What losing chess games can teach you about decision-making
Chess, while occasionally brutal, imparts valuable life lessons.
My opponent, a kid with curly blond hair wearing a blue sweatshirt, shakes my hand and starts my clock. I’m playing White against him in the first round of the tournament—and I’m feeling pretty confident, since my rating is higher than his.
I make my first move. He fires back quickly, and I take a second to think. After a few moves, the opening veers beyond my studies, and so I focus harder. After each of my moves, I quietly press the clock and hastily scribble my move on my scoresheet.
In the middlegame, I try to pry open the protective wall of pawns in front of my opponent’s king, but he defends well. As I walk to the bathroom after one of my moves, I feel frustrated with his resilience. I’m playing a great game so far. He’s just miraculously managing to hold on.
As I walk back to the game, I notice he’s made a move. He gets up, and I grow frustrated. I make a quick, uncalculated move with my knight, slapping the clock before I feel that something doesn't seem quite right. Bang.
Oh, look. My opponent has finally made it back to the board. He glances at me quickly with a confused look in his eyes, and I can’t understand why until he moves his bishop onto a light square, putting my king in check.
He glances at me again, and then leaves the board with a hint of a smirk on his face. Now I’m forced to realize how large my mistake really was.
I’m going to lose my queen—the most powerful piece in chess.
I immediately calculate all the possible outcomes. If I move my pawn here, can I save my queen? Nope. If I take his bishop, can I get enough material back to maybe save the game? Nope. If I lose this game, will my mom let me eat candied popcorn in the hotel room? Probably.
I eventually must confront reality. I move my king one square left and wait for the demise of my poor queen, and of course, he immediately takes it.
As the endgame approaches, I keep fighting. I have an illusion of hope for a few seconds, before it's shattered as I realize that my elaborate plan simply doesn't work at all. There's nothing I can do. I resign a few moves later in a completely lost position, and I can't help but wonder how the game would have gone if I hadn't made that hasty knight move.
Chess is often an extremely unforgiving game.
I've played over 5000 games of chess, and in that time, I've lost in all numbers of ways. But the most crushing defeats come when I make a hasty decision which turns out to be a blunder. One of the best life lessons I've learned from chess is:
If you are going to make a big life decision, spend lots of time considering the potential consequences of that decision.
Many people make irrational life decisions simply because they don't spend enough time considering them. Large life decisions (ex. buying a car/house, deciding whether to marry someone, etc.) are almost never urgent.
Of course, it's extremely hard to always make the right decision. But right decisions are more easily made when given ample time.