How Life Imitates Chess - Garry Kasparov

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qlai

I want to try an experiment here. Picked up this book and thought I would do kind of a public conspectus as I read it.
I am hoping this will prove useful both for me and ET members. I will try to keep it short and as relevant to trading as possible.

As I quote things from the book, I hope members can chime in and make it even more relevant to trading. Let's see how it goes.
 
What makes Chess such an ideal laboratory for decision-making process? To play chess on a truly high level requires a constant stream of exact, informed decisions, made in real time and under pressure from your opponent.

Chess is a unique cognitive Nexus, a place where art and science come together in the human mind and are then refined and improved by experience.

The standards of success and failure in chess are strict. If your decisions are faulty, your position deteriorates and pendulum swings toward a loss; if they are good, it swings toward a victory.

There are no quick fixes, and this is not a book of tips and tricks. It is a book of self-awareness and challenge: about how you can constantly challenge yourself and others so you can learn how to make the best possible decisions.
 
Bobby Fischer was my idol at a very young age, I was obsessed with Chess until I got in high school and it switched to sports... I was a freak at speed chess, a freak... If you can master speed chess of 3-5 minute games, it will greatly enhance your thinking speed, reading speed and thinking patterns.

Never learned anything about Kasparov but he is a genius no doubt. Searching for bobby fischer, excellent movie, this scene will crack a grin on any chess player's face... =)

 
Chess is mathematical, and as in Math, retaining moves is highly memorization of not only current moves but also forming direction of future moves, IMHO. More than likely, not going to find a good chess player who can't do Math as one side of brain concentrates on logic. So, in relationship to trading, many firms like to see your hobby of chess or backgammon as another game of planning future with current moves. Does that mean you have to like chess to be a trader, no it does not, but it helps as it forces one to have more answers before the questions.

I taught my stepson how to play chess when he was four, by seven he was beating me easily and we played without a chessboard when traveling, he had as well defined memory as well. He has played in assortment of tournament's offering speed chess. I have watched him play 50 players all at once, scans board and in ten seconds plays perfect move, amazing to me, he says he knows the probabilities. What may take me 3 days to figure next move, takes him seconds, yet at 41yo he still forgets to tie his shoes.

Yea, that movie bought back our past., lol
 
Not played a good game of chess in literally 29years, mate got his first GF and she stopped him seeing his mates, got to be face to face ( everyone cheats on the internet ), got to take as long as required per move, got to be almost silence for hours, perfect, best board game ever (GO sucks ).
 
Turveyd said:
Not played a good game of chess in literally 29years, mate got his first GF and she stopped him seeing his mates, got to be face to face ( everyone cheats on the internet ), got to take as long as required per move, got to be almost silence for hours, perfect, best board game ever (GO sucks ).
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Ok I will take the bait. Actually was gonna post anyway but happened to see yours lol

Please. Watch AlphaGo on Netflix or Amazon. Chess to go is tic-tac-toe to chess. Play Go and truly feel what it’s lik to push your intellect boundaries. Let me brag. Amateur 6 Dan here. Prolly good for the top 1/1000. Also met Gary Kohl the producer in person at the Philadelphia film festival.

AlphaZero self learned for 4 hours. From scratch. And that was enough to kick stockfish’s ass. want to relate this to trading? GOOG MSFT AMZM they are all vastly undervalued because of the public don’t understand what AI will bring. Yet.

Chess simply isn’t that complicated. deepblue figures that out 20 years ago lol

It’s all good lol. Go sucks because you are terrible at it lol.
 
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Brought a smile to my face with "Searching for Bobby Fischer..." -- what an amazing movie/cast/script -- even to James Horner with the soundtrack, fercripsake. I want to see it again. [And Joan Allen: what a MILF.]

Was never particularly good at chess -- never really played. Did a "surge" once where I could play 3-4 games at once -- that lasted about a month, maybe. High School? Had to be. But I always enjoyed *playing* it. (I even bought books when I was a kid, but never understood a thing about what I was reading...)

...Anyway, played my first game in YEARS back around Christmas, and it was a fantastic little trip -- totally enjoyed it. SUCKED, of course, but the guy I was playing against sucked worse, and we were both 'in our cups'.... Good times.

