This week brought news that my long standing housing nightmare may soon be at an end. So now that demon called ‘hope’ has raised its ugly head. I find myself ‘hoping’ that things will work out OK despite long experience of knowing that it rarely does. Worse still, hope brings us to our most vulnerable mental state.

After thousands of chess games I came to realise that hope is one of the ultimate destroyers of objectivity, the urge to relax when battle is still joined.  So I’m doing my best to be cautious about my hopes, trying to think of things that can go wrong. The odds are that things will be OK, but nothing is over until the fat lady sings.

I’ve heard it said that teaching is far more effective when done by example rather than ‘lessons’, and today I had a powerful confirmation of this view. In the morning I was on the exercise bike for an hour whilst my son was watching a DVD. And then in the afternoon I won our weekly race in Staples for a change.

My son just couldn’t believe it because children are supposed to be faster than their parents. And when I ascribed my victory to all the training I’ve been doing his first reaction was to insist that I stop. His second idea was that he should start whilst I stop and finally he wanted me to teach him the ancient Chinese stuff. There followed some coaching in basic relaxation exercises (arm swings, knee circles etc) after which he wanted to race again. ‘Too soon’, I told him.

What was fascinating about this experience was how strongly motivated he became when confronting a real life problem (ie running faster than his father).  And this may be the hook for excellence in any field.

On the subject of martial arts, this vid has been circulating the internet in which a yob is seen attacking a certain Mr Smith. Unbeknownst to the yob, his portly victim was a gulf war veteran with black belts in karate and ju jitsu:

Coincidentally my reading today in Deng Ming Dao’s ‘365 Tao’ (OK, I’m not reading them according to the correct dates) was the following. And whilst like everyone else I’m cheering, it’s difficult to avoid noticing that Mr Smith is now highly visible:

Invisibility is the best advantage.
But if forced to a confrontation,
Come out with all your skill.

There was once a roadside vendor who sold rheumatism formulas to the passersby. He was a cheery old man who was faithfully at his spot for years. One day a young bully began to harass the vendor. The old man tried very hard to avoid the confrontation, but eventually the bully became convinced that he had a coward to abuse as he pleased. When the moment of attack came, the old man defeated him with superior boxing skills. Significantly, the old man was never seen again. He had manifested his superiority at a critical moment, but once he had exposed himself, he disappeared.

In this competitive world, it is best to be invisible. Go through life without showing off, attracting attention to yourself, or making flamboyant gestures. These will only attract the hostility of others. The wise accomplish all that they want without arousing the envy or scorn of others. They make achievements only for the sake of fulfilling their inner yearnings.

Yet it is inevitable that you will have to prove yourself at one time or another. When that is necessary, then you must marshal all your skills and do your very best. Prove yourself when it is demanded, and when you must prove yourself, be superior. At that moment, it is no time to talk of philosophy and humility. Act. Do. Then fade back into invisibility.

Here’s an interesting subject that was sparked by a post I found via the Wujimon blog. Mike Murphy suggests that Tai Chi requires physical conditioning in order to be ‘authentic’ because the original practitioners were very strong and fit (mainly due to farming).

This kind of historical context is often overlooked when claiming ‘authenticity’, any set of ideas will change if the backdrop changes. There are major examples of this with religious texts, which are both followed and criticised without any regard to context. Put aside modern scientific discoveries and many old ideas would appear pragmatic and sensible rather than mystical. And occasionally, just occasionally, they stand the test of time.

I have been thinking a lot about planning of late, especially with regard to its connection with intuition and minimalism. It will be difficult to describe my thoughts on this in such limited space, but I’ve become convinced that elaborate plans are, by their very nature, hopelessly flawed.

The more elaborate a plan, the more there is to go wrong at every stage of its realisation. And this is without considering the role of the opposition, whose goal is not just to refute various plans but to lie in wait for the obvious ones, constructing his game to meet them most effectively.

So should one actually have a ‘plan’ as such, or is the entire concept flawed? I’d say it needs some adjustment in that a ‘plan’ must have enough inherent flexibility to change at any moment. And what characterises the game of strong players is the way that their moves often seem ‘multi-purpose’, fulfilling a role in multiple potential plans.

Traders might find this concept useful too; rather than have a single ‘on-off’ switch to one’s trades it may be far more effective to make multiple adjustments in position size and instrument depending on an overall assessment of the market and the extent of an advantage.

Incredibly the CD from which this track comes is out of print; the least expensive one on Amazon costs over 48 quid. If ever there was a case for someone owning their own right to publish this must surely be it.

I attended John Littlewood’s funeral today. John played a major part in my development as a player and after the service I got to compare notes on this with IM Gary Quillan. Gary still plays some of John’s lines whilst my treatment of the Modern Defence was largely inspired by John’s favourite line of the Philidor Defence, 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nxd4 g6. Anyone who doubts this should check out the game that brought me my second GM norm, a win as Black against Michel Godena.

It was also interesting to learn so much about his life outside of chess. I knew that he wrote poetry because there was one on the card I got on my 21st birthday. I didn’t know that he was also involved in amateur dramatics and singing. Those who’d like to know more can find Raymond Keene’s obituary on John here.

A commonly held belief is that creative people are not very efficient, but I believe  this is worth questioning. Some thoughts on the matter were sparked by Julie Morgenstern’s book Organizing from the Inside Out in which ‘America’s #1 Organiser’ (and an obviously highly creative person) challenges conventional wisdom about being neat and tidy and throwing things  away. Instead she proposes a deeper look at each individual’s situation with the goal of finding strategies which allow people to make better use of what they have.

Rejecting a dogmatic ‘one fits all’ approach is the hallmark of a creative mind so it’s interesting to see it applied to what seems like an unlikely field. This got me thinking about other areas in which off-the-peg solutions are adopted as a matter of course, turning out to be highly inefficient despite the apparent ease with which they could be adopted.

With chess I can’t say I ever liked the decision making model that Alexander Kotov presented in Think Like a Grandmaster. He argued that candidate moves should be selected prior to being analysed, thus forming a decision making tree. But what I’ve found in both my own thinking and that of other GMs is that we often find superior concepts as a result of testing certain variations in our thoughts. So after looking at a number of lines you might suddenly realise that the queen belongs on d2 and the best thing would be to put it there immediately.

I thought about martial arts too and how people will often select them on the basis of their alleged effectiveness, body type or age. Yet a deeper look can indicate that quite different criterium should be examined; who for example considers the amount of space they have to practice? And maybe this is why Zhan Zhuang is such an effective form of training, you can do it with nothing more than standing room in your kitchen.

I’ve just heard that John Littewood has died. I don’t feel like saying too much about it right now except that John was a wonderful person and brilliant player who has had a profound influence on my life.

Inspired by this post from Leo Babauta I’ve been trying out some of Google’s web based offerings such as their calendar, online docs and blog reader. They certainly do simplify a lot of things so I’m becoming quite a fan of Google. My email goes there now and I’ve been checking it just once a day. In fact the main problem is in knowing what to do with the free time.

This life simplification process really seems to work and now I want to find a way to break free of the computer. What did people do in the old days besides watch television and listen to the radio? There again it’s not clear that being a computer addict is any worse than these things and in many ways it’s better. For starters it fosters activity rather than passively viewing or listening.