The Monk and the Beast

Alexander Alekhine was the fourth world champion in chess. As Jonathan Rowson puts it in his book, The Moves that Matter, his longevity is unbelievable:

“(Alekhine) held the title for most of the second quarter of the twentieth century (1927-35; 1937-46).”

Alekhine is quoted as saying that a chess Grandmaster needs to be a “combination of a beast of prey and a monk”. Or as Rowson rephrases it:

“We need aggression, but our fire has to be under control.”

 

Rowson describes the state in one of Alekhine’s games, seemingly “an utterly lifeless endgame position”. Can black win from here, asked Rowson’s instructor. It seemed impossible. But Alekhine had found a way. A very long route.

“Seemingly out of thin air, the monk conjured an elaborate scheme that we were supposed to have guessed, while the beast of prey executed it with precision.”

 

Obviously, most of us (even Rowson, a Top 100 player) couldn’t dream of figuring out such a sequence. But there’s still a lesson in it for us, says Rowson. And it’s a non-obvious aspect of planning. Even Alekhine, he says, couldn’t have thought through every move (and counter-move) in such a long sequence. So the lesson here isn’t about the importance of planning. Rather, it’s about the importance of “coping and adapting”.

 

Generalizing it to a life lesson, Rowson says:

“Chess taught me that the real purpose of planning in life is not so much to get to where you want to be, but to strengthen the willpower that you will need to get to a good place of any kind.”

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