Page 160 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

pick an opening that allowed him to expr ess hi mself in a more creative vein.
There were countless subtle variations of mood and of open ing. Ins tead of

imposing an artificial structure on his match strategy, Petrosian tried to be as
true to himself as possible on a moment-to-moment basis. He bel ieved tha t if
his mood and the chess position were in synch , he woul d be most inc line d to
play with the greatest inspiration.

Garry Kasparov, World Chess Cham pi on for nearly twenty years and
perhaps the strongest chess player of all time, had a different appr oach to hi s
emotions. Kasparov was a fiercely aggr essive ches s pl ayer who thr ived on
energy and confidence. My father wrote a bo ok called Mortal Games about

Garry, and during the years surroundi ng the 1990 Kaspar ov-Karpo v match, we
both spent quite a lot of time with hi m. At one point , after Kaspar ov ha d lost a
big game and was feeling dark and fragile, my father asked Garry ho w he
would handle his lack of confidence in the nex t game. Garry respo nde d tha t he

would try to play the chess moves that he woul d have pl ayed if he were feeling
confident. He would pretend to feel con t, and ho pef ully trigge r the state.
Kasparov was an intimidator over the board. Everyone in the ches s world was
afraid of Garry and he fed on that reality. If Garry bristled at the che ssbo ard,

opponents would wither. So if Garry was feeling bad , but puf fed up hi s che st,
made aggressive moves, and appear ed to be the manifestation of Con nc e
itself, then opponents would become unsettled. Step by step, Garry woul d feed
off his own chess moves, off the created position, and off his oppo ne nt s’

building fear, until soon enough the con ce woul d become real and Garry
would be in flow. If you think back to the chap ter Building Your Trigger and
apply it to this description, you’ll see that Garry was not pretendi ng. He was
not being artificial. G arry was trigger ing hi s zone b y pl aying K aspa rov che ss.

As you can see, there are many different appr oaches to handl ing your
emotions under fire. Some are better than other s, and at the hi gh end pe rha ps
your personality should determine the nuan ce of your fine- tuni ng de cisions .
That said, I highly recommend that you inco rpo rate the princi ples of Building

Your Trigger into your process. Once you are no longer swept away by your
emotions and can sit with them even when under pressur e, you will pr oba bl y
notice that certain states of mind ins pi re you more than other s. Fo r some it
may be happiness, for others it may be fear. To each his own. Petrosian was very

flexible. Miller, Hernandez, and Robi ns on worked well with ange r. Kaspa rov
and Jordan were intimidators: they inspi red them selves by wilting oppo ne nt s.