Visionary. Value focused.

What does chess teach me?

For most people, chess is associated with old dudes sitting and looking at a wooden board for hours on end. It is a very time and brain consuming activity, and unfortunately not a lot of people can sit and think for a long time. Chess is my favourite boardgame by nature, and I’d like to keep a note on a few things that I learned from it.

Tl; dr;

Chess teaches me a lot about principles of life and also, death.

• Every pieces have their own role.
• If you get to the end, you can be whatever you want to be.
• It helps me practice thinking about multiple scenarios at once.
• Sometimes sacrifices are required for the greater good.

Every chess pieces are important.

All chess pieces play their own role in the game. Not a single pawn or piece is useless. The player is the one who put them into useless situations. You can win games with just a pawn, and can lose games with queen advantage.

The thing I get out from is, we cannot do everything, be everywhere, and satisfy everyone. We can only do what we want to do, be where we want to be, and make only the people we care about happy. I guess it is kind of similar to not giving a f**k about matters that I don’t really care about. Flipping the thought, would that mean criminals, cancer patients, homeless people, etc. are actually playing a valid role in the game of life? There is no good without bad, no happiness without sadness, no yin without yang. Should we just need to accept that bad things are bound to happen, how we respond to them defines how we can win the game?

The end is always good.

There’s an old saying, “Everything will be fine in the end. If it’s not fine, it’s not the end.” As you know, when a pawn go to first rank or eighth rank, it can be promoted into a more important piece. Therefore it transforms from a seemingly useless chess piece to a more powerful and more important piece.

There are a lot of threats on the way for a pawn to reach its final destination. Promotion is a reward for that journey. And the best thing about it is, when the opportunity for a pawn to head towards the end, every other pieces will support that pawn, and every other pieces from the other side will try to stop it. We just need to recognize and take the opportunity with a strong determination, other people will help us get to where we want to go.

Thinking in multiple scenarios.

Playing chess, or any games that require strategic and tactical thinking, will train the players to think about multiple possible scenarios. This translates well in life and in business. Whenever I deal with a client, I can think of a few different ways that they can react to my proposals, and prepare the response in advance. I tend to do the same in life, and it is quite hard for me to be surprised by something, since I have already thought about the scenarios before hand, either during drift off, dreams, or day dreaming.

It’s a good thing in business. But in life, sometimes I have to fake being surprised. And to me that just feels weird. Maybe I’ll get better at that in the future.

Sacrifices are required sometimes.

It’s hard to talk about chess without mentioning sacrifices. If you sacrificed and won, it’s the best feeling ever. If it doesn’t work out, you will be blaming yourself for the stupidity. The thing about sacrifice is, you can’t take back what you have given up. Therefore we need to be very careful when deciding to remove an important piece of our lives, whether it is an asset, or a person. However, in real life, at least you have a chance to get back what you surrendered before.

For example, I give up my free time, my high figure salary, to build up the company that I own. I accept the low salary amount, barely enough for me to live, with the expectation that my company will grow bigger and bigger. And so far it has been growing exponentially. I feel happy and grateful for that, and ready to forgo more things as needed to see it grow.

Summary

Above are just 4 of the lessons that I learned while playing chess. There are a lot more that I realized when playing but I’d like to keep them to myself for now, as some of them are quite controversial. Maybe in the future I will note it down, when I deem appropriate.

“There are tough players and nice guys, and I’m a tough player.” ― Bobby Fischer

By Tuan Nguyen