We Win or We Win: 839 Days Later… (Heroic +1 #1998)

0:00Hi, this is Brian, welcome back to another heroic plus one and our last several plus ones. We've been spending some time with Emerson on a weekend chess adventure. Let's continue with one more. So go back to Whole Foods. We put the groceries into the trunk and head back to the hotel for the last round of the tournament. It's about an hour until show time. Here's another fun fact. You might not know about chess. Tournaments like this are run on a Swiss pairing system. The best players are basically matched up with opponents who are progressively harder and harder as you arrive at the eventual champion. The pairings are usually posted 30 to 45 to 60 minutes before the game starts. Now if you're at Emerson's level that means you have 30 to 45 to 60 minutes to prep against your opponent. And very importantly you know that they will be spending that 30 to 45 to 60 minutes prepping against you. Now the kids these days are insanely good and what's known as opening prep

1:03is a big reason why. Without going into the details there are dozens and dozens of main opening lines and hundreds and thousands of sub-opening lines that these kids can and do memorize and master. In short for our purposes here's what you need to know. If someone knows how you tend to open they can prep a nasty trap for you and or review how to best play that line so they can get out of the opening unscathed. So Emerson is refreshing the pairing page on our drive back to the venue to see who he'll be playing. It's 45 minutes before show time now the pairings are live. He tells me that the name of the guy he's playing seems vaguely familiar. He says I'm pretty sure I've played this guy before then he says away I think this is the kid who beat me and then I started Chess Tempo the day after that. I'm like no way that's amazing. Then I go back and look through the US

2:05Chess site which is a awesome and b it lets you see every single opponent you've ever played. Now what's even more awesome is that I created a plus one about what Emerson did after he lost to that brilliant nine year old when he was only 11. We got a link to check it out short story he got out played. The kid was tactically better which means he outcalculated Emerson which means he could see more moves ahead and wound up beating him because of it. I can vividly remember it like it happened last night this is almost three years ago. Now he lost the final round of Saturday and it was late of that tournament years ago and he knew exactly why he lost which as I just explained was because he was outplayed tactically. He also knew exactly what he needed to do if he wanted to get better which was something his coach had been telling him to do for a while. He needed to do one thing puzzles. That's how you get good at chess and calculations you got to

3:06solve puzzles. Now if you want to get not puzzles like puzzles but chess puzzles. If you want to get really good at chess you need to know your openings. You need to know how to close out end games and you need to know how to see tactics and calculate x moves ahead. Now you get better at the calculation side of things by doing a lot of hard puzzles. So Emerson's coach had been telling him to start doing puzzles on a site called chess tempo and that Monday the day after the tournament ended years ago he started a streak and you know how many days he's done in a row since that day since that tournament eight hundred and forty days ago both of the kids have improved dramatically. His buddy went from a rating of 1543 to 1930 Emerson went from 1577 to 2085 and to wrap this up no one we went a little long Emerson got better because he alchemized a loss remember we win or we learn and learning is winning when we do it right so we win or we win we got to take that off

4:08the bumper sticker make it real today's plus one spotlight on you what's one recent loss you can convert into a learn that will eventually become a bunch of wins got it good now you got that loss now what specifically can you do differently that will help you improve you got that good now get on that imagine how much better you'll be in eight hundred and thirty nine days start today commit to not breaking the streak and let's go hey this is Brian thanks for spending a few minutes with me today if you enjoyed it please hit subscribe so that the best of the show keeps landing in your feed then head over to heroic dot us that's heroic dot us where you'll find the full library of wisdom I've created over the last twenty years as well as the app advanced training programs coaching and everything else we've built to help you optimize your life actualize your

5:09potential and live heroically it is day one we are all in let's go