As goes our games so goes our life. But can the tactics and strategies of our games be used to succeed in life?
Speed Chess Phenom Yaacov Norowitz visits the LTP podcast to discuss what it is like to be best in world and the lessons he has learned to be successful in both chess and life.
TRANSCRIPT
| Mark Gleason: | Welcome to APEX Level to Power, the podcast completely dedicated to your self-empowerment. For those of you that follow the program, you know that we are dedicated to finding ways that you can gain personal power through changing our perspective and that is why on this program we sat down with speed chess champion Yaacov Norowitz because Yaacov has accomplished the impossible.
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| He’s beaten overboard every single chess champion in the world including Garry Kasparov, but Yaacov struggles with the issues we all struggle with which is: “What do I need to be happy? What are my obligations to the tribe? Do the obligations to the tribe trump my own personal views of what I need to be happy?” Yaacov has a lot to teach us both on how he discusses his resistance to tribal norms and to the unique way that he challenges and beats world champions at their own game. So, I invite you to listen to my rollicking conversation with Yaacov Norowitz. You can change your level, change your life, change the world. Welcome to APEX Level to Power.
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| Escape the herd, rise above the pack. This is the APEX Level to Power Podcast, the only place in the web that teaches you to identify and control the invisible strings that dominate all human interaction. We teach sheep to become wolves, a challenge to be sure, but one that we answer and answer with vigor. I am your faithful host, Mark Gleason. I welcome you to the program and I invite you to visit our little corner of the web at LeveltoPower.com for more information and to support the broadcast.
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| Speaker 2: | Now, for an episode from the APEX Level to Power Man on Fire Series, the episodes where guests find personal power, and we proved it like a masochistic narcissist, you only hurt the ones you love.
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| Mark Gleason: | In the APEX Level to Power studio, we have Yaacov Norowitz, international master, speed chess extraordinaire, here to talk to us about chess and life. He is an international master with a rating well over 2,500 last time I looked, but he is a underground legend in the speed chess world. He’s played Blitz chess against many of the top figures in the world and holds his own and wins many of his games as a matter of fact. His legendary rivalry with Nakamura you can find online. He’s played many of the best players in the world in regular chess tournaments and has done well and held his own against many of them including former champion Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short and others.
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| Yaacov, thank you so much. Please introduce yourself to our listeners and let us know a little bit more about you.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Hello. Thanks very much for having me here. It’s nice to be here, guys. Thanks everyone for listening. I’ve been playing chess my whole life. I’m 35 years old. I’m playing chess my whole life since I was nine years old. I’ve played over a quarter of a million speed games.
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| Mark Gleason: | Wow. Oh, wow.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Literally. That’s not [exaggerated 00:03:40]. Over a quarter of a million. I’ve won I believe every speed chess, important speed chess tournament I’ve won. The World Open Blitz Championship I won I think five times and I won recently a big tournament in Atlantic City, Millionaire Chess Open, I won eight nothing. That was very epic.
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| Mark Gleason: | Wow.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | On four shot of vodka. I believe it helped. Anyways, it helped. I was able to play natural. I’m not recommending this but-
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| Mark Gleason: | The world’s most interesting, man.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Yeah. It’s [inaudible 00:04:14]
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| Mark Gleason: | Yaacov, you can’t let your coaching secrets out in the beginning of the podcast, okay?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Yeah, yeah.
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| Mark Gleason: | Okay. Your secret is out. Your secret is out. It’s the shots of vodka before the tournament that really do it.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | That’s true. Yeah. But anyways, I’ve been playing my whole life, and I’ve always absolutely loved it. It was a love of mine since a young kid and in recent years it’s become my full-time profession: teaching, playing professional but mostly teaching kids and adults. I have adults that just literally only know the rules, just know the rules and have been playing their whole life but want to have a great hobby. I think chess is absolutely a great hobby from many things. It’s just a great peace of mind. We’ll talk about it in the podcast, more about this. Chess could definitely enrich someone’s life a lot.
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| I’ve had students tell me that it’s actually helped them in business. I’ve had people, CEOs, tell me that it’s really helped their thinking process and helped them make money. [inaudible 00:05:16] I’m like, “Oh, okay. Oh, beautiful.” So, that’s been good. I had a recent experience. A poker player. I was teaching a poker player and then he won a tournament. He used to thank me. He said, “Your chess lesson,” I taught him one lesson, he said, “That lesson helped me analyze situations better.”
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| Mark Gleason: | The reason I have you on the podcast is because I have taken some of your coaching and found it fantastic because it’s different than typical chess coaching because you’re teaching a way of seeing, a way of looking at the world, a way of looking at the board that’s different than just make sure you open with e4, right? This is not a tactical kind of grocery list that you’re giving me rights and wrongs what I’ve done with my position which helps me in certain circumstances but doesn’t really help me in others.
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| What you do is you have this interesting thematic way of looking at the world which is quite different than anybody else, and what makes you a speed chess champion. I mean it helps you. It’s your way of making sense of a chess game. When you explain it, all of a sudden some of the hidden moves and valuable moves that high level players make, it opens the kimono a bit for people like me who are more of a mid-level chess player but love the game to begin to understand some of what you’re looking at.
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| It’s almost like … I hate to say the word shortcut, but it’s a way … APEX Level to Power is about changing your perspective. It’s about looking at things from another way and deepening your understanding and gaining advantage particularly when your opponents are not doing that. Imagine playing poker and you’re the only one at the table who’s looking at body language and reading body language. I’ve actually been in poker games. That’s happened to me. I’m a poker player. Then you have this invisible advantage that body else understands. It’s purely a matter of perspective. They can all see the same things I’m seeing. It’s just invisible to them because nobody is looking at the body language.
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| Now, am I a genius for doing that? No. If I took somebody aside and taught them for a week in how to do body language and put them back in the same game, they would be doing the same thing I am, right? They’d be deepening and enriching what they already know about the game. That’s what you did for me with your view of chess which is why I’m so excited to have you on the program, thank you so much again for coming on, is because I have a whole program about changing your perception to increase your personal power, and here you are showing me a new perception to increase my power in chess. So, I’m even more profoundly grateful than most would be.
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| You have this way of looking at the world, like body language let’s say, only the equivalent is how can you look at a position from this different way of being and see insights that nobody else is going to see. So no matter where you are in your chess, if you’re a beginner, if you’re a mid-level, if you’re struggling at the upper level, trying to gain a few more points to make international master, you need this as part of your game.
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| Can you succeed without it? Sure. Can you succeed in poker without being able to read body language? Sure. Why would you? Why would you do that? Why would you not get every way of looking at it that you can so you can add it to your world view in the way that you approach chess? That’s what you’re here to talk about today: about chess and about life and about changing perspective.
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| I played chess my entire life as you could not tell from how well I play but certainly it’s been a fun passion of mine for a while. What struck me was that when I was young, I like the games of Bobby Fischer which were very dynamic and crazy and just the things you could see. What I learned though was I couldn’t learn anything from Fischer’s games other than how Fischer played very well. It didn’t help my chess that much to study Fischer’s games where as opposed to Capablanca who could win in his beautiful thematic ways where you could study his games, and my games got better just by understanding what he did in his games.
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| What I learned was that all grandmasters or all chess masters are not alike, that depending on your own style and depending upon what you need to get out of the game that different approaches to chess can be helpful. Now, that’s why I love your games. That’s why I love your explanation of your games and the way you view chess because like Capablanca you have this simple thematic ways of explaining a position as an entry point into a position, which of course get very, very deep and murky and complicated the further you go into it, but you still have an excellent way of doing a snapshot analysis of a position and deciding where to go from there.
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| Therefore, it should be of no surprise to anyone that you are a speed chess champion. You are known for your speed chess. I mean certainly, you have an accomplished chess record but your Blitz chess at least on YouTube where you are well-known as a brutal Blitz player, right? I’m going to let you introduce yourself and then explain more to us, but my impression is that it is because of this way you have looking at chess, this insight you have, this filter that you look at the game with that it lends itself to this more intuitive play where you can size up a position and play thematically versus purely tactically. How old were you when your first started playing chess?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | I was nine years old when I first started playing.
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| Mark Gleason: | This is actually unusual in the sense that most supremely accomplished chess players, my impression is they start when they’re four or five. Is that what you’ve heard as well?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Yeah. Nowadays particularly. But yeah, back then, it was a little late. I was one of the top kids in my age in the country growing up when I was 12, 13 already and [going 00:11:02] forwards but I had a little catching up to do. A lot of the other kids, they all started at six. Six was the usual age. Six.
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| Mark Gleason: | Right. You are nine years old. You come from a religious family. You meet a family friend who is also a chess player?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Yeah. He was a family friend and he was just [giving 00:11:24] a … He just ran a chess club in the school. He was my dentist also. His name is Dr. Richard [Lewis 00:11:30]. Till this day, he’s a very close friend of mine and he gave a chess club. It wasn’t serious. Most of the time, people were just playing, maybe just jumping around. There was no instruction, but every so often, he would instruct say one or two lessons, small lessons, and at some point, he saw I had talent.
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| He told my dad one day. One day, my dad comes to me and he tells me like, “Dr. Lewis offered to teach you.” I was like, “Wow. That’s awesome.” My dad explained that first he turned him down. He said, “No. No thanks because I can’t …” he doesn’t really feel like paying for chess lessons, but then Dr. Lewis said, “I’m happy to teach Yaacov for free. He has talent.” My dad was a little confused but he was like, “Sure.” So, every Tuesday, I would go to his house and get trained for two years. I was growing up so I [inaudible 00:12:27] and I improved pretty quickly. I read a lot of books. I read lot and lot of books and by the end of two years, I was almost about his level where he couldn’t really teach me anymore.
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| Mark Gleason: | All right. So, you decided you have a knack for this.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Well, he decided. I didn’t decide it.
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| Mark Gleason: | That’s right.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | I never knew. Till this day, I don’t even know how he knew.
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| Mark Gleason: | You’re playing Nakamura in speed chess in the park and winning so I’m going to guess you have a talent. You have an aptitude. Let’s say you at least have an aptitude.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Aptitude, aptitude, aptitude. Confidence. Confidence. Confidence.
