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How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom (Hardcover)
by Garry Kasparov
| Category:
Strategy, Leadership, Decision-making, Strategic thinking |
| Market price: ¥ 288.00
MSL price:
¥ 268.00
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
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| MSL Pointer Review:
This new book is Kasparov's effort to examine how the lessons he learned in his chess career can be applied to the worlds of business and politics. |
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Author: Garry Kasparov
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Pub. in: September, 2007
ISBN: 1596913878
Pages: 240
Measurements: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00989
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-1596913875
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- Awards & Credential -
One of the highly recommended primer on strategic thinking. |
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- MSL Picks -
In his 22-year reign as Grandmaster, Garry Kasparov faced more than a few tough choices under the heat of chess competitons. This is a man who knows a thing or two about making smart decisions, and since his retirement in 2005, Kasparov has put his powerful strategic thinking to work in business and politics, showing that a simple reliance on instincts can guide you through even the most complex challenges. With no shortage of wit or eloquence, he's answered our hardest questions about what factors can make or break a decision-making moment.
(From quoting Anne Bartholomew)
Target readers:
Kasparov fans, business readers and all the other people interested in strategy and leadership.
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- Better with -
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The Book of Five Rings, A Classic Text on the Japanese Way of the Sword
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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.
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From Publisher
One of the most highly regarded strategists of our time teaches us how the tools that made him a world chess champion can make us more successful in business and in life.
Garry Kasparov was the highest-rated chess player in the world for over twenty years and is widely considered the greatest player that ever lived. In How Life Imitates Chess Kasparov 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 Chess is a glimpse inside the mind of one of today’s greatest and most innovative thinkers.
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Chapter One
I can look back at my chess career and pick out more than a few crisis points, but only one Mount Everest. I would like to share the tale to investigate the means I used in winning the most important game of my life. After winning the world championship in 1985, I had little time to savor the taste of victory. The traditional cycle called for a title defense every three years. During that time the challenger would be produced by rigorous qualification through regional tournaments, giant "interzonal" tournaments, and finally a series of candidate matches. This was so grueling that a challenger in the final was undoubtedly a worthy contender.
This process was interrupted in my case, however, thanks to the rematch clause, a defunct rule that FIDE (The World Chess Federation, or Federation Internationale des Echecs) resurrected in the Seventies under Soviet pressure to favor Karpov. If the champion lost, he had the right to an automatic rematch a year later with no qualification process. This rule had been abolished after Botvinnik, who had poor scores in world championship matches but was devastating in the rematches, used it to reclaim the title he lost to Smyslov in 1957 and then Tal in 1960.
A Turbulent Start
To avoid the same fate I would have to beat Karpov again in 1986. Bear in mind that we had already played the longest championship match in history in 1984-85, then played another grueling match in 1985, in which I took the title. I narrowly won the rematch in 1986, but the ordeal was still not over. The qualification cycle had started on schedule in 1985 despite our canceled marathon match, the rescheduled match, and the rematch. This meant that I was due to face the scheduled challenger in 1987, exactly a year after beating Karpov. And who would my opponent be this time? Karpov.
Evading the main qualification process, my nemesis had been dropped into a "superfinal" and had duly demolished the leading contender, Andrei Sokolov. In October 1987 we sat down in Seville, Spain, to begin our fourth world championship match in three years. If I had thought I was tired of looking at Karpov back in 1984, I was really sick of him by now. At least this time there were no more tricks. If I won this match, I wouldn't have to see him or any other title challenger for another three years. Apart from the freedom from the exhausting battle of the match itself, this also meant not having to endure the months of intense preparation that always precede such a match.
Perhaps my eagerness to avoid playing another match with Karpov for another three years is what led to such a turbulent start to our match in Seville. Four of the first eight games were decisive, two wins each and four draws. I was disappointed with my uneven play and my inability to put any distance between us. After a terrible Karpov blunder, I won the eleventh game from a dubious position to take the lead for the first time in the match, scheduled for twenty-four games. After four draws Karpov won the sixteenth game to draw even. At this point I began to think only of my title. A 12-12 score - a drawn match - would allow me to retain the championship. Hardly the convincing victory I had hoped for to end our marathon, but beggars cannot be choosers, and, more important, a draw would give me three years of peace. I went into defensive mode and stopped pressing him. A stretch of six quite uneventful draws followed, setting up a showdown in the final two games.
A Must-Win Game 24
I didn't want to push, and Karpov didn't have the energy to do so. Two more draws seemed the most logical result. Members of my analysis team thought so too. They didn't tell me about their side wagers until after the match had ended, but Grandmaster Zurab Azmaiparashvili made a bet against Grandmaster Josef Dorfman on the last two games, giving away phenomenal odds for any outcome other than two more draws. It would have done my heart a great deal of good had Dorfman lost his bet, but unfortunately the string of draws would end at six. After a tough, prolonged defense I suffered one of the worst hallucinations of my career and blundered to a loss in game 23. Suddenly, Karpov was up by a point and was only a draw away from taking back the crown he had lost to me two years earlier. The very next day after this catastrophe, I had to take the white pieces into a must-win game 24.
Caissa, the goddess of chess, had punished me for my conservative play, for betraying my nature. I would not be allowed to hold on to my title without winning a game in the second half of the match. Only once before in chess history had the champion won a final game to retain his title. With his back against the wall, Emanuel Lasker beat Carl Schlechter in the last game of their match in 1910. The win allowed Lasker to draw the match and keep his title for a further eleven years. The Austrian Schlechter had, like Karpov, a reputation as a defensive wizard. In fact, his uncharacteristically aggressive play in the final game against Lasker has led some historians to believe that the rules of that particular match required him to win by two points.
