Page 31 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

After three hours, the tournament hall was empt y as we reached the end of
the game. We were alone but for the television camera that was broadc asting to

the hotel lobby where hundreds of peopl e were gat her ed around the moni tor,
watching and wondering which little ki d woul d be the champ and whi ch
would be crushed. The silence was suf focating—o r maybe that was jus t my
position. I had a knight and five pawns against hi s bi sho p and six pa wns . It

looked hopeless. I remember wrestling with the dem ons of the pr evious year’s
heartbreaker while I searched for a way out . Nothi ng ther e. I went to the
bathroom and cried. Then I washed my face, steeled myself, buck led do wn and
went back to the board.

It was as if I was trapped in dark jungl e, stuck in the under br us h, starving,
bleeding and suddenly there was a little light . I’ll never forget the feeling whe n
I sensed my potential escape. Often in chess, you feel somethi ng is the re be fore
you find it. The skin suddenly perks up, senses height en like an ani mal feeling

danger or prey. The unconscious alerts the cons cious player tha t the re is
something to be found, and then the search begins . I started calcul ating,
putting things together. Slowly the pl an crystallized in my mind. I had to take
my knight out of play and give up my remaining pawns to set up a long

combination that would leave jus t two ki ngs on the board—a compl etely
counterintuitive idea. I found moves that were far beyond my years to save tha t
game and I’m not really sure how I di d i t.
We drew the game and I became National Cham pi on. I walked out of the

playing hall in a daze, and was hit by a mob of cheering ki ds and pa rent s who
had been sucked into the drama of the bat tle. One coach, an Int erna tiona l
Master, asked me why I had made a certain decision in the middl ega me and I
had no idea what he was talking abo ut . Ches s was already a world away. The

humanity of the moment was overwhel ming. I watched Jeff slip around the
crowd and approach his father, who rejected him with a cold stare. It was
awful.