How Life Imitates Chess Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom

by Kasparov, Garry

• ISBN13: 9781596913882
• ISBN10: 1596913886
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-09-30
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA

Summary

"One of the most formidable brains of our era....fast-talking, exuberant, indigant one moment and laughing sardonically the next Kasparov clearly relishes the fight."Washington PostGarry Kasparov was the highest-rated chess player in the world for over twenty years and is widely considered the greatest player that ever lived. InHow Life Imitates ChessKasparov distills the lessons he learned over a lifetime as a Grandmaster to offer a primer on successful decision-making: how to evaluate opportunities, anticipate the future, devise winning strategies. He relates in a lively, original way all the fundamentals, from the nuts and bolts of strategy, evaluation, and preparation to the subtler, more human arts of developing a personal style and using memory, intuition, imagination and even fantasy. Kasparov takes us through the great matches of his career, including legendary duels against both man (Grandmaster Anatoly Karpov) and machine (IBM chess supercomputer Deep Blue), enhancing the lessons of his many experiences with examples from politics, literature, sports and military history.With candor, wisdom, and humor, Kasparov recounts his victories and his blunders, both from his years as a world-class competitor as well as his new life as a political leader in Russia. An inspiring book that combines unique strategic insight with personal memoir,How Life Imitates Chessis a glimpse inside the mind of one of today's greatest and most innovative thinkers.

Author Biography

Garry Kasparov grew up in Baku, Azerbaijan (USSR) and became the youngest ever world chess champion in 1985 at the age of 22. He held that title until 2000. He retired from professional chess in March 2005 to found the United Civil Front in Russia, and has dedicated himself to establishing free and fair elections in his homeland. A longtime contributing editor at The Wall Street Journal, Kasparov travels around the world to address corporations and business audiences on strategy and leadership, and he appears frequently in the international media to talk about both chess and politics. When not traveling he divides his time between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Opening Gambit	p. 1
The secret of success	p. 1
Why chess?	p. 3
A map of the mind	p. 5
Better decision-making cannot be taught, but it can be self-taught	p. 7
The Lesson	p. 11
Personal lessons from the world champion	p. 11
Becoming aware of the process	p. 14
Strategy	p. 16
Success at any speed	p. 16
"Why?" turns tacticians into strategists	p. 18
An ever-expanding example	p. 21
Play your own game	p. 23
You cannot always determine the battlefield	p. 26
A frequently changed strategy is the same as no strategy	p. 28
Don't watch the competition more than you watch yourself	p. 31
Once you have a strategy, employing it is a matter of desire	p. 33
Strategy and Tactics at Work	p. 36
Element of surprise	p. 38
A genius for development	p. 39
Sticking with a plan	p. 41
Confidence and the time factor	p. 43
Never give in-never, never, never	p. 45
Calculation	p. 48
Calculation must be focused and disciplined	p. 50
Imagination, calculation, and my greatest game	p. 51
Talent	p. 54
Recognizing the patterns in our lives	p. 56
The power of fantasy	p. 60
Fantasy can cut through fog	p. 60
Developing the habit of imagination	p. 62
Be aware of your routines, then break them	p. 64
Preparation	p. 66
Results are what matter	p. 67
Inspiration vs. perspiration	p. 69
Preparation pays off in many ways	p. 70
Turning a game into a science	p. 72
Targeting ourselves for efficiency	p. 74
MTQ: Material, Time, Quality	p. 79
Evaluation trumps calculation	p. 79
Material, the fundamental element	p. 80
Time is money	p. 83
When time matters most	p. 84
The third factor: quality	p. 87
What makes a bad bishop bad?	p. 88
Putting the elements into action	p. 89
Double-edged evaluation	p. 90
Personal return on investment	p. 92
MTQ on the home front	p. 94
Exchanges and Imbalances	p. 97
Freezing the game	p. 97
The search for compensation	p. 100
The laws of thermodynamics, chess, and quality of life	p. 101
Strategy on the browser battlefield	p. 102
All change comes at a cost	p. 104
Overextending our reach	p. 105
Phases of the Game	p. 108
Know why we make each move we make	p. 109
Art is born from creative conflict	p. 112
Make sure a good peace follows a good war	p. 114
Eliminating phase bias	p. 117
Don't bring a knife to a gunfight	p. 118
The Attacker's Advantage	p. 120
Flexing your intuition leads to strong decision-making	p. 120
The aggression double standard	p. 122
The initiative rarely rings twice	p. 123
An attacker by choice	p. 126
The transition from imitator to innovator	p. 129
The will to attack	p. 130
Question Success	p. 133
Success is the enemy of future success	p. 133
The gravity of past success	p. 134
Competition and anticomplacency tactics	p. 136
In favor of contradiction	p. 141
The difference between better and different	p. 143
The Inner Game	p. 144
The game can be won before you get to the board	p. 144
The storm before the calm	p. 145
Don't get distracted while trying to distract	p. 147
Breaking the spell of pressure	p. 148
Staying objective when the chips are down	p. 150
Pretenders to the crown and fatal flaws	p. 151
Man vs. Machine	p. 155
Enter the machines	p. 155
And a child shall lead us	p. 158
Kasparov vs. Deep Blue	p. 160
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em	p. 164
Staying out of the comfort zone	p. 167
Intuition	p. 171
We know more than we understand	p. 171
Intuition vs. analysis	p. 173
How long is long enough?	p. 176
The perils of ignoring a trend	p. 178
Crisis Point	p. 181
One single moment	p. 181
Detecting a crisis before it's a crisis	p. 184
Learning from a crisis	p. 185
A final chess story: the crisis in Seville	p. 186
Must-win strategy	p. 187
Errors on both sides	p. 189
Keeping a grip on the title	p. 192
Endgame	p. 194
The fight in Russia today	p. 194
Your life is your preparation	p. 196
No more secrets	p. 197
Epilogue	p. 199
A strategy for democracy	p. 199
Glossary	p. 205
Acknowledgments	p. 211
Index	p. 213
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