| Review: "How life imitates chess" by Garry Kasparov |
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| Written by Sciurus | |
| Wednesday, 26 September 2007 | |
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Garry Kasparov is certainly a superstar among chess players. I even knew his name well before I started playing chess. Therefore, I was happy to find his latest book, "How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom" in the local library. From the moment I saw the book I was very skeptical of it's content - usually I find books written by famous people that try to relate their field of expertise to something bigger, well, how should I say, anything from not interesting to exaggerated in the conclusions. However, this book came not only practically for free (long live the library!) but somehow also got onto the library's shelf before the official publication date (Update: apparently I read the British version which was published ahead of the US version). I simply could not resist to be one of the first bloggers to review the book while still being able to keep my quality standard of reviewing only books that I have read completely. My first impression of the book was that it is an interesting read. Kasparov and his co-author, Mig Greengard, managed to strike a nice balance between original content and anecdotes from Kasparov's long chess career. The epic world championship matches between Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov obviously played a central part in the life of Garry Kasparov and are used throughout the book to exemplify both lessons learned as well as to entertain the reader. For instance, the book describes his first world championship match against Karpov and draws lessons on the importance of analyzing both your own and your opponent's weaknesses from it. Parts of the book read like your standard self-improvement type book. And that is where I have to admit that I simply put my brain in fast-forward mode (my pattern recognition for reading books is far more advanced than for chess tactics). Particularly the use of phrases where the authors mention "thermodynamics" and "energy creation" by "transformation" in the same context, to only write about one that has been already mentioned in this article on the book simply do not appeal to me, to put it mildly. If it wouldn't be for Kasparov's extraordinary personality and chess capabilities, I might even have stopped reading. Another thing I disliked about the book is that it seemed to me that parts of it were out of date even before its publication. For instance, Kasparov is addressing the psychological consequences of losing in the chapter "When your best is not good enough", citing Gata Kamsky as an example. Kamsky quit professional chess after his loss against Karpov in 1996 and Kasparov writes about this incident "We will never know what Kamsky, then only twenty-two, might have achieved had he stayed with chess after the crushing loss Karpov had dealt him in their match." Kamsky is actually back playing chess at top level since 2004 and was in fact a contender for a spot in the 2007 chess world championship tournament. I believe that it would have been important to mention that even though it would have complicated the discussion. The book describes probably as many mistakes Kasparov made during his chess career as good decisions. Every mistake is used to learn and improve, which ultimately transforms the mistake into a success. But then, if Kasparov wouldn't have been able to adapt to his ever changing environment he wouldn't have become one of the very best chess players in history and nobody would be interested in the book anyway. And all these mistakes by themselves are a powerful lesson: improvement is not possible without failure, something chess players too often forget when they lose a game. In fact, Kasparov writes in his book that in order to improve, you have to lose as many times as you can take! In this context, he also discusses that the ability to recover from losses is essential to success both in chess and in 'real' life. Of course, you have to analyze your losses to find out what went wrong. The most enjoyable part of this book is certainly the large amount of anecdotes from Kasparov's chess career and also some other famous chess masters. One of my favorites is from his 1995 world championship match against Vishnathan Anand, where he writes about an Last but not least the book has to be seen in the context of Garry Kasparov's role as opposition leader in Russia and presidential candidate in the upcoming election. This becomes particularly clear when he portraits himself as somebody who overcame an "Olympus of chess champions" and the reigning president, Vladimir Putin, as a "mere KGB lieutenant-colonel". This book can probably be considered as much of a self-improvement text with chess anecdotes as political program - publishing a book before an important election is after all a common thing to do for politicians. The epilogue of the book also explains Kasparov's decision to retire from professional chess at the height of his career (even though he lost the world championship to Vladimir Kramnik he still remained the highest rated chess player until his retirement). It has to be seen if a chess world champion has political chances in a country like Russia, that is widely considered as the chess nation. In conclusion, the book delivers a bit of everything - chess anecdotes, life lessons, insight in strategic planning, the relationship between between talent and work, importance of persistence, psychology, and political statements. Even though I certainly enjoyed reading the book I had the feeling that it runs a bit too long towards the end and could gain from shaving off a couple of pages. Will this book make you a better chess player or better executive, to stay with the book's title "... making the right moves, from the board to the boardroom"? I somehow doubt it. However, one of the book's mantras - constantly reviewing the decisions you make in life/chess - got me thinking about the way I approach my chess training in particular and decision making in general. And that might be helpful, indeed.
Additional reading:
Comments (10)
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written by Trooper, September 27, 2007
Thanks for the review. I saw an advertisement for it in ChessLife magazine just yesterday so I was surprised to see you write about it.
Celebrities writing book can be a touchy situation, but it depends on their actual experience. For example, I read one of Donald Trump's books, and while I found it quite interesting and useful, I cannot take advice on marriage from someone who is married three times). Then again, most of the advice was from a business perspective... how to protect yourself, not how to have a happy marriage. But I'm getting away from the topic at hand. I've found recently that I am more interested in reading chess books with more actual text. Chess stories, or at least a few paragraphs about the players before each sample game. I recently picked up a book on the Scandinavian for $2, but was disappointed when there wasn't even a single word of discussion in the whole thing. Just page after page of move possibilities and sample games. After reading your review, I may not go out and try to read this one right away, but if I ever happen to run across it, I may sign it out from the library and skim a few chapters to see if it catches my attention. ...
written by Sciurus, September 27, 2007
Trooper:
I would love to see more text in many chess books, too. I just got a used copy of a book on the Sicilian that was supposedly written to teach this defense to lowly players like me but contains mostly variations, too. I would still recommend the Kasparov book, although I am pretty sure that I would not want to spend much money on it. It is definitely entertaining and has some interesting advice in it. As for the Tromp book & marriage advice: at least he has experience. If you take Kasparov's mantra to learn from mistakes seriously you might want to take a second look at the book  although I don't really think that Tromp's marriage problems are easily tranferrable to other people's lifes... ...
written by Wahrheit, September 28, 2007
Hi Sciurus, it sounds like somehow your library got a copy of the UK version--Greengard wrote on his site that the US edition eliminated the short bios. Anyway, a very fine and thorough review; I'll look for it at my library! Thanks.
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written by Walter, October 15, 2007
Thanks for the review! In fact, I'm going to see Garry Kasparov speak today about the new book at the First Parish Church in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA. USA.
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written by GMI Jean-Luc Chabanon, November 27, 2007
Gary Kasparov was in Paris the 21 th novembre.
On the first video, you can see what he said about the dangers of his situation. It was just 3 days before his arrestation in Moscow. http://www.dailymotion.com/rel...anger_news On the second video, the former World Champion spoke about the process of decision. It was at the press conference of his book in french version http://www.dailymotion.com/rel...artie_news Write comment
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| Last Updated ( Friday, 28 September 2007 ) |
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Cheers!