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| Mark Gleason: | So, you started playing and you throw yourself into this in a big way. Where does this view, this unique view of chess come from where you start looking at the game through a certain lens, a certain thematic lens of this dacha? We’ll get to what that is in a second, but when did that start? Which teacher did you have that opened your eyes to look at chess in that way?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | After about two years, when I was 13, well, 12 actually, we stopped training for a bit, for a few months because Dr. Lewis couldn’t teach me anymore. Then at some point, he contacted me again and he said he’s going to have me come into his office. So every … I think it was every Wednesday or every other Wednesday, I will come to his office. The rabbi let me out of school two hours to get chess lessons.
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| Mark Gleason: | All right. Your rabbi let you out of school for two hours to study chess and that is a grandmaster?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Yeah.
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| Mark Gleason: | His name is?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Grandmaster name was Roman Dzindzichashvili.
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| Mark Gleason: | Okay. It’s okay if I refer to him as Grandmaster Roman?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Roman. You could say Roman.
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| Mark Gleason: | Okay. Very good. That’s very kind of you and him. Thank you. Grandmaster Roman and you started working together in chess. How old are you when that started?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | I was 12.
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| Mark Gleason: | Okay. So, that ends up being one of the formative 10 steps in your chess career is that you started with him. Now, is this where this idea of this thematic play, this dacha concept comes in?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | He was one of the top, I think number eight in the world back in the day, so he’s a very deep thinker from [originally 00:14:47] the country of Georgia. A very, very deep chess thinker. We never talked chess philosophy, deep chess philosophy. In fact, no one these days really talks about it. No one ever really did. I think a lot of chess always has been about results so people would be deep-thinkers about chess but it was all really about the results of what gives the best win, what’s the best move, what’s the best idea, but it’s towards a goal and the goal was to win the game, to win the tournament, to win the rating, to become the highest rated in the highest rating possible.
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| Mark Gleason: | Right. The problem with that approach, and that’s a great approach, but the problem with this incrementalism that creeps into any sports is how I can shave off this here, how can I shave off that there, how can I gain .0125 advantage here, and while it is true that that is the slow and steady way to make sure that you move above the rankings, it does kind of suck the soul out of the activity you’re involved in.
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| Once you start working it down that way, for me at least, that’s exactly where it ceases to be fun, and that’s why I think that your way of looking at chess is so exciting because you play at an extraordinarily high level of chess, but the way you look at it versus let me learn the 59th variation of Ruy Lopez so that I’m prepared for my opponent who plays Ruy Lopez, and therefore if he does something difference, we’re playing Sicilian instead, all of that is out the window, right? All of my preparation is out the window. But that’s okay because I have a catalog of preparation I’ve done hopefully which encounters what he’s done.
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| I guess my own chess experience is I play against those people all the time. Everybody I ever I play is more prepared than I am. Therefore, my only option is to make things a little bit messy, a little bit crazy, and let’s play some chess, right?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Sure.
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| Mark Gleason: | Let’s get off the preparation [inaudible 00:16:49]. Sometimes I have to take a disadvantage to mess up the board a bit, to make things off book so we can actually start playing real chess. That’s where your ability to calculate, that’s where your strategy, that’s where your grasp of theme really becomes critical and crucial. Looking at your games, obviously blitz games are just crazy. That’s why blitz games are so fun, right? Because departing from book to make things messy works very, very well in blitz where it’s not going to necessarily work against the strong chess player.
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| You could be called for some of your nonsense that you’re doing blitz in longer games where people have lots of time to think about it. But that’s what makes it so fun and so exciting is what can you think of in time, and that’s where again your strong grasp of the themes that underlie the game I think really serve you very well and makes you very, very strong. You could find these moves nobody else can find.
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| Again, this show is APEX Level to Power and this show is about perspectives. It’s about gaining power in our lives by looking at things from different perspectives. What fascinates me about your chess play is that’s exactly what you do … right? … is that you and I are both looking at pieces in the board and I’m looking where the knight can move. You’re looking where the knight can move and I’m looking where the bishop can move and you’re looking where the bishop can move, but you’re also looking at this other dimension of the game and that is revealing to you some hidden moves which are obvious when you’re looking at it from that perspective but are completely hidden if you’re not looking at it from that perspective.
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| That’s again what fascinates me about your approach to the game. So, you begin working with grandmaster Roman and where is it that you begin embracing this idea of the themes behind chess?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | [This was 00:18:30] age 12, we work together for about six months then he moved to Boston or to maybe California I think it might have been and-
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| Mark Gleason: | This is a very, very well-known highly regarded grandmaster. I mean you are very, very fortunate to have crossed paths with him that early on. He’s a very, very well-known quantity. A very well-known respected quantity in the chess world.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Yeah. I was fortunate to train with him. Frankly, I mean it was actually literal miracle. I mean I’ve had a few miracles. This is one of them. Trained for free for two years randomly. It doesn’t really happen. It was every single week for two years by Dr. Richard Lewis. Then he couldn’t teach me anymore and he had Roman teach me, and he gave Roman free dental work. Roman needed thousands of dollars of free dental work. Lewis would give Roman dental work in return that Roman would teach me.
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| It was actually pretty rare scenario where I was lucky enough to even have him as a coach paid or not paid. He’s one of the [known 00:19:34] as one of the best coaches, period. To meet him in person at age 12, young age, and for free. If it was not for free probably, it would not have happened. My dad wasn’t really interested to pay for my lessons. Till this day, I heckle him about that a little bit, but whatever. He could have afforded it. He’s an eye doctor. He could have afforded it. But it’s all right. He’s got enough tuition. The kids’ Jewish tuition is expensive.
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| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. But it would worked out well. It would worked out well.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | It worked out very well. Roman trained me for a bunch and gave me some little chess culture. He gave me even more inspiration, definitely more understanding. I played a lot. I played a lot online, a lot of blitz. Blitz was like an exercise. It was not about winning or losing.
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| Mark Gleason: | To just be clear, what is blitz just for our listeners?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Blitz is speed chess. If they call it blitz chess, it means speed chess.
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| Mark Gleason: | Blitz I think means lightning in German.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | That’s right.
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| Mark Gleason: | What is the time parameters on blitz?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Time parameters could be like usually it’s either five minutes for each side. There’s different times. It’s either five minutes, three minutes or one minute. Which means … Let’s say, five minutes would mean that each player has five minutes for all their moves.
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| Mark Gleason: | All right. We all have the seen movies with the guys in the park who are sitting there going boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and moving the pieces quickly and slamming the clock. They are very likely playing blitz chess in those scenes. It’s fun. It’s fast-paced. You can play a lot of games back-to-back but you don’t have a lot of time to think deeply about any given position. Whereas a normal game might last two hours, your entire game here is going to last five to 10 minutes so you have to be moving very, very quickly, size up snap judgments and decisions. This is blitz chess.
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| Now, some people say blitz chess ruins your deeper chess because it gives you the bad habits. You can get away with things in blitz chess because your opponent doesn’t have the chance to think deeply and call you on it whereas in a longer game, they might be able to call you on that and take advantage of the fact that you made this move that wasn’t well-thought out.
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| I was always being criticized growing up that I played too much blitz and it basically ruined my slow games, which basically it did. In my case, it definitely did. It gives me a sense of risk-taking which probably doesn’t translate well into the slow games. You’ve found a balance there. How was it that you’ve found a balance between your blitz and your slower games?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | I’m just thinking right now. It’s interesting. That’s a really interesting question. It might have been related to …. Regarding risk, I think I took very, very little risk in my personal life so being safe was not a problem. That was the norm. My family was more conservative. My mom was more conservative both in religious ways and maybe mentality towards life. Just very safe, conservative so I was probably by nature going to be more that way by how I was brought up.
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| So, when I played blitz, it put that balance where you’re forced to be aggressive but I still have that conservative backbone so I was able to find the right balance I think. I think I was by nature … I was brought up conservative but I was yearning to take risks so it kind of let me lose a little bit and just to find a good balance.
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| Mark Gleason: | Okay. Here you are. You’re starting with some impressive people. You are improving your chess game. You’re playing lots of games. You’re reading lots of books. Explain what this concept of the dacha is. How did that come about? At what age did you start struggling with that idea and how did this whole thing develop?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | All right. It was exactly at age 18 when I was in Israel. When I was Israel, I was studying in Israel to become a rabbi. I’ve studied for many years to become a rabbi and I went to Israel for a little bit. Actually, it was 19. I went to Israel. I was 19 and I was in the city of Petah Tikva near Tel-Aviv, very close to Tel-Aviv and I was playing a league there, a league game against … He was a strong player. I was a master at the time, just basically two levels below grandmaster. It’s master, international master and grandmaster. I was a master.
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| My opponent was I think international master, a little bit higher rated than me. I had a scenario where … Well, in chess there is knight, there’s bishop, rook. I had [inaudible 00:24:10] a knight and a bishop. Knight and bishop are about equal, known to be roughly equal pieces. Chess theory doesn’t talk that much about it but they say knight and bishop are about equal, but bishop is usually a little bit better and two bishops are better than two knights.
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| Mark Gleason: | Right. The classic rule of thumb is that a knight or a bishop, both of them are worth three pawns. Meaning a knight could be worth three pawns or a bishop can be worth three pawns and that a bishop is a distance weapon so you could have activity in both sides of the board. A bishop can be good in general in a closed position, in a locked board so that can be good. So, really they’re considered equal only in the sense that depending on which end game you end up in, the piece can be good or better or worse, right?
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| Then to your point, in chess, if you have two bishops though that cover both of the dark and light squares, that’s considered to be an advantage. If somebody else has the bishop and the knight, you have two bishop advantage it’s called, for our listeners, so the two bishops can be quite good. You are in this game. What’s going on in regards to the bishops and knights in this game?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Bishop could only go on one color. Let’s say you have 64 squares in the board, a light bishop go on the light squares. A dark bishop could only go on the dark squares. There’s 32 light squares, 32 dark squares. Each bishop could go on half of the board, could move only on their color. A knight could switch back and forth. I had a situation where I had two knights and my opponent had two bishops. The book say that two bishops is better than two knights because two bishops could control both colors.
