The Right Mindset: 9 Principles for Winning Play

From: IanchoHr   

great job Matt!

I know a lot of geniuses, by any way that term can be objectively used. I think if I was to take a poll most would agree that most of them are much smarter than I am. Some of them are math professors, some of them play backgammon. Yet I can outplay all of them at backgammon. How can that possibly be? Most of them just don't get it...or they don't care.

What is a truly objective IQ test? I played chess for twice as long as I have been playing backgammon and was only an average chess player. You can remember bridge hands from before I was born; I often can't remember what cards I have in my hand at the moment.

Here's a good memory test: can you remember your name? Most people don't have problems with this. If you can remember your name you can also remember other things...the trick is to make things easy rather than fight an uphill battle.

There are other differences between me and someone who has been playing for 20 or 50 years besides what is visible on the surface. If I played a 10 ER, I wouldn't be able to sleep. If they play a 10 ER, they might not know whether that was good or bad.

I am not suggesting that you can just become a better player tomorrow at no cost. It is possible that I would have become a top chess player if I had continued studying chess. But chess was literally driving me insane at the time, and I valued my mental health more than my chess skills.

Anyway, I am just trying to give my perspective here. These are the things I've focused on in the past 3 years to improve my game. I've never really thought about whether I have a better memory or better math skills than anyone else because I don't find it important to my improvement as a player.

Great article.

Phil - you may be mistaking causation and correlation. I tend to agree with Matt that you don't need to be a genius or have a great memory or terrific math skills to be a great player. You do have to work hard at it and want to work hard at it.

Its not a coincidence at that top players tend to be clever and have good memories and are good at maths. But this is correlated with their interest in the game. It is not a necessary condition. I have met vey few serious games players who didn't study maths, sciences or logic - this is just the stuff that interests them. Normal people don't devote many hours a week to playing and studying a game involving moving pieces round a board with triangles on it!