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

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Heroic Plus One. In 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 showtime. 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 is 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 showtime 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, oh wait, I think this is the kid who beat me, and then I started Chess Tempo the day after that. And I'm like, no way, that's amazing! Then I go back and look through the US Chess 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 is that I created a +1 about what Emerson did after he lost to that brilliant 9-year-old when he was only 11. We've got a link to check it out. Short story, he got outplayed. The kid was tactically better, which means he out-calculated 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 3 years ago. And 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 solve 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 endgames, 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 840 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, knowing 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 the 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 839 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.us. That's heroic.us, where you'll find the full library of wisdom I've created over the last 20 years, as well as the app, advanced training programs, coaching, and everything else we've built to help you optimize your life, actualize your potential, and live heroically. It is day 1. We are all in. Let's go.