In 1985 the situation had been reversed. I had gone into the final game leading by a point, and Karpov needed to win to tie the match and save the title he had held since 1975. In that decisive game Karpov started out with an all-or-nothing attack. At the critical moment he was betrayed by his own instincts and failed to find the best moves. He had started out the game playing in my direct style only to slow down to his own more cautious approach in midstream, with predictably poor results.
The Secret of My Preparation
When preparing for my turn on the other side of this situation, I recalled that critical encounter. What strategy should I employ with the white pieces in this must-win final game? There was more to think about than game 23 and game 24, of course. These were also games 119 and 120 between us, an extraordinary number of top-level encounters between the same two players, all played in a span of thirty-nine months. It felt like one long match, with this final game in December, 1987, the climax of what we had started in September 1984. My plan for the final game had to consider not only what I would like best but what my opponent would like least. And what could be more annoying for Karpov than my turning the tables and playing like Karpov?
Had I not battled against Karpov for 119 games, I would have been incapable of surviving the all-important 120th. The loss of game 23 itself had the potential to be crushing, and I had less than twenty-four hours to prepare what could be my last game as world chess champion. The secret of my preparation? Playing cards with my team and getting a good five or six hours of sleep.
The aggregate score of our world championship marathon was sixteen wins apiece and eighty-seven draws. Victory in this 120th game would mean not only winning this match but taking the lead in our overall score. So why cards and sleep instead of opening preparation? After 119 games with Karpov there was nothing my team and I were going to uncover in a few hours of anxious analysis. We decided on a basic strategy, nothing more than that. The rest of the time was better spent recovering my nervous and physical energy for the battle ahead. This might sound strange given my typically obsessive preparation, but it was a simple matter of allocation of resources. Here, I would be best served to trade time for quality. The strategy I had chosen would require not explosive energy but a slow burn.
Part Chess, Part Boxing Match
The magnificent Teatro Lope de Vega was packed for game 24. The entire game was shown live on Spanish television. The usual pregame murmur of the audience had been replaced by a low roar. I was later told that the excited Spanish radio and television commentators sounded as if they were covering the final round of a heavyweight boxing match, which in a sense they were.
The arbiter started my clock and I pushed my c-pawn forward two squares, just as I had done eight times previously in the match. The difference would come in the next few moves as I kept my center pawns back and instead developed on the flanks, carefully avoiding a do-or-die battle. I opened slowly, even a little passively, to keep as many pieces as possible on the board. This technique would put psychological pressure on Karpov, despite his expertise in such maneuvers. With no clear, forcing continuations he would constantly be tempted to simplify and exchange pieces even at the cost of a slightly inferior position. Obviously with fewer pieces on the board the level of complexity would drop, reducing the chances of a decisive result, but as long as I could put a sufficiently high-quality price tag on these exchanges, I felt I was getting good value.
My slow-cook method had the additional advantage of getting Karpov into serious time trouble. With the stakes so high he was being extra-cautious, taking valuable minutes to double-check moves he would normally make quickly. As the game progressed, Karpov exchanged half the pieces, but his position was still under uncomfortable pressure. He was so close to equalizing on every move, but he couldn't quite get his head above water; in the meantime his clock was becoming a factor.
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Publishers Weekly (MSL quote), USA
<2007-10-06 00:00>
A business manual by the champion-turned-activist [is] a no-brainer. The book is serious, readable, and offer[s] real insight... engaging... Kasparov fans will find much to enjoy.
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Bruce Pandolfini (Chess Life, MSL quote), USA
<2007-10-06 00:00>
When the game's greatest champion gives advice on integrating your chess skills into your business life (as well as the rest of your life), the wise player listens closely. …an evocative tapestry of inspiration and guidance. To support his account, [Kasparov] draws extensively from history, philosophy, art, science, sports, and general culture. He intersperses references, across the intellectual spectrum, from and to the likes of Lao Tzu, Charles Darwin, Marcel Duchamp, George Washington, Franz Kafka, Jack Welch, Michael Jordan, and, of course, Vladimir Putin, his chief political adversary. The result is a volume of cogently packaged lessons that, beyond its import and message, is a pleasure to read… It's clear from this enjoyable offering that the champion's gifts are not confined to the chessboard and those same qualities are now to be employed at making the planet a more livable place. Probably, nobody else has all of Kasparov's special skill sets. Yet, after reading How Life Imitates Chess, with its solid advice to follow one's own path, it's eas to see how the road to personal growth and eventual fulfillment might suddenly come into view, sharp and focused. |
Adrian J. Slywotzky (Director of Oliver Wyman, and author of The Upside), USA
<2007-10-06 00:00>
It’s very rare to have a window onto a unique and fascinating strategic mind. It’s even more rare to receive a set of very specific, pragmatic ideas to enhance your own game, and your own business success. Garry Kasparov provides you with both, in a totally accessible, highly engaging, one-of-a-kind volume. |
Portfolio (Reviewed by Roger Lowenstein, MSL quote), USA
<2007-10-06 00:00>
Riveting… [Kasparov] makes his debut as a management guru. If retired jocks can write inspirational books, I see no reason to exclude retired chess luminaries from the field of management advice, and executives will find Kasparov’s prescriptions useful. The man is a genius, for Pete’s sake.
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