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| Mark Gleason: | Yeah. Both colors and both colors at a distance.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | At a distance. Yeah.
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| Mark Gleason: | Right. Exactly.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Now, I had two knights which is supposed to be worse. My position felt okay. In fact, there was a certain square. I remember it was c4. There is numbers and letters.
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| Mark Gleason: | Right. There is a coordinate system.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Coordinates.
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| Mark Gleason: | Coordinate system in chess. So, there’s a square in chess, c4, and you’re looking at that square.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Exactly. I was looking at that square and I had to be careful about that square. That square was like an important square in my territory. I was playing the Stonewall opening which my signature opening. I have beaten all the best in the world, everybody, including Garry Kasparov at one time, a world champion. I’m sure a lot of listeners may have heard of him. I beat him with the Stonewall one time. Nigel Short who played against Kasparov in 1992, number two in the world from England. So, I’ve beaten all the best about that time, the best from the ’90s and the early 2000s with the Stonewall.
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| I was playing the Stonewall. He was putting some pressure on me. A good player, this opponent. I had some problem with the c4 square. It was a light square. But my two knights were comfortably holding on to the square, and I’m like, “Hmm, this is nice.”
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| Mark Gleason: | So, you have a unique position in chess where even though there’s [supposed 00:27:06] two-bishop advantage, one bishop can only control the dark square and one bishop can only control the light square. Whereas knights can hop back and forth and control different colors. So, even though he has this “two-bishop advantage” You actually could arrange a position where you could get two knights covering that square and he only could get one bishop covering that square.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Exactly. It was almost a shock to me at first. I didn’t really consider the notion of why this is happening but … Right. I had control of the square and I’m like, “Wait a second.” I was happy but I was like, “Wait. But the theory says that bishops are better than two knights. They control all the squares. Why is this happening?” Then I thought about it a little bit. I almost got confused. Like, “Wait. I don’t deserve this.”
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| Then I’m like, “Hah, well, I guess it was because each knight is actually has half of the light bishop in it. It has a dual personality. It actually is like a bishop in its own right. It’s not just a piece that jumps around. It has its power as a light bishop and also has a power of dark bishop. It could switch in a moment’s notice but it has always in it it’s like a half light bishop and a half dark bishop. So, in a sense, I had two light bishops or two pieces that have the personality of a light bishop.
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| I started to think about it. “Hmm, I guess there are maybe two different boards.” So, on the light board, I’m ahead or at least, I have two pieces that control the light board versus only one bishop that could fight for it. It got me thinking about things and I-
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| Mark Gleason: | If you think about the chess board not as a checker board like we think about it normally but as two different boards, only a light square board and only a dark square board, and of course, these things are merged, in regards to just thinking about how knights and bishops might be able to counterbalance each other, he had one piece that could compete on the dark and one piece that could compete on the light, and you had two pieces that could compete on either so you outnumbered him essentially on either color as long as you could create a situation where that became relevant to the game.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Yeah. Exactly. [inaudible 00:29:18] I started thinking about it. I came to conclusion that there are boards, there are really two battles going on side by side. It’s not one battle. It’s two battles. Two boards, two struggles going on side by side, a light board and a dark board. Of course, both boards are important. You can’t control one board and then neglect the other one because they were all there.
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| At the end of the day, there are 64 squares. If the king is on a dark square, how are you ever going to check mate if you control the light squares. You can’t even put him in check let alone check mate if you don’t have a dark bishop or something. You need a piece or a pawn or something that could contribute to the other color. Harmony is important, so balance of light and dark. The goal is to have harmony of light and dark. I think of it as building a home, trying to build a beautiful home on the board, a dacha.
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| Mark Gleason: | A dacha in Russian is what?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | A dacha is a summer home. You’re trying to build a beautiful home on the chess board. What makes it beautiful is to have harmony. I think it’s symbolic of … I don’t know that much about this but yin and yang and stuff and just harmony in general in the world seems like it’s important.
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| Mark Gleason: | Right. If you’re going to build a house, you can’t have one really strong wall and one really weak wall or else over time, your house is going to collapse. So, it’s important to have this harmony of light squares and dark squares. You have two different games. That’s why I say I love this approach because it’s all about perspective, right? I’m looking at it as one game, one board, and half the time you are as well but the other half the time, you’re looking at let me look at this position again from this other perspective of two different games happening on dark and white.
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| Look, I think most people listening who do play chess know the feeling of watching a game. Okay, I follow Garry Kasparov’s play up to a certain point. I think I do. I’m probably missing the subtleties but I’m basically following. Then, he moves against Deep Blue h3 [inaudible 00:31:12] pawn and everybody goes, “Oh, okay.” Five moves later, but he says that was the pivotal move which 20 moves later rescued him in the end game and really allowed him to win. It’s those kinds of moves that beginner players or intermediate players, how do you find those moves? What is the mechanism by which you’re looking at a normal chess position and you’re saying, “This is the time to depart from what normally would be perceived as a regular good move to in this particular position unique to this position. I’m going to do this instead.”
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| That’s where this these brilliant moves come in, and people always wonder I think “What’s going on in that guy’s head? Did he just work this out in advance? It seems an unusual position. How is he looking at the game that he’s finding that move and I’m not?” Here is one way. Here is how you find moves that other people don’t is that you look at it as I got two different games going on, the white and the dark, and if my attack on the white can come a lot fast than your attack in the dark, maybe I can trade these pieces and strengthen that advantage or maybe I need to trade other pieces to harmonize again because I’m too weak.
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| Your attack of the dark come much faster than my attack on the light. So, every decision in chess in regards to what color your pawns are going to rest on, which pieces you’re going to trade, and your pawns on the other side of the board, which color are they going to rest on. All these decisions rely upon this idea. They’re impacted by this idea of whether to take control of more white or more dark on the board.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Part of it I think is related to the fact that I think if you’re trying to towards a goal like we say a goal of improving, even a goal of winning, it becomes a little bit minimized. Your joy is minimized and frankly your sense of presence. I don’t know that much about this, but I know they say living in the moment, being in the moment very present and not looking ahead.
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| Mark Gleason: | Yeah. Having commitment versus expectation. That’s right. Don’t have an expectation for the outcome which can build that stress. Just having commitment to making the right moves and a commitment to playing a good game. Being present in the moment and just trying to make the moves that are in front of you.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Exactly. It’s very hard to be contained in the commitment mode. Often we-
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| Mark Gleason: | In life as well as chess.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Sure.
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| Mark Gleason: | I mean in life, we all fall into the same thing where we have expectations, get disappointed but pressure ourselves and screw up something because we put pressure on ourselves. Where if we could just stay present, stay true to our commitments that we’re trying to pursue, and the let the rest of it take care of itself, we actually would do much better in the long run I think.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | It’s really the same thing. Commitment versus expectation is actually about living in the moment. It’s beautiful. I think here it’s very hard not to be drawn back in life, in chess, by tournaments more so. I think by blitz, the nature of blitz especially online, there’s not much at stake. It’s fast. You’re seeing another game in five minutes anyways, next game so you’ll always be able to focus on the action versus the result. The result is fleeting so you’re able to engulf yourself in the action, in just the present. It’s always present because the game is over and it starts and it begins, and the next game begins within five minutes. I think that’s very important to do.
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| There are two currencies. There’s light currency and dark currency. Both players start with exact same pieces, hence the exact same currency, the exact same dollars. A light bishop is worth like a thousand dollars of light, a dark bishop is a thousand dollars of dark. So, they’re like two countries and both light and dark start off as the same value. A light dollar is the same value as a dark dollar in the beginning but any slight weakness or … Let’s say my king. I have a king. My king, I make a weakness on the dark squares. Guess what? The dark currency suddenly becomes more important because if you lose your king, it’s game over. You get checkmated. You lose.
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| Mark Gleason: | So, if I create weaknesses on the dark squares around my king, that might be a sign that as my opponent, you should be investing in dark squares in your position. So, the value of that currency has gone up perhaps. What’s one way that you could invest? How do you invest in light or dark squares?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Well, if you got the opponent’s bishop of that color, it’s great. Let’s say a rook. Someone that’s somewhat experienced in chess world probably know that a rook is a little bit better than a bishop. A rook goes horizontally, vertically, any direction. Bishop goes diagonally but only on its color. Bishop is so smooth but only on its color. A rook is not smooth. It has to be open files, open ranks to really get around, but it gets to any square on the board. It can get to light or dark. A rook is usually worth five units in general. A bishop is worth three units. However, if the dark currency is very valuable, the dark bishop becomes so important. I will often want to give up a rook for your dark bishop in that case.
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| Mark Gleason: | So, here you have a situation where you realize that you’re playing a normal game. It’s a game that any of us could follow as kind of intermediate players. I play, I don’t know, in 1,800 level. It’s a 2,000 level on a good day so I can follow some basic games, and so I’m following everything you’re doing so far. All of a sudden, crazy Norowitz is sacking his own rook for the other guy’s dark square bishop and I go, “What just happened? What’s going on?” This is one of those moves. I’m saying this is one of those inspired moves that the average player looks at and just is baffled as to what was the logic by which this move was found. Because usually it ends up working out or if not working out, it’s certainly is not as horrible as it first looks.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Right.
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| Mark Gleason: | All of a sudden you see the idea seven moves later and you go “Oh, wow.” Whether or not the attack works or not, who knows? That’s why I think this is a great way for you and the students you coach to look at this which is that you made a calculation that says, “Oh, dark square currency is about to get really, really valuable because he’s weakened and I have an attack which may control the dark squares, everything in this game for the next eight moves, and therefore, sacrificing my rook for his dark square bishop, I am taking a piece which can compete on both the light and dark but I’m taking off his only dedicated dark square piece. I’m taking off a thousand units of dark by trading a piece which is essentially let’s say 500 and 500 light and dark.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Roughly. Yeah. Rook, [inaudible 00:38:02] say is like 750, 750 sometimes.
