Skill at chess requires an ability by the good player to differentiate between the important and the unimportant in the selection of his moves. A beginner will have before him a vast array of moves to choose between and will have little idea as to which are the good moves and which are the bad moves. In the starting position for example there are 20 possible moves, but you and I know that we basically have to choose between e4, d4, c4 and Nf3 as good first moves.
Grandmasters can generally look at a position and immediately narrow down the candidate moves to two or three alternatives that are worthy of attention. I remember one GM looking briefly at a position and, seemingly without analysing, saying “I think in this position I must play SO!” and he made his move. Perhaps he just selected his move based on “feel” using his vast experience of similar positions.
It must be a wonderful life skill to have to be able to instantly appreciate what is important in a decision making process and to quickly arrive at a solution.
I saw an example of this the other day whilst attending course “Write Up Your Business” at the Glen Eira Town Hall with David Cordover, the Managing Director of Chess Kids.
Many of you may know that David is often referred to as the “Chess Guru”. Wikipedia tells us that “A guru is a person who is regarded as having great knowledge, wisdom and authority in a certain area, and who uses these abilities to guide others.”
It was interesting therefore to see him in action when the course lecturer gave us a problem to solve. Our task was to make the following very verbose piece of writing briefer.
“As part of the organisation’s successful recruitment and retention policy, all candidates who commence employment on or after June 1998 will be requested to disclose all pre-existing injuries or diseases suffered by the worker of which the worker is aware and/or could reasonably be expected to foresee, which could be affected by the nature of the proposed employment.” (59 words)
The lady sitting next to me reduced it to 22 words and I was quite pleased to get it down to 18 words with “After June 1998 new employees must disclose existing injuries or diseases which may be exacerbated by their work”. The lecturer asked around and one lady had it down to 14 words which was most impressive. At this stage David put up his hand and said “I have it in 5 words”, “We don’t employ sick people!” I guess that’s why he’s the Guru.
