Call me a nerd, but I love chess. I’ve been playing since the 4th grade. I competed in tournaments all through grade school. In high school, I was captain of my chess team, and I led our team to the state title my senior year…I even have the state ring to prove it.
Now, the tournaments are behind me, but I still love to play in my free time. There’s nothing better for keeping the mind active than hopping on Chess.com and playing a couple of great games. I’ve even played the legendary 4-player chess a handful of times with my buddies.
Let’s just say I’ve played a lot of chess over the past 10-15 years. And I’ve learned quite a few good lessons from my time behind the chessboard. I’m here to share with you 4 of my biggest lessons.
Lesson #1: Timing is Key
In chess, timing is so important, it has it’s own fancy word: “tempo”. Tempo refers to a single move or “turn” in chess. Tempo is so critical, that the player playing White actually has a significantly higher winning percentage (~52-56%) than the player playing Black simply because the White moves first.
Black can make up this disadvantage, however, by making moves that force White to waste his turn, gaining tempo on White. On the other hand, White can amplify his one turn advantage by making moves that force Black to waste his turn.
Chess is really a game of timing (tempo), and the player who has an advantage in tempo usually wins the game.
Interestingly enough, however, it is not always an advantage to have tempo on your side. The term “zugzwang” is given to a chess situation in which a player is at a disadvantage simply because it is his turn to move. Tempo works both ways, and it can be an advantage or a disadvantage.
Like chess, life is a game of timing. The same opportunity can be good or bad, depending on when it occurs. And you should always be thinking about tempo. Never waste time because a loss of time can be a significant disadvantage in and of itself.
Lesson #2: You Have to be Comfortable with Boredom
I once heard a great chess master say that the key to winning at chess is to be incredibly comfortable with boredom.
Chess can be exciting when pieces are being captured and players are launching attacks and counterattacks on the opposing king. But in most games, there is a so-called “boring phase”. The game slows down, certain pieces are gone, and the position on the board becomes closed. This can happen in the opening, the middle game, or the end game. But it almost always happen.
When it does happen, the key to victory is comfort with boredom. When the games gets “boring”, the winning strategy is to wait for your opponent to make a mistake. This could take 1 turn or 10 turns or 50 turns. It really depends.
But one player will always make a mistake. It’s usually the player who is less comfortable with boring. In an attempt to open up the game and make things more exciting, they’ll make a rash move, exposing a weakness in their defenses. Then, the other player sees the opening and makes his opponent pay.
In life, you want to be the one who sees an opening and takes advantage of the opportunity. To do this, you must be incredibly comfortable with boredom. There will be periods of immense boredom in your life.
When they occur, don’t move rashly. Be patient, keep yourself prepared, maintain your defenses, and move quickly and effectively when the lane opens up for you. Learn to be comfortable with boredom.
Lesson #3: Small Advantages can Lead to Big Victories
A pawn is the weakest piece on the chessboard. For the best players, being just a single pawn up on your opponent can lead to a big victory. Here’s how:
If you find yourself a pawn up, force your opponent to trade pieces. After all the queens, rooks, bishops, and knights have been swapped, both sides will be left with just a king and some pawns. You will have one more pawn than your opponent and if you play well, that will be enough.
Now start trading pawns. After all the dust settles—and assuming you play well—you will have one pawn who you will be able to get to the other side of the board. When a pawn gets to the other side of the board, it turns into a queen. Suddenly, you have gone from being a pawn up to being a queen up.
Your small advantage turned into a huge advantage and you will be able to use that advantage to bury your opponent. In chess, an advantage as small as a single pawn can lead to a huge victory.
The same is true in life. In both chess and life, the key to making this happen is proper execution. If the player with the pawn advantage had played poorly, he would have lost that extra pawn (or worse, more pieces). But because he played well, he was able to amplify that small advantage into a big advantage.
You can do the same in your life. And here’s the best part: in chess, you had to work hard to gain your small advantage, but you the same is not true in life. That’s because everyone already has a small advantage due to their genetics, upbringing, past experiences, personality, or some other reason. Every single one of you has some small advantage over 95% of the population.
The key to success in life is to find that small advantage, turn it into a huge advantage, and then turn that huge advantage into a glorious victory.
Lesson #4: You Need to Think Ahead
The masters of chess can think 10, 15, even 20 moves ahead. If you can think just a handful of moves ahead, you are already a better chess player than the vast majority of the world’s population.
In chess, the ability to think ahead separates the pros from the amateurs. The best players can predict how their opponent will react and will act accordingly.
You need to do the same in life. You need a Plan A, as well as Plans B-Z. You need to be at least one step, and ideally more steps, ahead of the competition. You need to be able to accurately predict how the world—your clients, your competition, your loved ones, your colleagues, etc.—will respond to your actions.
The dual combination of planning and predicting (the two P’s) is essential to success in chess and in life.
Lesson #5: Be Aware of Your Opponent’s Plan
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been planning and executing some ingenious plan to break through my opponent’s defenses and make a winning attack on his king. And just before I am about to deliver the fatal strike, the opponent launches his own ingenious plan and either checkmates my king or gains a significant piece advantage by capturing one of my pieces. I was on the verge of victory, and suddenly, the opponent struck and I lost.
I’ve also been on the other end of this, and it’s definitely a lot more fun completely catching your opponent off-guard with a surprising, game-winning counterattack. The look of horror on his face as I snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
However, a closer look at this situation reveals that I didn’t magically turn defeat into victory. Instead, I was carefully crafting an winning attack that my opponent clearly ignored because he was too busy paying attention to his own attack.
As someone who’s been on both sides of this situation dozens of times, I can’t emphasize this enough: you need to pay close attention to what your opponent is doing.
This is true in life and it is true in chess. You can’t just close yourself off from the world and look inward. There is competition out there and you have to pay attention to what they are doing. When they attack, you must be prepared to counterattack. The look of horror should be on their faces, not yours.
Never sleep on the competition. It’s good to focus inwards, but you also need to keep one eye on what everyone else is doing. Be prepared for anything.