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| Mark Gleason: | 750. There you go. I think it’s better. Exactly.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Yeah, yeah.
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| Mark Gleason: | So, you’re thinking of 750, 750 so for you, and you can look at some tactics as well, but you’re gaining there. If you decide that the darkness is where investment needs to be made, you are gaining because he … you’re losing 750 of dark and he’s losing a thousand of dark and you’ve gained 250 in dark overall. It’s these kinds of calculations of looking at the two different games going on, the white and the dark, which is why I think I’m beating you on the board because I got more wood on the board, right? I’m up a pawn. Now, I’m up a rook for a bishop. Things are going fantastic.
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| Next thing you know you’re taking apart my position with the scalpel somehow, and ding, ding, ding, ding, next thing you know you’re sacking this for my pawn. You’re doing this. You’re doing this. Next thing you know, I’m checkmated or in huge trouble. Seemingly out of nowhere, right? For somebody of my skill level. But look, I’ve seen you destroy people in some of your games even of your skill level, right? That’s what’s unusual I think about this way of looking at things. You’re able to find these moves and these positions by changing your perspective in the game that most people aren’t able to find.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Yes. I think if you’re focused on results, it is very, very hard for me. Hard to do this. I’ve had this myself in tournaments where it matters. Where it matters, my mind gets clouded and I may be able to think, but it’s very hard for me to really judge and appreciate colors, the beauty of the harmony and to really delve into something maybe bigger than just math. Even though it’s something a little inspired, it’s very hard because I can only fool myself so much.
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| At the end of the day, I know that I care about the result and I don’t give a hoot about how I get there. When you stop giving a hoot how you get there, about the process, you’re no longer inspired, and then you got to just pray that these exchange … When you give up a rook for a bishop, then you’re just praying that it works. Your heart is not there.
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| I heard a good saying from a grandmaster from Australia. I don’t know who it was but it was an anonymous grandmaster online. He said, “Never play a move unless your heart is into it.” It’s really interesting. I told him I like that quote. I really enjoyed that because I think it’s … You can’t just play a move and think it works out. You have to really feel comfortable with it. You have to be enjoying that moment because chess is a beautiful thing. You got to appreciate it. If you’re just playing for result, your heart is not really in it, then you’re going to lose inspiration. You’re not going to be inspired.
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| I think these ideas of colors and harmony, deep intricacies of trying to create a full beautiful position changes the dynamics a little bit from being a battle against your opponent to being self-processed, to being almost like a completion of yourself.
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| Mark Gleason: | Well, it’s almost like sailing a rough sea where you’re trying to tame nature. It becomes about you versus yourself and overcoming nature. Your job is to achieve harmony. Whatever your opponent does is just one more insult to the harmony which needs to be corrected, right?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | It really focuses you back. It reminds you that it’s not about expectation. I think the colors and harmony are excellent reminders where every single move and every single thought is saying commitment, what is your commitment? It keeps on reminding you that you’re not playing an opponent. You’re playing the colors, the light and dark, and trying to achieve that balance. So, it puts you on a more healthy mindset not even a better more deep understanding of chess that may be one thing. I believe it’s pretty deep, these ideas getting to the truth of chess, but I also believe that it’s helpful. I can be helpful if used correctly to help the mindset.
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| Mark Gleason: | Which is critical in any sport, right? Particularly chess which is an entirely mental thing, but every sportsman has the exact same problem. Look, Tiger Woods playing golf, he’s not even playing directly against somebody. It’s not like he’s fencing. It’s not like he’s boxing. It’s not like he’s playing directly against somebody who’s punching him in the face, but he has that same pressure of the person who’s in front of him who got a birdie and now he’s feeling the pressure that he’s down two strokes, right? So, what he has to do though is go out and play his best game, his best shot every single time. If he gets in his head about this or that, he’s going to screw them up.
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| Sports psychology is very, very interesting in that way which is that the games that people play with themselves in their head. I follow MMA a lot, UFC. There are fighters who win and lose and win and lose and win and lose. They go to a sports psychologist for a year. They get their head right, and they go on a winning streak like you wouldn’t believe. They figured out how to make sure that the mind is not creating opportunities for them to lose. Sometimes we self-sabotage ourselves. Sometimes we psych ourselves out. Sometimes we lose the joy of the game halfway through and stop caring about what it is we’re doing.
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| So, the question is how can you prepare yourself in some way to insulate yourself from that a bit, the pressure of the situation, the expectations that you’ve set? How can you remain committed in the moment versus having expectation in the future? This is for life as well as chess because expectations, for the listeners, expectations lead to disappointment inevitably.
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| If you go through life with expectations, maybe she’ll go out with me, maybe I’ll get this job, maybe I’ll win this tournament, and every single time you set a goal for yourself, some of them you win but some of them you’re going to lose. If you don’t handle that well, that’s going to hurt you in the long run. That’s different than figuring out what your commitments are. Your commitments are I want to be a good person and I want to meet a nice girl. That’s my commitment. Even if I ask the girl out and she doesn’t want to go out with me, my commitment remains the same. There’s no expectation that she would necessarily be the one. It’s simply my commitment is to find the right one.
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| My commitment in chess is to play beautiful chess and if I can remain committed to that, play great chess every single time. Don’t worry about whether this is the park or whether this is the US Open. Either way, I should play the most beautiful, great chess I can. That is being in the moment and having a commitment to that. That’s why I think this whole perspective you have is so interesting because I think you’re right. I think it does. When you slip into expectation like “Holy cow, I can win this thing, and what would that mean, and maybe this will raise my profile or maybe I’ll fall into it.”
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| All of sudden, [there’s cascade 00:44:34]. You’re not thinking about the game anymore. You’re thinking about all this other stuff that could happen after the game. Or maybe I’ll be embarrassed if I lose, right? All those other stuff. Returning back to this what is light, what is dark, what are the games that are happening, what is the value of the light or dark squares in the board, should I be investing in this and not investing in this, this is the perspective that you’re adopting. It helps you look at the game a different way and it also helps center you back to your commitment to harmony versus all the other human stuff that creep in to weaken your mindset.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Yeah. When you focus on the beauty of the positions and see the harmony, the light and dark, a little touch, a little more light, a little rebuilding, you [weaken 00:45:15] a color, you rebuild that little dose. It feels a nice beauty to it and you could focus on it and you become more and more in the moment. It helps you. You dip back into the … dips in the moment.
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| Mark Gleason: | It didn’t occur to me till the way you just expressed it, but I’ve taken coaching from you which I absolutely loved and I encourage all of our listeners to at least take a few coaching lessons with you. The way you just described it, it just reminded me of the lessons that we’ve had and it almost sounds like you’re a master chef preparing a recipe. The way you described it, right?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | I see.
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| Mark Gleason: | Particularly when you have a certain joy in your voice when you’re saying it’s a little dab of this and it’s a little dab of that and you got to add a pinch of light square. Then on this side of the board bolster up our base with a little bit of dark square. It is like a painter. It is like an artist. This is like a master chef. It is somebody who is finding joy in the harmony and the patterns that are before them.
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| That’s very interesting experience in chess that you don’t get when you get lost in the tactical. Well, I take this knight. He takes that knight. I take his pawn. Four trades from now, I’ll be up a pawn. What would that end game look like for me? That’s where most people get bogged down in chess. It becomes very dry and soulless.
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| By the way, the normal teaching establishment only encourages that. It becomes incrementalism. It becomes this .0125% you’re most often going to win if you move this pawn first before that pawn against most openings and therefore make sure you do that. It just sucks the soul and joy of the game right out. Here you found a way. You have fought back against this kind of soulless machine if you will. These are my words not yours. I’m not getting you in trouble here. But in my view-
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | No, it is.
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| Mark Gleason: | In my view, I had to lost some joy from the game that got returned to me because of the way you were able to explain it. All of a sudden I’m able to compete against people again in a joyful way for me because I don’t have to out-calculate everything. I don’t mind calculation in chess. But if this is all just an exercise to see who memorizes the most openings and who can do the tactical calculation deeper, well that’s okay, but it’s just not very fun after you’ve done that for about a year or two, right? For me, it’s about something larger. It’s about some kind of additional joy you’re finding.
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| The mechanics of swinging a golf club are very interesting but so is playing outdoors in the sun and the wind and the rain and the this and the that, different terrains, different golf courses, different lighting conditions, different injuries that you have. Overcoming all that is really what the sport ends up being about. In chess, it’s the internal, right? It’s about keeping with harmony, keeping with your commitment to playing beautiful games and not being caught up in the moment which we all do at some point, right? We get this power and we get caught up on our own head about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.
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| So it’s a joyful way I think to look at the game so you begin applying this to your chess. It makes total sense that your speed chess would just explode in potential because when you’re looking at light and dark, your ability to look at complicated positions and distill essential truth, it seems that many times you’re going to be able to leap to an answer that would take a pure calculator a long time to get to.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Yup. Sometimes I’ll find a move which may take 20 minutes to calculate. In fact, if I go in this mindset, I’ll find a move where after spending 20 minutes, I’ll find a move after 10 minutes. 10 minutes later, I’ll muddle to more complications and say like, “Ah, it’s feels muddy,” and then I’ll pick the wrong move and then I realize after the game that if I would have been playing speed chess not in the slow chess, I would have played the right move. My instincts will thrust deep down, my gut will dig a little deeper than just calculating and trying to find results. You got to dig, find what really feels right and that’s-
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| Mark Gleason: | Playing the move that feels right.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Right. That’s feels right.
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| Mark Gleason: | That’s the beauty of … If you ‘re playing what feels right, the reason that I love that as a strategy is because your opponent is making you a better person by beating you on it, right? Meaning if I’m doing what feels right and there’s a flaw in it in some way and I lose the game as a result or I get in a tough situation, having a strong opponent who actually helps me expose why that felt right but it wasn’t right only improves my game.
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| When I play moves that feel wrong but I know they’re technically correct, I don’t really learn a lot. Maybe I win and I go, “Okay. I should trust the tactical over my guts” but those moments when I lose by not trusting my gut, I’m left still wondering whether I trust my gut or I trust the book. So, I fully embrace the idea that you go with what feels right and when it doesn’t work, you plumb the depths why. You have to understand why.
