It’s a bad habit to become over reliant on one skill or way to doing things just because it has in the past worked well for you.” Seamos crueles: si la vida imitara realmente al ajedrez, Kasparov sería hoy el presidente de Rusia, y no Vladimir Putin. Apenas un año después de que se publicara este libro, con todo su optimismo, su autor fue obligado mediante trucos viles a abandonar su campaña presidencial. Más tarde, el temor por su seguridad personal lo llevó a exiliarse en Nueva York, donde hasta hoy sigue viviendo y odiando a Vladimir Putin. Il primo passo è avere degli obiettivi precisi, il secondo è rimanervi coerenti e non abbandonare il cammino"

Questioning yourself must become a habit, a strong habit that overcomes your overconfidence and dejection.How success is measured is different for each of us. The first and most important step is realizing that the secret of success is inside.”

Chess is above all a struggle, the point is always to win, no matter how you define winning.” – Emanuel Lasker of Germany, the second world champion Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics witout strategy is the noise before defeat". Sun Tzu This game serves as a testament to my philosophy of preferring time over material, favoring dynamic factors over static factors.”Avoid change for the sake of change.” ( Learn more about transformational moves in this blog post by National Master Evan Rabin). Por supuesto que el fracaso efectivo del autor no invalida su texto. El ajedrez puede ser una fuente de sabiduría, de enseñanzas aplicables a otras esferas de la existencia, y eso es lo que Kasparov, con variable entusiasmo, se propone demostrar. En alguna medida, supongo que lo logra, pero me parece dudoso que su sapiencia ajedrecística pueda ser de utilidad para otras personas – o siquiera para sí mismo en sus otras actividades. His attitude towards risk is interesting and instructive**, his competence concerning history doubtful (no matter how good his memory is), his pep talks are stimulating … You won’t find new ways of solving problems unless you look for new ways and have the nerve to try them when you do find them. They won’t all work as expected, of course. The more you experiment, the more successful your experiments will be. Break your routines, even to the point of changing ones you are happy with to see if you can find new and better methods. I find Kasparov overtly sympathetic, as he is quite conscious of his quirks and idiosyncrasies, stating open-handed his shortcomings, his failures both in chess and in life, against Anatoly Karpov, against Tigran Petrossian, against Veselin Topalov, his defeat against a small child in a real-time strategy videogame. It is a friendly, soulful introduction to his life and what realizations he chanced on.

Thus, this book tries to do one thing but can't reach that pot of gold. It might also be useful for someone interested in chess too, but that was not Kasporav's target audience. He relates in a lively, original way all the fundamentals, from the nuts and bolts of strategy, evaluation, and preparation to the subtler, more human arts of developing a personal style and using memory, intuition, imagination and even fantasy. Kasparov takes us through the great matches of his career, including legendary duels against both man (Grandmaster Anatoly Karpov) and machine (IBM chess supercomputer Deep Blue), enhancing the lessons of his many experiences with examples from politics, literature, sports and military history.One of the most durable methods is to break the game into three parts, or phases: the opening, the middle game, and the endgame. There is no agreed-upon formula for determining exactly when one ends and another begins, but without question each phase has distinctive characteristics and each poses problems that benefit from different modes of thinking. Knowing what to look for is only the first challenge. Good decisions require the ability to weigh all of the factors present and to decide the best balance among them. Di cosa parla il suo libro? Di tecnica scacchistica? Di politica? Della storia della sua vita? No, nel libro non ci sono assolutamente regole, tecniche di gioco o resoconti di partite di scacchi. Il libro ha sicuramente un contenuto autobiografico, ma è anche una parziale storia degli scacchi e un manuale per il miglioramento dell'efficienza personale e di motivazione manageriale. And if you thought you would learn more about chess from this book, you would be wrong as well. Since Kasporav is writing this book for the somewhat business lay person, he doesn't expect them to know anything about chess.

It was Fischer who would resurface in Milosevic's Yugoslavia in the early Nineties to play a sanctions-breaking match, which means he is barred from entering America. It was Fischer who said of women chess players: 'They can't concentrate, they don't have stamina, and they aren't creative. They are all fish.' It was Fischer who described the events of 11 September on Filipino radio as 'wonderful news'. It is Fischer who most Americans think of on the rare occasions they think of chess. And when they think of Fischer, they think of fruitcake. A chess game is divided into three stages: the first, when you hope you have the advantage, the second, when you belive you have the advantage, and the third, when you know you're going to loose!" Tartakower If we could know where we are going and where we are standing, we could better judge what to do and how to do it. Planning and innovation both require solid grounding on the present. Kasparov's love for life is quite obvious from the start. He makes no fuss about sizing-up life as infinitely more complex than chess. Sin embargo, debo decir que tenemos en este ejemplar una prosa agradable, con ritmo ágil; un libro erudito, con conocimiento histórico puntual (quizá cargado hacia los conflictos bélicos); y con intersantes acercamientos a las ciencias cognoscitivas.

Reviews

Chess in America is overshadowed by Bobby Fischer, a player perhaps even more gifted and charismatic than Kasparov. It was Fischer who defeated Boris Spassky in Iceland in the sporting contest that more than any other symbolised the Cold War. A comic-book genius who only read comic books, he became world champion and promptly retired.