Page 62 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

or in which I made an error. Immediately after each of my games, I qui ckl y
entered the moves into my comput er, no ting my tho ught pr ocess and ho w I

felt emotionally at various stages of the bat tle. Then after the tour na ment ,
armed with these fresh impressions, I went back to Vrho lvje and studi ed the
critical moments.
This was the work that I referred to in the Int roduct ion as numbers to leave

numbers. Usually long study sessions went like thi s: I began with the critical
position from one of my games, wher e my int ui tive under standi ng ha d no t
been up to the challenge. At first my mind was like a runner on a cold wint er
morning—stiff, unhappy about the coming jog, dreary. Then I began to move,

recalling my attacking ideas in the struggl e and ho w no thi ng ha d ful ly
connected. I tried to pick apart my oppo nen t’s position and discovered ne w
layers of his defensive resources, all the whi le my mind thaw ing, int egr ating
the evolving structural dynamics it had not qui te under stood before. Over time

my blood started flowing, sweat came, I settled int o the rhy thm of ana lysis,
soaked in countless patterns of evolving sophi stication as I pored over wha t a
computer would consider billions of variations . Li ke a runner in stride , my
thinking became unhindered, free-fl wing, faster and faster as I lost myself in

the position. Sometimes the study woul d take six hour s in one sitting,
sometimes thirty hours over a week. I felt like I was living, br eathi ng, sleepi ng
in that maze, and then, as if from no wher e, all the compl ications di ssolved and
I understood.

When I looked at the critical position from my tour nam ent game, wha t ha d
stumped me a few days or hour s or weeks before no w seemed pe rfectly
apparent. I saw the best move, felt the correct plan, under stood the evalua tion
of the position. I couldn’t explain thi s new kno wledge with variations or words .

It felt more elemental, like rippling water or a light br eeze. My chess int ui tion
had deepened. T his was the study of numbers to leave numbers. I
A fascinating offshoot of this metho d of analysis was that I beg an to see
connections between the leaps of ches s under standi ng and my changi ng vision

of the world. During my study of the critical po sitions , I no ted the feeling I had
during the actual chess game. I expl ained abo ve ho w in the pr essur e of
tournaments, the tension in the mind mount s with the tension in the po sition,
and an error on the board usually parallels a psychologi cal collaps e of sorts.

Almost invariably, there was a cons istent psychologi cal strain to my errors in a