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| Then your opponent is making you better, truly making you better every game because your gut of what feels right is improving over time, right? Because as your understanding deepens and you understand more subtleties, then that snap human judgment becomes more and more and more refined and more and more valuable like and FBI agent peeking around the corner. If I do that, I’m going to see nothing. I’m going to see a bunch of commotion. He’s going to take one look and say, “Okay, there are seven guys. One has an AK47. One has a nine millimeter.” He’s trained his mind in snap judgment to be able to take in all that information that are very high level.
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| Now, again I’m not giving chess coaching and advice. I’m not in a position to do so. I’m a student saying that what’s worked for me is going with what I believe to be true and sticking by my own judgment and my own opinion, and then when that opinion fails, fighting for it anyway and saying, “No, I really think this was right anyway” and having somebody like yourself beat me down and explain this is why not until I understand it. Once I understand it, no problem. I’ll never do that again. If I don’t understand it, I will do it again until I do. I’m just saying it’s important that you do push yourself and push your own judgment, do what feels right and then if you want to improve in your chess, go and figure out what you did wrong because otherwise you’re never going to improve.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | I’ve taught a lot of students in the past. Now about 13 years. I’ve been teaching the past about 10 years already, a full-time teaching and I have noticed how foreign this mentality is of just enjoying. It’s like it’s never the default. In fact, it’s very pressurized especially with kids. I guess they treat it like a subject like learning math and stuff. It’s a shame because it’s not. I don’t think of it like a math. I think it’s becoming a part of who you are. It’s not just a subject. It’s a part of who you are. You want to be focused on the process.
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| I remember growing up I had an interesting experience which I’ve never ever seen. I know as a fact I will never see it. I was a kid. I was about 12 years old and my rating … I got these magazines, Chess Life Magazines where they had the rating. They showed the rating each month. One month, I see it. These would come out, the rating supplement, every few months and I shot up from 1,500, which is decent ratings of level C, and then few months later, the next rating supplement, I was 1900. I shot up like a few hundred points. Maybe 350 points, so it was like 1,850. I went from becoming just a talented kid to becoming, rating wise, one of the top kids for my age in the country. Maybe number six in my age, age 12. The normal kid these days or any time would be very happy to say the least of course.
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| I remember my reaction. I was pleased but it was almost like, “Okay. That’s a good thing.” I was happy but I didn’t care too much. I really, really didn’t care. It wasn’t why I was playing chess. It wasn’t even why I was studying chess. I remember I was happy about my rating shooting up, but I wasn’t … It was more like, “Oh, I should be happy now. Oh, yeah, I’m pretty happy. That’s a good thing to be top five in the country. That’s probably good.” I didn’t even care. I swear.
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| I was in the [kitchen 00:53:52]. I remember exactly where I was. I just put it down five seconds later or 10 seconds later. I didn’t care. I think it has to do a lot with what chess was about for me. It was the one thing I enjoyed that I [inaudible 00:54:05] foolhardily what I wanted to do, and that was the one thing I was not pressured to do. That was one thing no one told me not in the least. No one. My parents had zero to do with my chess. No one had anything to say about my chess. It was my own baby. It was my own project.
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| Nothing else in my life was my baby. Some things I was okay with. Some things I was not okay with deep down. Maybe religious wise, maybe mentality wise I felt somewhat constricted in some ways. Chess was not that. Chess was complete freedom. By playing chess, I already won. I was happy. By playing chess, beautiful, complete winner. Losing a chess game was better than getting a hundred on a test because I was winning by being there versus being … My surroundings wasn’t comfortable for me. It didn’t matter if I succeeded. I was losing by even being there.
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| Chess was winning by being there. If I lose the game, I’m like, “Okay, who cares?” I mean it’s a bonus to win. That was a bonus. Wow, you play and you won. That’s great. But I was a winner. I was literally a winner by even playing a tournament so there was no disappointment. There was one time in my life [inaudible 00:55:17] I was a kid, I remember now. There was one time where I was disappointed of losing a tournament. One time.
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| I have not thought about it till now exactly from this perspective, but there was one time, and that was the New York under 13 championship, I guess I was 12 or so. I was number two seed and it was all kids of course. I was number two seed and I lost most of my games. I did pretty poorly. I remember I was very upset. Thinking back, I’m wondering because I’ve had other tournaments where I didn’t care. I’ve had tournaments which are great. I’ve had tournaments which are not great growing up, and I cared about this one.
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| I think the reason why I cared is because I was in a surrounding where it was so hyped, like so “Oh, yeah. Dah, dah, dah, dah. What number you placed? Number, what number?” I’m like, “Oh, I placed 15th, 18th, dah, dah, dah.” I was so sad. That surroundings influenced me, but I was maybe naive. Call it all you want. Naive. I didn’t know it was in the concept of like trying to be the best. Why? Wait. Who said that? I never learnt about trying to be the best. At least, not in chess. I was trained to being the best in studies. Chess? Oh, this is a luxury. Best? Hey, this is an activity. Enjoy the activity. What? Being the best? Whoever thought of being the …
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| You could be good I guess but it was not part of anything that I was brought up and I was naive enough to never even think twice about it which is really why I just enjoyed it. I read literally over 100 books. People ask me like how much I study now, how much I study growing up. I tell them I never ever study. They say, “What you do you mean? Of course, you studied.” I say, “Well, I read over 100 chess books, but never was it studying because it was a leisure, pleasure.” I never read a book to improve. I can say that 100% when I read the books, it was not about improving. I didn’t pick a book which book would help me improve. I picked a book which I would enjoy which was every single chess book.
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| I would get sad when I finish a chess book. I was actually sad when I finished the book because now I can’t read it. I have nothing more to read. I need to find another book. Looking now, I’m like … Students are so happy I finished the book, and they should be happy. It’s good that you completed a book, but really you want to approach it from a perspective of like, “Hey enjoy it.” What you do in chess should be enjoyment. If you enjoy the book, read it. If you don’t enjoy it, don’t read it.
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| It’s tricky. The dynamics of the world are not really in this line so it’s tricky. I think it interferes with chess development which I believe shows just how important commitment versus expectation, being in the moment and how important is focusing on the commitment versus expectation and achieving a goal.
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| Mark Gleason: | Yes, yes. So certainly being goal-oriented is not necessarily a bad thing but when the goals create expectations then your mindset changes and you’re suboptimal, and that is where being committed to the goal but not having expectation around the goal is important. For instance, for me to be committed to being in a good relationship with my wife is different for me having expectations as to what that relationship looks like because I’m committed to being a good husband then I tend to make the right decisions … right? … even if my wife behaves in ways I’m not expecting as optimal.
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| If I have an expectation for what a good marriage should be in a relationship and she deviates from that, that can make me furious. How dare you do this thing? This is not what a good wife does. This is not what people in a good relationship do. You are not meeting my criteria for what a good relationship is. I did a lot of that I think when we first started dating. I formally apologize to anybody ever in a relationship with me.
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| I now realize that I’ve spent a lot of time based from the expectations of how I should behave and they should behave and how we should behave, and what does it mean to my expectation of this relationship that they do this thing which now hurts my feelings. How dare you do that? Because people in my version of a good relationship don’t do that. That’s my expectation.
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| That’s different from having a commitment, open commitment that I want to be a good boyfriend or I want to be a good friend or I want to be a good chess coach or I want to be a good chess student. If you were just openly committed to this thing, then the actions take care of themselves, the right actions take care of themselves.
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| [inaudible 00:59:56] reminds of Tom Cruise who’s obviously a very accomplished actor. They asked him “What do you do when you’re in a scene and something is not working?” I think it was an actor studio when other actors were asking him like “You’re doing something and it’s just not working, what happens?” He says, “Well, if I’ve done my work, if I’ve inhabited this character. I’ve gone off and I’ve created who this guy is and what he cares about and what he doesn’t care about, what makes him angry, what makes him happy. If I’ve done all my work, then I don’t have to think about it. I’m in the moment. I just do it. And if I find something is not working, I go away and I reexamine what makes this guy tick. What is it I’m missing? What is it I have left unexamined about this role that I’m playing so I can internalize it? Maybe I haven’t thought about …”
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| Like in Top Gun, he thought about how this guy relates to other characters. His mother comes up and he hasn’t thought about how he relates to his mother and therefore it comes off weird and hollow because he hasn’t built that compartment in his mind for how this character reacts to things. To do that, he has to go off and he has to do that work and then come back and this too comes naturally. I know that’s for acting but I feel like that’s how I feel.
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| When I have an expectation, I feel like constantly “What do I got to be doing right now to meet my expectation? Am I doing the right thing? Have I meet my expectation? Am I aligning with that?” When I’m committed, it’s much more natural because all my actions naturally align with all the things I need to be doing to be committed to this thing. It’s not even a question anymore about what I should be doing but I should be doing the thing that’s natural because my commitment makes obvious the thing, the course of action that I need to follow.
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| Being clear about what your commitments are in life I think is an important component to achieving success and achieving success, if we go back to the chess example not in a tactical let me improve my life at .025% kind of way but in this snapshot let me go with my gut and make the right move kind of way which actually gets you there. I’m in a better relationship with my wife because I have a commitment to be in a good relationship and I’m not trying to micromanage every single expectation of what that means. I’m just trying to be present.
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| I’m trying to do well every single day, and if I screw up, I go, “Okay. I need to make sure I’m more aligned with my commitment. I need to make sure that … Why did that happen and can I reaffirm my commitment. Can I build a compartment in my head more clearly as to what the commitment means in this regard? So, when she asks me to do her a favor and I snap and say, “No, I can’t. I don’t have time” and the next day, I say … Not that that ever happens. The next day, I say, “Hold on. I have a commitment to be in a good relationship.” Being in a good relationship means when these kinds of things happen, I need to respond differently than I did. I’m committed so why didn’t I respond the way I expected to.
