Relearning how to see the truth.

Seeing the truth has never been an easy thing. The first step is learning how to reason. How to look at the facts without adding or subtracting. How to weigh and measure the order of importance of relevant factors. In fact even identifying what is relevant and what is irrelevant in differing scenarios is not easy.

And then there is the question of how things work. Do it one way and no result is forthcoming. Do it another and you get better results. And there are also long term and short term goals. Too many knee jerk short term reactions take us nowhere.

All these decisions are further complicated by strong emotions. There is the spirit of things ie the essence and there is the illusions created by strong emotions.

A GM recently told me that he asked a super GM what is the one thing that separates chess players. And he was told, its decision making.

Our players need to be able to make decisions over the board. And they will be doing this alone. They need to be able to raise their hands and ask for the arbiter. So they will need courage. And they will also need to be able to reason out their case in a way that can be understood. So they will need communication skills.

They need to learn to see the truth that lies behind a position despite all the illusions, intimidations that are thrown at them by their opponents. And then they need to learn how to be decisive and take the appropriate action. That is chess.