Friday, May 25, 2007
Beauty and Depth
When Viswanathan Anand is asked in an interview : On what sets super-grandmasters apart from the rest ?
He replied precisely and beautifully :
The stronger you are you get to see more connections. The pieces and positions come alive with patterns. You start seeing possibilities in these patterns. First you think the white has the advantage and then you look carefully and realise that the black has the edge. As you refine your analysis the more sharp your understanding of the position gets. The pieces are there standing and suddenly when you see the connections they become beautiful.
In my own interpretation :
Pieces + positions -> pattern -> connection/harmony -> beauty simphony (both in art and logic nature).
Talking of computers and chess, Anand said this whole other perspective which is worth reflecting upon. One could have a 300 Giga data base of analysis to see the outcome from a given position. By extensive cataloguing and crunching the computer can give its finding, stating that options 2,190,7000 and 3 million lead to successful endings. It is only the human mind that can lend the beauty of comprehension to these findings by understanding the principles behind and the reasons that unite them!
When Vladimir Kramnik is asked in an interview :
Chess commentators often describe your style with terms from the language of art. They speak of harmony, flow and depth, resplendence, crystalline clarity and intensity. On occasion even inconceivability. How do they arrive at this appraisal ?
He replied : You know, sometimes I think I have understood a position, but after a couple of years I realize that I have understood nothing. That is what is so mysterious and fascinating about chess. You have a board with 64 squares, and it is so deep that not even ten Kramniks can know which is the best move. Sometimes you simply feel lost. You cannot feel the ground.
Are you afraid of the depth?
Kramnik: It is sometimes painful. You simply cannot reach the ground. This ground or call it final truth, if it exists at all, is not of humans.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
How Life Imitate Chess
I really enjoy reading this new book How Life Imitates Chess. Author : Garry Kasparov. It gives me many new perspectives to view chess from different angle.
In this book, Garry Kasparov reveals how and why the game of chess is a fitting and powerful teacher.
He shares the powerful secrets of strategy he has learned from dominating the world's most intellectually challenging game for two decades.
Lessons about mastering the strategic and emotional skills to navigate life's toughest challenges and maximise success no matter how tough the competition. Drawing on a wealth of revealing and instructive stories, not only from his finest games, but also from a wide-ranging and perceptive knowledge of current affairs, Kasparov reveals the strategic ways of thinking that always give a player - in life as in chess - the edge.
We learn about the great figures of the game, and how their contests have shaped chess history; from Capablanca and Alekhine to Bobby Fischer and Kasparov's own nemesis, Vladimir Kramnik. With a raconteur's engaging charm, a great chess strategist takes us inside a brilliant strategic mind.
As Sun Tzu distilled the secrets of the art of war and Machiavelli unveiled the lessons to be learned from courtly intrigue, Garry Kasparov - a player whose record is likely never to be rivalled - reveals how and why the game of chess is a fitting and powerful teacher, of how to be prepared for, and how to win in, even the most competitive situations.