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| I know we deviated into the personal life but I want to move there with you a bit. Bobby Fischer is very famous that the only way Bobby Fischer could relate to the world around him was through chess, and it’s very sad obviously that as he got older, he was never able to emerge. To him, the right chess move … I mean there’s games where he had the game won in 12 moves by force, but he insisted upon taking the extra 15 minutes to study it so he could have the seven moves by force, right? Some crazy knight around the board ridiculous combination that he only would take the time to come up with, but he was correct. He had a commitment to playing beautiful chess certainly.
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| The problem was he was using it as a placeholder to fill the hole in his life which was that he didn’t know how to relate to the world around him, and unfortunately, he never really learned how to and he led a very sad life as a result. I’m not saying you’re in that category necessarily, but what I’m saying is you were in a situation where you felt like your life was a bit out of your control. You had parents who had expectations and you had a community with expectations. You were set on the path in life. Chess ended up being this other outlets where you were in control. That’s where you could be free. That’s where you could have fun. That’s where you could pursue it to your heart’s content. That’s where you could certainly-
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Make commitment.
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| Mark Gleason: | You could lose a tournament and your parents wouldn’t care and your community wouldn’t care but if you flunked out of school or got terrible grade in a series of tests, everybody would care quite a bit probably.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | If I would be talking to girls, growing up I was in a very strict … Spending time with girls, that was considered bad but losing chess game didn’t matter. Winning, losing was all … It was just freedom. There’s a certain freedom going on.
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| Mark Gleason: | So you’re growing up and who your friends are, where you go to school, your ability to talk to girls, it was very strict upbringing that you had in many ways, right? You’re always being told what you could and couldn’t do and what you should or should not feel good about or guilty about in regards to what you wanted to do or did. But chess was this other thing that was all yours and you can pore yourself into it and everything there was your own. That’s why you say that you were there for the joy of it and winning was almost a bonus. That’s probably why, right? It was this way you could exercise yourself.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Yeah. That’s why even losing a chess game was just winning. I was just always winning.
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| Mark Gleason: | Like anybody who’s accomplished anything great, they say to be accomplished at anything, to be good at anything, to be considered an “expert” takes 10,000 hours for anybody to be considered an expert at any activity. It’s just a rule of thumb. Now, obviously, to be considered one of the best experts takes considerably longer so people dedicate their lives to certain things. Some people try to be body builders. Every single moment of their life is around how around how do I build additional muscle and be more lean. Some people have a great golf swing. Some people do various things.
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| The greats usually focus on that to exclusion of almost everything else. Whether it’s music or whether it’s tennis or whether it’s golf or whether it’s chess or whether it’s anything. Usually, there is a focus there, a focus on one activity, and of course that costs you other places in your life. The great musicians, there’s a reason they’re great because on Christmases, on birthdays and New Year’s, they were focused on music.
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| Steve Jobs who accomplished amazing things in his professional life is quite famous for not really spending a lot of time with his family. Very little investment there. So, there’s always a tradeoff so you achieved the heights of chess. You’ve accomplished some very, very great things. You’re a legend in certain circles and on YouTube and speed chess and whatnot but it had to come at a cost.
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| In other words, all the time you spent poring over chess and playing chess and living chess and breathing chess over the years, what is it that you felt that … We’re talking about harmony. We’re talking about the dacha and harmony. That sounds very, very light square and not enough dark square, right? Because you’re in all chess but you had these other parts of your life.
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| Josh Waitzkin for instance, the chess champion. He also does taichi pushing hands. That’s another thing he’s accomplished then where he does chess and just that to try to give himself some kind of other activity which is physical to try to balance things out. How did you cope with that? I mean here you are poring yourself into this activity. How do you cope with that lack of balance or lack of harmony?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t. That’s why at some point it became very, very bad. At some point, I just collapsed. That’s what happened because I was all about harmony and I got to some deep sense of some harmony, appreciating the beauty, and then I started realizing it was a small thing that [affected 01:07:50]. Some relationship didn’t go well. It wasn’t even with a girl. It was just with a friend, guy friend. It was just a simple guy friend. It didn’t go well and I’m like, “Wait a second. Wait.”
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| In chess I didn’t mind losing or winning. I wasn’t afraid to build relationships, friendships. I avoided it. I didn’t like that I was [bound 01:08:13] who I could be friends with, who I cannot. No girls in my life. It just felt very, very locked so I wouldn’t even deal with that part. I was like, “All right. Never mind. No thank you. I’ll do what I have to do in studies, religious and stuff. Some I liked. Some I didn’t even know. Some I didn’t like I didn’t even know I didn’t like, but I did what I have to do and avoided what I didn’t have to do and I delved in chess which I just loved which was me. I probably loved other things even more but this was the things that I was allowed to do. This was what I loved the most by far.
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| Mark Gleason: | Okay. There are some people who pore themselves into relationships their entire lives and become “experts” at relationships. People, relationships, friendships, putting a huge amount of time and investments, psychic energy in the friendships and they’ve accumulated these over time, but they’re very, very bad or they haven’t spent nearly enough time focused on deep intellectual tasks. So, when they have some test they need to study for or certification they needed to get, finishing their degree whatever it is, when it comes to focusing on intellectual tasks and delivering, they’re the opposite on balance basically.
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| For those people and for you if you’re going to say we’re on opposite sides of the spectrum, for you being as fearless in your personal life making friendships, making relationships, being present and having a commitment to that without the expectations, finding the same level of harmony there, being a good friend, being committed to being a good friend, being committed to just having good relationships whether or not … without expectations of whether this turns into a best friendship or simply an acquaintance, you don’t really know, but you can know that you can be the kind of person people should like to be friends with and that’s a commitment you could make.
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| There’s definitely a balance here. How do you find balance? I mean here you are. You’re extraordinarily accomplished in this area, but to say the truth, balance is something everybody struggles with even people who feel like they sometimes are at relatively good balance, spending time at the gym, dealing with their friends, dealing with their family, advancing in their career. Everybody all week long has these tradeoffs and decisions to make and they’re always feeling guilty that they’ve left something behind. How is it that your approaching this other part of your life that you did not develop in lieu of chess but now you’re looking back on and saying, “Okay. What do I need to do over here?”
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | I’m just trying different things. I tried to use that idea of commitment. You have been instrumental to helping me at least begin certain processes of trying to look at least one step at a time commitment, just trying to make one commitment. It’s not going to be immediate but just take one step in the right direction. I have like really a lot of super amateur experiences. I begin a novice in dating and all this stuff, but every time I feel like when I … The horrible date, the most 10 terrible mistakes with a date is better than beating the world champion because beating the world champion is like by necessity, it’s not harmony.
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| I can pretend it’s harmony, it’s light and dark, and it is but in my life then there’s bigger harmony of chess and maybe 10 other things or 40. I don’t know a lot of other things. Certainly building relationships, having a sense that maybe what I want is important like a new concept like having what I want actually means something not just on the chess the board, not just following your gut on the chess. Maybe following your gut, just following your gut in life.
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| I think it’s a lot more valuable than chess. I mean chess is absolutely beautiful. I will say I think it’s bigger than a game. It’s not a game. It’s something super special but at the end of the day, I believe it doesn’t quite compare to life in a sense. It’s still not quite life. I’m just trying to find that balance. Big time mistakes is a win because my commitment is just to try. My commitment is to fail, is to just talk to a girl and just do everything wrong. It doesn’t matter like, “Ah, you won. You did everything. You did everything right. It doesn’t matter. You won.”
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| Well, I have experiences lately where I’m in a chess tournament so I’ll be doing very well. I’ll start feeling, “Wait. Why am I being antisocial, not around people?” And while I enjoy to some extent the relaxation of chess, it doesn’t feel right. It feels like while I’m creating harmony, I’m actually … by sitting there, it’s actually not harmony.
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| Mark Gleason: | You are all about creating harmony on the chess board but then you realize that by being at the chess board itself, it’s the lack of harmony in your own life. It’s the equivalent of sitting in a room saying, “Hey, the room is not on fire. I’m fine,” and then realizing part-way through that the house is on fire.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Right. That’s really good.
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| Mark Gleason: | Even though your room is not, your room is actually quite cozy at the moment, but the house is on fire and maybe you should do something about that. That’s not part of that harmony and that meta-harmony and that again is a perspective change, I want to point out. It’s a perspective change of tactical chess to harmony chess to the meta-game of the harmony of my life and how it’s all integrating together in a meaningful way.
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| Now, your brain is hard wired to repeat the patterns of the past. Your brain is not hard wired to make you happy. If you’re going to have a happy life and a powerful life that you love every single minute of, that’s work. You need to think about that. You need to work towards that in a commitment type way. You need to be committed towards that goal. So, I think it’s great. I think it’s great to be in a chess board and to question, “Well, wait a minute. Is this where I need to be right now?”
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| Now, that’s not great to [set off 01:14:11] your chess career, but in the long run, it’s much better for your chess career because you don’t want to be a Bobby Fischer who’s dedicated to chess and is a miserable person. What’s the point of that? What you want to be is one of these athletes who plays even better once they find the harmony. They have kind of a tumultuous early career because maybe they’re an athlete and they’re single and they’re partying and they have this girl friend or whatever but once they find those ability and the wife and the kids or at least some balance in their personal life, that only makes their professional life explode.
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| Imagine everything you’ve done, you’ve done with a lack of harmony over all in your life. Imagine what you could do with full harmony and the decision to devote yourself to chess anyway because it’s making you feel powerful again not because it’s a place to hide. It is a place to express yourself and express personal power. Boy, I’m a little afraid for Nakamura actually.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Well, actually that actually [inaudible 01:15:15] my mind because I’m going to tell you something important. I’m dating a very nice girl for a few months. First time that she came over was beautiful experience. I felt like I just [inaudible 01:15:27] person, very, very early on in our relationship, like super early on. In the morning, she [leaves 01:15:35]. I wake up. Okay, I’m on the computer. I log on, Hikaru has challenged you, Nakamura. Now, Nakamura is number two in the world in blitz chess. I play him two games. I beat him in both. I beat him in both.
