Page 116 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

I don’t have much of a natural poker face. I’m an out go ing guy and tend to
wear my heart on my sleeve. Instead of trying to chan ge my persona lity, I

learned how to use it to my advantage. Whi le some ches s pl ayers spe nd a lot of
energy maintaining a stony front, I let oppo nen ts read my facial expr essions as I
moved through thought processes. My goal was to use my natur al pe rsona lity
to dictate the tone of the struggle. Just how a poker player might hum a tune

to put it in the head of an opponent (ther eby “getting in hi s head” ), I would
control the psychology of the game by unmas ki ng myself. If I sat up hi gh in
my chair in a natural display of confi ce, my oppo nen t might wonde r if I was
covering something up. Was this reverse ps ychology ? Maybe reverse reverse

psychology. Maybe reverse reverse reverse psychology ? In addi tion to the moves
I made on the board, I was posing another set of conundr um s for an oppo ne nt
to ponder.
Of course I was not so transparent. Mixed in with my gen ui ne impr essions

would be misleading furrows of the br ow, trickles of fear, or subt le fl ters of
excitement. Sometimes this type of decep tion woul d simpl y inv olve the timing
of a sip of water or a flicker of my eyes. But not always. Agai nst some rivals, I
would be completely straightforward emotional ly with no attempt at pr etens e.

This open-book quality might cont inue from one tour nam ent to the ne xt. Over
time, my barely perceptible tells were steadi ly reliabl e, and my oppo ne nt
would trust what he was seeing. Gradual ly, my mood woul d become pa rt of hi s
evaluative process—like a leg a martial artist is condi tioned to lean on be fore it

is swept away. When the right moment or critical game was at hand, and I was
faintly misleading about my current level of con ce, I coul d pr ovoke an
overextension or an overly cautious deci sion. T hi s was a delicate dance.
At the same time, I was a careful obs erver of my rivals’ rhy thm s. As I moved

into my late teenage years, many of my tour nam ents were closed, inv itationa l
events where ten to fourteen very strong players gather ed for two-week
marathons. These were psychologi cal wars. Imagine four teen world- class che ss
players living together in a small resort abo ve a Bermuda cliff. We ate meals

together, took walks on the beach, formed compl icated friends hi ps , compa red
notes about our approaches to the game—and every afterno on at three o’clock,
we went to battle. This type of env ironm ent was a hotbed of psycho logi cal
maneuvering.

It was during these years that I began to dr aw the parallels bet ween pe opl e’s
life tendencies and their chessic dispo sitions . Great pl ayers are all, by