Sunday morning musings over coffee- Fundamental flaw

"life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards"

Charlie Chan

Lets think a little about the quote above this Sunday morning. Our postmortems in chess is only about how the line failed and how to find better moves within the game. This is akin to finding out how the patient died on the coroners table.

Surely the way forward is how to keep the patient from dying in the first place instead of looking at cold slabs in the mortuary. This means we need to look at how we make decisions.

If that is the case then we need to look at how we prepare, how we train. Asking questions like are we using the right opening for the right opponent, the right time control etc.

You can tell a lot about the state of chess in Malaysia by looking at the thinking of our strongest proponents. Do they make good decisions? Can they challenge past assumptions? Can they see the big picture or do they shoot off at tangents? Are they forward looking or stuck in the past?

Are they stuck repeating past mistakes again and again? This pattern of thinking is repeated on the chess board. Observe carefully around you.

See past the illusions, drop the self delusions and we will do better and better.