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| It’s the first time in my life that I beat him. I spoke to someone on chess.com. He said it might have never happened that Nakamura lost [Owen 01:16:01], too, including against Carlsen. He played a match against the world champion. Carlsen won the match but there was never … I don’t know. Was there any two games in a row where Naka lost? He wasn’t sure and certainly no one ever played a two-game match against Naka and beat him in both. Naka just logged off. He just logged off. Her left. I beat him both games.
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| I felt different there. I just felt I was in a happy mood but I’ve been happy before. It was a different type of happiness where I felt a little bit of layers of harmony where I’m like, “Hey, you know what? Chess is not just a way to hide anymore.” Now, it’s like maybe I’m gaining harmony yet I still like chess. Then it’s coming from a different angle.
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| Mark Gleason: | And that’s personal power. That’s self-empowerment.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | That’s interesting.
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| Mark Gleason: | Living a powerful life is that all day long. It is what you’re doing is exactly where you need to be and want to be to harmonize yourself and to become even more powerful. It’s like everything in the world is right about you being right now they’re playing chess is where you’re going to play your most powerfully, and whereas everything in the world that’s kind of wrong where you’re playing and you’re winning but you’re thinking I should be out talking to girls so I can increase that part of myself. I have to be more social. Am I just using this as a crutch to hide [inaudible 01:17:19]?
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| I mean as soon as you start going down that road, look, it’s valuable analysis. I’m not saying you should abandon the analysis but to do that in the middle of a chess tournament is self-defeating. Either do the tournament or not do it. The point is to live a powerful life and being powerful is knowing your commitments, being clear about your commitments.
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| You have coached me on my chess to great effect, I highly recommend you as a coach, and I’ve coached you a bit on some of the concepts we talked about in the APEX Level to Power. One of those concepts is this idea of knowing your commitments, being very clear about your commitments versus expectations. It’s only by knowing clearly what you’re committed to that when you come to a fork in the road and you have choice A or choice B, you can easily decide because you know your commitment so clearly. It is when you don’t know your commitments that you’re wondering what to do and sometimes you choose wrong.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Yeah. I want to tell the listeners that [inaudible 01:18:18] Mark, some of the relatively limited talks about life, maybe we’ve had a total of 68 intense conversations about life, but it’s helped me a huge amount on chess and otherwise to like definitely maybe let’s say 20 hours of talk or 15. I would say it’s fair to say it’s the most important 15 hours or my life. It’s fair to say. I just want to put that out to the community.
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| Mark Gleason: | Wow. Wow. Would that be above or below beating Garry Kasparov?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | No. It’s below. It’s below. It’s below. I’ve beaten Kasparov. I’ve beaten Kasparov.
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| Mark Gleason: | I know.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | It’s below. I can brag about beating Kasparov. I can’t brag about … I can’t brag. It’s not something I can mention. I mentioned Uber Cars to start a conversation and it gets awkward. It always gets awkward. I tell them, “All right. Have you played chess?” It’s like, “Oh, Kasparov” or whatever stars, but it’s up there. It’s above. Yeah. More [inaudible 01:19:18] life.
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| Mark Gleason: | Well, so we’ve spoken off and on. I must say that the nice the thing was that you attacked these ideas as courageously as you attack your chess where you put yourself out there, you’re looking for your harmony, you’re struggling with issues of family and community and obligation and fears and insecurities of meeting with people. It’s things that everybody struggles with.
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| Every single human on earth struggles with these exact same questions which are what are the expectations upon me? Who will I be disappointing if I do the following things? I want to be happy but do I have some sense of duty that I should be doing something else which is actually suboptimal to my happiness and how do I reconcile those two things? These are things that people struggle with every single day, all of our listeners, and I hear from our listeners who email me.
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| One of our last episodes was on the power dynamics of abusive relationships, and I received many heartfelt emails after that, of people who got a lot of that episode who feel like they’re in a poisonous relationship and don’t quite know where to go. So, their struggle in every single day with, “Should I be here? I have children with this person. Some days they’re good to me, other days they’re not. Do I stay? Do I leave? What does it mean if I leave?” I mean these are different situations that you’re in. I’m just saying the expectations that others have upon them that they stay versus their happiness if they leave versus the expectations of their children, of the community and everything else.
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| I mean people profoundly struggle with this and how they deal with these questions will dictate whether they’re living happy, powerful lives or whether they’re living disempowered, unhappy lives where they feel like they’re being carried along by events over which they have no control. A sense of efficacy is critical to self-esteem and a profound sense of power and happiness. Efficacy is your ability to control your world.
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| If you feel like you are a great chess player but you have no control over your world, and you’re just kind of being carried along by the whims of other people, that is a very disempowered place to be. You could be the god of the chess board in that case but be actually very unhappy in life which honestly is how many, many grandmasters are. Many high level chess players are that way.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Definitely that is very straightforward that was me, and now I’m in a way … Now, I’m happier but much more anxious because I’m involved in some really, really intense struggles so it’s upheaval. It’s like an internal upheaval but that’s a good direction. I know deep down I’m happy even about the upheavals. That makes me happy because I think there’s no something good is happening. I’m trying to achieve that harmony and then trying to achieve that kind of balance.
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| Mark Gleason: | Well, look, all of life but in particular human life and human achievement is stress and adaptation. Stress, survival, adaption. You’re under stress and this is going to the gym and putting your muscles under stress to build them. This is putting yourself in an uncomfortable position that you’re not really used to in chess, to struggle with it and really try to work your way out of it. Stress, survival and then adaptation.
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| That’s what this is about. In this case, when it comes to being committed to creating more of a social sphere in your life because you decided that’s an important thing for you to have, and I agree with you it’s very important to have, that’s going to come with stress. Everything does. Everything good does, right? You can’t get muscles without going to the gym. You can’t get better at chess without the struggle.
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| I can show you how to play some good games, but unless you struggle yourself with your mind on why those moves are good, obviously you’re never going to learn how to play very good chess. Same thing here. That’s why you have to be courageous. You have to have commitment and you had to be courageous. This is where your level of commitment is all here. If you say, “Well, Mark, I committed to having a happy life but I don’t know how to tell my friends that I’m breaking up with my girlfriend because we’ve been together for 20 years.” I’m just concocting a scenario.
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| There’s expectations of other people. Your commitment level is the only thing making that unclear. You’re not committed to having a happy life. If you’re in an unhappy marriage for instance, people say, “I’m on an unhappy marriage. I don’t know what I should do.” Well, you know what you should do. You just don’t have the commitment level to do it, right? You should either change around your marriage so it becomes happy and powerful or you should move on with your life and find another relationship. That’s what you should do.
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| If I made it easy for you, if I said, “To tell you what, I’ll give you $100 million, and all you need to do is to make your life happy by either leaving or turning around your relationship,” you’d do it. Most people would do it. They would say, “What? $100 million? My god. Yeah, I’ll do that.”
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Sure.
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| Mark Gleason: | They’ll move heaven and earth to either turn around their relationship and make a decision or move out and go off on their own because they have $100 million windfall coming their way if they do. Well, that’s just a commitment level. That’s all. I’ve given them the incentive to increase their commitment level high enough. So, if I said to you “I want you to go out and talk to 30 girls in a bar and ask every single one of them on a date and you have 30 minutes to ask 30 girls out,” and I just told you “Let’s go do that,” you might be like, “Ah, I’m not sure I want to do that.” Who likes getting rejected? I don’t like going up to girls in bars and having girls saying no to me, right?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | I’m very scared.
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| Mark Gleason: | It’s a painful thing. It’s painful for anybody, right? Now, promise me a million dollars.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | [inaudible 01:25:09] |
| Mark Gleason: | It’s $10,000, right? “Hey, go do this. Here’s this money. I’ll give it to you at the end.” “No problem.” All of a sudden, my commitment level has changed where I’m now fully behind this idea and it is no longer scary because there’s a win there for me, but I see that clearly out of the way. It’s the other thing. Now, I’m not going to promise you a million dollars. I’m going to promise you a more powerful life, a happier more powerful life, a happy, more powerful way of being. Isn’t that valuable, too?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | More valuable than [a million 01:25:39] I think it’s more [inaudible 01:25:41]
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| Mark Gleason: | Yeah. Over time, it certainly is, right? I mean money can’t buy happiness but it sure can rent it for a while as they say.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | I can rent it for a while. That makes sense. Maybe chess was like that, too. It’s fair to say that chess was renting the happiness until it kind of end.
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| Mark Gleason: | Absolutely. That’s right. If you like real self-esteem then you attempt to gain other ways in the short run. Maybe for instance, say a pretty girl who doesn’t feel good about herself because her whole life is out of control. Her relationships are terrible. She can’t find somebody she wants. She’ll get dressed, look nice and go out to a bar where she gets some attention. She has no intention. She has a boyfriend. She has no intention of doing anything other than getting that attention, but it fills the whole of her self-esteem temporarily.
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| The problem with that is it doesn’t solve anything, right? The next day, she feels exactly the same way and the next day, she feels exactly the same way. Some people needs a sense of power to substitute a lack of self-esteem. It’s like the bully. Bullies who are very abusive, they lack self-esteem and they attempt to put power over others to temporarily fill that hole in their lives. We all have these mechanisms.
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| For me, growing up, I think it was books and movies. If something wasn’t going on right in my life, I would retreat to my intellectual endeavors. I’d read lots of books. I’d go see movies and it was a nice way for me to retreat from whatever the harsh realities were that I didn’t want to deal with at that particular moment. Of course, they don’t go away, right? They don’t go away if you don’t solve them so eventually you have to come back and solve them, but yes it’s very, very typical that that’s what we all do.
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| Everything that you’re struggling with, everybody struggles with. The reason that I think listening to you is so helpful for people is because you’re a man of extremes. We learned more about ourselves from people of extremes because it’s very easy to see. It’s hard to see in ourselves and it’s hard to see in people who have this balance, a closer balance in their life. It’s still off balance but because it’s closer in balance, it’s harder to find exactly where they’re going wrong.
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| When you have somebody as a person of extremes, it’s easier to see everywhere they went right and say I want to that and it’s easier to see where they [inaudible 01:28:02] spent more time and say, “Okay. Well, now I see what the true cost of doing that is. For instance, there’s many people who would look at you and say, “I wish I can play chess like that.” Many, many people would look at you and say, “I wish I can play chess like that.”
