Can chess make you deal more effectively with the difficulties of everyday life? Making you more determined? To help you change your own life?
For grandmaster Maurice Ashley, the first African American player in history to be able to win this title in the World Chess Federation's FIDE scoring system in 1999, the answer to all of the above is clearly affirmative. As he says in an interview he gave a few months ago at Mashable, "Without wishing to be exaggerated, yes, chess has literally the power to change your life. I have taught children in Harlem, Brooklyn, to people who are hard to pass. And I've seen these people change in front of my eyes thanks to this game. Improve their critical thinking, concentration, and become better at solving problems, ultimately changing their everyday lives. "
Does it sound too good to be true? And yet, according to Ashley, this change can come much easier than you think. A basic prerequisite to acquiring so-called "retrograde analysis" in English, a technique used by top chess players to solve the problems they may encounter during a lot and which, in essence, "Breaks" in the following three steps:
Start from the end
Think of all that you need to do to complete the final stages of your goal and then work backwards to make sure you have time and meet the conditions required to complete what you want in time and with success.
Limit your choices
By reducing the number of your choices, you can focus your attention and energy on what you choose, instead of "wasting" unnecessarily in the very process of choice.
Correctly weigh the disadvantages and advantages of your position
Only then will you be able to predict correctly whether the project / effort you want or need to engage in will be successful or doomed to failure.
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