Go, I have a special place for. I'd love to really learn it, but something about the scoring just has never *set* in my brain. But one of my favorite professors in grad school was a big fan, and he shaped a *lot* of my brain, and left that special appreciation for go.

And back to OP! Yeah: lots of nice links between the strategic and tactical mix of chess and Life itself. Nice mix of quotes there...
 
tommcginnis said:
Brought a smile to my face with "Searching for Bobby Fischer..." -- what an amazing movie/cast/script -- even to James Horner with the soundtrack, fercripsake. I want to see it again. [And Joan Allen: what a MILF.]

Was never particularly good at chess -- never really played. Did a "surge" once where I could play 3-4 games at once -- that lasted about a month, maybe. High School? Had to be. But I always enjoyed *playing* it. (I even bought books when I was a kid, but never understood a thing about what I was reading...)

...Anyway, played my first game in YEARS back around Christmas, and it was a fantastic little trip -- totally enjoyed it. SUCKED, of course, but the guy I was playing against sucked worse, and we were both 'in our cups'.... Good times.

Go, I have a special place for. I'd love to really learn it, but something about the scoring just has never *set* in my brain. But one of my favorite professors in grad school was a big fan, and he shaped a *lot* of my brain, and left that special appreciation for go.

And back to OP! Yeah: lots of nice links between the strategic and tactical mix of chess and Life itself. Nice mix of quotes there...
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Scoring at the end? The servers do it for you. Scoring during the game does have some fuzziness but nothing too bad. Humans limitation compared to Alpha is in the understanding of efficiency and the pros have learned a lot from alpha.

For amateurs to have fun. The fighting calculation from move to move is prolly similar to chess as we can only look so many steps ahead. But what separates from chess is the fuzziness. Thick or heavy? Thin or weak? The most valuable places? These are the more human like elements that chess lacks.

Chess really doesn’t relate to trading well. Mostly straight line calculation and there is very little of that in trading. If at all, robots do that better.

The Go fuzziness relates well. Value and efficiency Among the uncertainty . These things are more human intuition than straight line calculation. Things that can apply when you put on a trade.
 
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A map of the mind

Having a personalized map of your decision-making process is essential. The map tells you which areas of your mind are well-known to you and which are still uncharted. It reviels your strengths, weaknesses, and areas still untested.
Most important, you must develop your own map. There's no advantage in trying to identify the common denominator that links you to your friends or colleagues or opponents.

Acquired patterns and the logic to employ them combine with inherent qualities to create a unique decision-maker. As time goes by, experience and knowledge are focused through the prism of talent, which can itself be sharpened, focused, and polished.
Here we begin to see the influence of individual psychology and our emotional make up as it is expressed in our decisions - what we call style in a chess player.

We cannot pick and choose which style we would prefer for ourselves. You must recognize what works best for you and then, through challenge and trial, develop your own method - your own map. To begin, ask yourself, What am I lacking? What are my strengths? What type of challenges do I tend to avoid and why? The method you employ to achieve success is a secret because it can be discovered only by you analyzing your own decisions.
 
dozu888 said:
Scoring at the end? The servers do it for you. Scoring during the game does have some fuzziness but nothing too bad. Humans limitation compared to Alpha is in the understanding of efficiency and the pros have learned a lot from alpha.

For amateurs to have fun. The fighting calculation from move to move is prolly similar to chess as we can only look so many steps ahead. But what separates from chess is the fuzziness. Thick or heavy? Thin or weak? The most valuable places? These are the more human like elements that chess lacks.

Chess really doesn’t relate to trading well. Mostly straight line calculation and there is very little of that in trading. If at all, robots do that better.

The Go fuzziness relates well. Value and efficiency Among the uncertainty . These things are more human intuition than straight line calculation. Things that can apply when you put on a trade.
More...

The most important feature to win in Chess is you have to understand and analyze how your opponent thinks fairly quickly, once you understand his chain of thoughts, you have him... Vice versa, it's hard to counter and block someone out of thinking pattern, that's why I loved speed chess more. You have to be a machine in 5 minute games, where as without timers, pure intellect wins over thought process on a 40 minute span

I do not think there is any correlation to Chess and Trading, but if you have a 1800 + rating, you have the mental capacity and EQ to perform at trading. I have yet to come across a dumb person that was really good in Chess, by definition being really good at chess implies good Critical thinking, which helps you in most aspects of life
 
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