Page 51 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

teens, I frequented chess shops near my ho me and pl ayed speed chess in clouds
of smoke, which I have always hated. Of cour se I also played in Washi ngt on

Square Park, where consistent kibitzing and a steady stream of chess banter is
part of the game. There was no blocking out the noise or smoke, and my onl y
option was to integrate my environm ent int o my creative process. So if Bon
Jovi was playing, I might be prone to play a bit more aggr essively tha n whe n I

had on quiet classical music. The Gyut o monk chants po unde d me int o
fascinating chessic discoveries. Voices in the par k inspi red me as the y ha d whe n
I was a young boy. T he smoke I learned to live with.
As I turned fourteen and then fifteen years old, my Soft Zone traini ng was

really put to the test. The competition for the top of the American scho lastic
chess ranking was stiffened by a tremendo us in of Soviet immigr ant s. As
the Soviet Union fell apart, many of the powerful Rus sian pl ayers looke d for
opportunity in the west. These ki ds were hi ghl y trained, excellent fi ers,

who had been schooled in the famous Pioneer s’ Palaces of Moscow and
Leningrad. II Many of these new rivals were armed with a repertoire of
psychological “tricks” that presented serious challenges .
One of the more interesting tactics was impl emented by a Rus sian bo y

whom I had trouble with for a period of mont hs before I caught on to hi s
game. He was a very strong player so our clashes were always tens e, but for
some reason I tended to make careless errors agai nst him in the critical
positions. Then one day, an old Bul gar ian Master nam ed Rudy Blum enf eld

approached my father in the Marshal l Ches s Club and asked hi m if we were
aware of what this boy was doing to me. We were not. He expl ained tha t in the
climactic moments of the struggle, when I had to buck le down and patiently
work my way through the complications to fi a precise solut ion, thi s bo y

would start to tap a chess piece on the side of the table, bar ely audi bl e, but at a
pace that entered and slightly quickened my mental pr ocess. Thi s subt le tactic
was highly effective and I later found out that it was an offspr ing of the Soviet
study of hypnosis and mind control. The nex t time we pl ayed, I was on the

lookout for the tapping and sure enough, in the critical moment it was right
there. Hilarious. Once I was aware of what was hap pen ing, I was abl e to tur n
the tables in our rivalry.
Some of the other young Russian pl ayers were far less subt le, and ha d

“tricks” that crossed the borders of spo rting ethi cs. One of thes e bo ys, who was
my archrival for years, had the habi t of ki cking me under the table dur ing the