All the Right Moves

Never Let 'Em See You Sweat

Making a mistake in the middle of a game can be a shattering experience. But exceptional players become skilled at maintaining an absolute sense of calm and confidence -- at least outwardly. Great players may question one of their moves, but they never question themselves. They may admit that they made a mistake, but they never reveal that to their opponent. One of the worst things that you can do at the championship level is to let your opponent see that you've made a mistake. Even when you know that you've screwed up terribly, you simply must hide that reality. Now, there's a big difference between a mistake and a retreat. Retreating is not necessarily a bad thing. Often, to get an advantage in chess, you need to give something up. In fact, a retreat can be a brilliant attack maneuver. There was a classic example of this tactic in one of the greatest, most competitive games between children that I've ever seen. It was a 1985 match between two third-graders: Josh Waitzkin (the prodigy featured in "Searching for Bobby Fischer") and Jeff Sarwer. I don't want to portray a game played by two Mozart-like children as a game played by two masters, because it wasn't. It was fraught with errors. But these were very interesting mistakes, dynamic mistakes.

Jeff was a fiercely aggressive player. He got the white pieces, and, right from the start, he went straight for Josh's jugular. He quickly gained the advantage and hammered away. But then came a key moment. Jeff, convinced that he had won, played a somewhat indifferent move. It looked fine on the surface, but Josh saw through it. Everything stopped. You could see Josh calculating, looking deep into the board. And then he made an unusual play: He moved his knight out of action and into the corner. It was a subtle retreat -- so subtle that Jeff kept playing as if he were winning, and he made another pedestrian move. After a few more moves, Josh brought his knight back into action, placing it in the forking position that he had been aiming for -- which simultaneously put Jeff's king into check and threatened Jeff's bishop.

The maneuver took 12 moves. Now Josh controlled Jeff's game. Jeff ended up saving his king but losing his bishop. And from that point on, the game was a trade-off: The two kings were the only pieces left standing, and the game was a draw. But it also provided a great lesson. Josh was not going to accept defeat. He never gave up, not even when the game looked hopeless. He advanced by retreating first.

Mental Toughness Requires Physical Stamina

Chess can be incredibly demanding. A single game can last for hours. A match can extend over several days. If your concentration wavers for even a second, you're dead. That kind of mental discipline has a physical component. There's a certain physical thing that happens to you when you're really concentrating, when you can really feel the game. I knew a player who would lose 10 or 15 pounds during the course of a tournament -- that's how extreme the tension can be.

Sometimes you can win through sheer force of stamina. I remember a photograph from the 1927 World Championship match between José Raúl Capablanca and his challenger, Alexander Alekhine. Capablanca was considered invincible: He was one of the greatest chess geniuses of all time. But he wasn't a tremendously hearty fellow. He had such natural talent that he tended to overwhelm his opponents, and he rarely faced stiff resistance.

This photo shows the two players right before the match. Capablanca is sitting at the board, looking incredibly relaxed. Alekhine, who had survived the Russian Revolution, is leaning across the board, with his arms crossed and propped up on the table. That was a sign of things to come. Capablanca lost a game early on and never recovered. The match lasted 34 games, and each game took at least five hours. Those games were grueling. Over time, Alekhine's physical force just wore Capablanca down. Nothing was going to stop Alekhine. It's hard to muster mental energy if your body isn't there behind you.

In fact, many of the most poignant moments in chess history are about mental and physical toughness rather than pure brilliance. Back in 1987, Kasparov was playing Anatoly Karpov in the World Championship. Karpov was ahead, 12 games to 11, with 1 game left. All that Karpov had to do was play to a draw -- and he was the world's great master at drawing. But Kasparov just played his heart out. He would not give in. They were playing and playing and playing, and Kasparov just ground Karpov down. Anyone else would have collapsed under all that pressure. But Kasparov drew on all of his reserves and just kept fighting. Amazingly, he won the game and retained his title. It was a truly inspiring performance -- even to people who are not Kasparov fans.