A short podcast episode by Brian Johnson (typed 9:44am Central Time on Labor Day 2024) recounting his son Emerson’s dramatic chess win at the 90th Southwest Open in Houston. Emerson, undefeated in the under-2000 division, blundered late in a long game (losing a rook with 8 seconds left), then rapidly shifted focus, executed a multi-move tactical sequence that baited his opponent into capturing a knight and allowed a sneaky checkmate. Brian frames this as an example of mental toughness and “turnaround velocity” — the speed with which one recovers from mistakes and focuses on the next most important move.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome Back to another heroic plus one. I typed this one at 9:44am Central Time on Labor Day 2024, the final day of the 90th annual Southwest Open in Houston, Texas. It's a pretty big tournament with hundreds of players. With two more matches to go today, Emerson is 50 and currently the only undefeated player in his division, the under 2000 division. We dominated our protocol last night and this morning I just dropped him off for his first match of the day and my heart just skipped a beat imagining him 30 minutes into his game and him opening the hotel room door in a few hours saying either I won with all the enthusiasm Ralph Waldo would admire, or I lost with an understandably disappointed yet ultimately equanimous tone. I'm prepared either way. We win or we learn. And learning truly is winning when we do it right. So let's go now. Last night he started his final game of the day at 4:15pm I dropped him off in the hotel's big ballroom for the match, headed back up to our hotel room, had a FaceTime with one of my new friends who happens to be one of the world's most elite athletes I'm supporting, then chatted with the girls, Wifey and Eleanor, and read A Liberated Mind by Stephen Hayes as I waited four hours for him to finish the game. Then just after 8:15pm he burst through the door and says I won. It was one of his all time best wins. Not just because his opponent, who was a college sophomore who was a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier than Emerson, had a rating a couple hundred points higher than Emerson's, but because of how it finished. Emerson was buzzing with excitement as he told me that how he was down slightly the whole game. Then when he only had 8 seconds left on his clock, he made a huge blunder, losing his rook. Now, to put it in perspective, here's how chess matches in big tournaments like this work. Each player starts with 90 minutes on their clock. They get 30 seconds to make a move, then their clock starts ticking. Emerson and his opponent had played for four hours and and Emerson only had eight seconds on his clock when he made a move. That unfortunately led to him losing his rook, which is, aside from the queen, the most powerful piece on the board. Now to be clear, playing that long and then losing your rook at that stage of the game while leading a tournament this big sucks all caps. Now, once he made the move, he got another 30 seconds on his clock. So now he had 38 seconds to make the next move. After his opponent took his rook. I asked him what he was thinking in that moment. He said he was thinking, well, that sucks. Now I'm gonna lose and be in second or third place. Then I asked him how he was able to pull it together and focus on the next move so quickly. He said, well, I realized I still had my knights. Maybe I could fork him in some way. I knew it was a tiny chance, but I figured it was possible. Got goosebumps typing that and saying that. Then he tried a couple forks that didn't work. Then he did some calculations and saw that in about six moves, he'd be in a position to trick him into taking his knight, which would then lead him to a really beautiful checkmate in one more move. He said he thought the odds were really low that he could pull it off, but he was going to go for it. And it worked. He got the guy into the position he wanted, then moved his knight in such a way that it was an easy capture for his opponent, but if his opponent took the bait, he'd lose the best part. And I laughed as I typed this. I'm laughing as I get ready to say it. Right after Emerson made the move setting up his trap, apparently he sighed and grabbed his head and. As if he just made the worst move possible and was going to lose his night with nothing in return and then lose the game. And his opponent fell for his trap and Emerson checkmated in him on the next move. It was an insanely elegant and sneaky way to finish the game, and he was so fired up about it that we got out his chessboard and he set the pieces up in exactly the position they were in so he could show me exactly how he did it. It was awesome. We texted his coach to share the news and enjoyed the moment. Then I drilled back into what he was feeling in the moment he made his mistake to feel into and understand how he so quickly alchemized it and kept his energy focused on the next most important thing, his next move. I found it truly fascinating to see the speed with which he turned around that glitch. Now, we've talked about this many times before. Phil Stud says that the most creative act in the universe is the speed with which we can recover from a glitch. Something happens we wish didn't happen. Perfect. That's inevitable. The question is, how fast can we recover and turn that glitch around? That is the essence of mental toughness and peak performance mastery. I repeat, we know we will face challenges. We quit acting surprised when something goes wrong, we dominate our protocol as we take a breath, flip the switch, and focus on the next most important thing. And that is today's one. The next time something goes wrong, literally the next time, see if you can flip the switch and make it a game to see just how fast you can alchemize that experience and focus all of of your energy on the next most important thing, playing your next move as well as you possibly can, repeat all day, every day, especially today.
