I am reading Isaac Asimov's autobiography I.Asimov: A Memoir with immense interest. In the first quarter of the book, I came into a short chapter called Chess. I can't resist myself but share it with you here -
Failure at physical sports has never bothered me...What bothered me, though,
was my failure at chess. When I was quite young and had a checkerboard,
but no chess pieces, I read books on the game and learned the various moves.
I then cut out cardboard squares on which I drew the symbols for the
various pieces, and tried to play games with myself. Eventually I
managed to persuade my father to get me real chessmen. Then I taught
my sister the moves and played the game with her. Both of us played
very clumsily indeed.
My brother, Stanley, who watched us play, learned the moves and,
eventually, asked if he might play. Ever the indulgent older brother,
I said, "Sure," and prepared to beat the pants off him. The trouble was
that in the first game he ever played he beat me.
In the years that followed, I discovered that everyone beat me,
regardless of race, color, or religion. I was simply the most
appallingly bad chess player who ever lived, and, as time went on,
I just stopped playing chess.
My failure at chess was really distressing. It seemed completely at
odds with my "smartness," but I now know (or at least have been told)
that great chess players achieve thier results by years and years of
studying chess games, by the memorization of large numbers of
complex "combinations." They don't see chess as a succession of moves
but as a pattern. I know what that means, for I see an essay or a
story as a pattern.
But these talents are different. Kasparov sees a chess game as a pattern
but an essay as a mere collection of words. I see an essay as a pattern
and a chess game as a mere collection of moves. So he can play chess
and I can write essays and not vice versa.
That's not enough, however. I never thought of comparing myself to
grand masters of chess. What bothered me was my inability to beat
anyone! The conclusion that I finally came to (right or wrong) was that
I was unwilling to study the chessboard and weigh the consequences of
each possible move I might make. Even people who couldn't see
complex patterns might at least penetrate two or three moves ahead,
but not I. I moved entirely on impulse, if not at random, and could
not make myself do anything else. That meant I would almost certainly
lose.
And again - why? To me, it seems obvious. I was spoiled by my ability
to understand instantly, my ability to recall instantly. I expected
to see things at once and I refused to accept a situation in which that
was not possible.