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| Now, wish is a funny word. A Ferrari goes by, people go, “I wish I have that car.” Wish, if you substitute that word for “I am unwilling to do what is necessary to achieve that,” that’s really what they’re saying. By saying, “I wish I played chess like Norowitz,” I’m really saying I am unwilling to do what’s necessary to play chess like Norowitz because if I was willing to do what was necessary, I’d be doing it. By sitting there and going, “Oh I wish. I wish I could play chess like that,” it means I have no intention of doing what’s necessary to achieve that.
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| When people say, “I wish I had love of my life. Look at them. I wish I had love of my life. Poor me,” all you’re saying is you’re not willing to do what’s necessary to achieve love. There’s a difference between a Ferrari going down the street and one person saying, “Oh, I wish I have that” knowing they’re never going to do anything about it and somebody else going, “Nice Ferrari. How did he get that? Oh, he has money. How does one get money? What is the nature of money? What’s the nature of giving value to other people so they give you that money? How can I give value in ways that people will want to give me money?”
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| That’s following the string of logic for how you too one day can have this Ferrari. There’s an envy and admiration, right? Admiration is like I want to have that myself one day.” Envy is like “That bastard, he has that. I’m never going to have that kind of thing.” Right?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Right.
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| Mark Gleason: | Many, many people look at you and say, “Man, look at everything he’s done in chess. I wish I could play chess like that.” What you’re here to say is “Hey, you can but there is a cost,” right? There is a personal cost to spending your entire life wrapped up in chess, and that maybe just maybe that there’s a better way to even play great chess and that is to have harmony in your personal life along with the great study of chess.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | I think so. I think a lot of the kids that don’t spend as much time as I did in chess but they could still become great if they have a good mentality and a lot of it is mentality. That’s why I feel like through my struggles and trying to achieve the harmony in other parts of my life, I’m able to coach better these days. I’ll just give an example. I was teaching this girl for a while, one of the top girls in Canada, and early on, I saw that she [couldn’t 01:30:42] feel for the board, for the game but she was playing scared.
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| The second lesson, I told her “Your goal is to play …” She was about to play in tournament in Philadelphia. The world open. I told her, “Your goal, your homework is to play the most aggressive move unless it loses by force. At every juncture, play the most aggressive move unless it loses by force” which is actually not real chess advice. This is not legitimate. In Russia, I’d get my head cut off. I just get cut off. This is like bad. My coach Roman, if you heard me say this, he will get mad almost. It would be weird. Like, “What are you telling? What?”
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| But I felt this was important to go to an extreme to find that balance. I just felt like [defying 01:31:26] that harmony because there, it was no harmony. It was treated like a study. It was very sheltered kids and it was just very … I could tell them everything was very, very serious studies and they’re treating chess like that. That’s how they got good. It’s great, but you know what? I want to really get their heart into it a little bit, too, and to really take a chance, take a risk. I told her that. She came back from the tournament and she had her best tournament she ever played.
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| She showed me the games, and this is maybe the only time I ever cried. Literally, a tear came down because she played a different person. It was a different person. It was a different person. She was playing aggressively. It was so, so cool. You change someone’s life a little bit not just chess maybe. Maybe I could open her up just a little bit.
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| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. You say that she was too heavy in the dark squares and you added a pinch of light squares to her perspective. Yeah. I mean, now of course, if I was going to a tournament, I naturally play the most aggressive move. Sometimes that loses by force anyway. That’s my problem, right? I imagine your advice for me.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Will be the opposite. [inaudible 01:32:35] both extremes and everyone is always shocked whenever I have an extreme. The kids take it like “All right. That’s my homework.” Adults are kind of like, “Wait. Wait, wait. What’s going on?” [inaudible 01:32:43]
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| Mark Gleason: | I love playing the most aggressive move ever possible. For you telling me … It’s funny because it makes me feel a little comfortable just to think about that. It’s funny because I don’t have a lot invested in chess. I love chess. I love playing chess. I love winning in chess but going into let’s say a series of games and you telling me, you have to play the most conservative move that doesn’t lose by force, right? That would be honestly a very big challenge for me. I mean every single move to honestly look at the move that I am least naturally attracted to, right? The move I just reject offhand. I didn’t even look at it because it is literally the most boring move possible.
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| The better way to express it is if you said because I like opening up the board. I like playing on crazy open boards usually, right? So quiet long-term tactical games. I play them if I have to but it the person closes the position, but that’s not what I’m looking to create. If you told me, “Mark, I want every single game, want you to lock up and play slow positional chess every single game,” I would do it. I would just present you the entire time.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | How is that? I had to say I just-
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| Mark Gleason: | No. I would do it. I’m just saying it will be a struggle for me because it’s not where my mind wants to be. Now, obviously though it would be great for me to do that. To push my boundaries to stretch my mind deeper into quiet, long positional chess. I like positional chess by the way, but I mean quiet boring chess where everybody has to think 45 minutes for every possible move, I’m just like, “Come on.” There’s like you’re going to move your knight. We both know you’re going moving your knight. That’s obviously the move to make, why are you spending 30 minutes looking at something else. It drives me crazy.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Yeah. That’s why I love blitz because it’s more in the moment. I feel like I was able to express … The reason why I got into chess, I love chess so much is because it was just being in the moment not worrying about what the result is. So, it’s cool to play blitz and you’re just enjoying the process. When in such a long game, it’s not by necessity, it’s kind of structuring in a way that the result does matter in a way.
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| Let’s say you make a mistake then I got to [stay 01:34:51] for three hours to deal with it and try to survive five [inaudible 01:34:54]. Next game. I don’t know. I just [inaudible 01:34:57] play. It’s not as conducive for that momentum and that expression, self-expression like an artist. It’s almost like some kind of art. Starting out, it was great because I needed the time. Once you don’t need the time then the time becomes a hindrance to that self-expression. That’s what I [inaudible 01:35:14].
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| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. The funny thing is I like playing fast chess, and people might say it’s because I’m intellectually lazy on my chess game but that’s what blitz does for me is it makes me … You know. But I love playing aggressive chess. I love playing fast chess, and I don’t mind. I don’t mind longer and slower games honestly but I do love the blitz.
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| My father and brother, I played chess with and father likes playing very slow chess and when he realize he’s annoying me, he plays even slower. He’ll drum his fingers on the table and like, “I’m sorry.” “Brroom” “Is that bothering you?” “Brroom.” But he takes even longer to play, right? I’m just like, “Come on. Just move. I’m going to lose the game. Just a piece already.”
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Put me out of my misery.
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| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. My brother is a little more of a chaotic style where he likes to play, he likes to sack pieces early and play more of a swashbuckling way but he’s really dedicated. It’s the only way he can keep himself interested is by sacking a piece for a pawn early. No way theoretically correct, but then he just struggles like crazy to play the best possible move after that and it’s infuriating when he comes back and wins. I mean infuriating for me but obviously great for him.
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| I actually get my brother and father to play me in a simultaneous match. The funny thing is, I get them on by doing this. We have chess clocks and they have plenty of time. My dad would never agree to a game unless they had plenty of time. But because I’m playing a simultaneous match against both of them, by the way a simultaneous match when I’m playing both of them at the same time. There’s a pressure on them. It’s a speed pressure which they’re both not used to which is really my wheelhouse. That’s where I shine.
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| So, my dad moves and I move and his clock is running while I’m looking at my brother’s board. Even though he has all the time in the world, there’s something psychological about his time is running while I’m looking at the other board that he’d rather make a move so my time is wearing down while I’m looking at the other board. Because of this time pressure on both of them, it’s kind of psyched them out. It’s psyched them out that their time would run while I’m looking at the other board. So they end up speeding up there play beyond what both of them would normally do.
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| So, I’m sort of psyching them out where I’d be looking at my brother’s board but I’m really studying my dad’s at the corner of my eye and then he’d move and I would just move without even looking at the board because I actually have been studying it, and that just psychs him out even more because now he spent time and I have no time on my clock. I mean I’ve used one of my own time.
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| Anyway, my point is this is gamesmanship. This is seeing the meta-game and this is figuring out a way to move them into my strong suit which is the speed chess, right? I ended up beating them both in the simultaneous game. I’m not sure if they played me since. I think they both probably thought they could probably win if we did the whole thing again and they didn’t get psyched out, but they’re happier to call it a fluke and not risk me actually winning another simultaneous match I guess.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | That was funny.
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| Mark Gleason: | So, you take on students. Just tell us a little bit more about what it is you do. You coach chess online for anybody of our listeners who will be interested in improving their chess and again, looking … I need to go back where I started with. Examining Bobby Fischer games are beautiful. They’re wonderful. They’re amazing chess, but I don’t learn anything from them, whereas looking at Capablanca who has this thematic play, I learned so much from studying those games. You have this kind of very odd mix where I would look at your game and I say, “How did he come up with that move?” But when I talked to you and you explained it, I go, “That’s how he came up with that move.” Because you have a thematic way of making this kind of hidden moves in the position that are actually quite strong.
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| That’s where I think your value is. There’s plenty of chess coaches online but I really feel like you have a very unique offering. If somebody’s hit a road block or a ceiling in their chess play, which we all do at some point, and they kind of just need another perspective, another … take some of the games that they lost and have somebody take a look at them or to prepare some games for an upcoming tournament or something, I would highly recommend you as a resource for that. What’s the best way to get a hole of you for chess coaching?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | I have a YouTube channel. The YouTube is Yaacov Norowitz.
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| Mark Gleason: | Okay. You have a YouTube channel, Yaacov Norowitz which we’ll put a link to in the show notes. So, everybody listening to the podcast can go to our show notes. We’ll have a link to that. You’re on chess.com as well, right?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Yeah.
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| Mark Gleason: | So, chess.com also we can find you online. Now, if we do a search for some YouTube videos, I know if we just look up Nakamura, Norowitz speed or something like that, we’ll probably get a bunch of videos of you playing, right?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Absolutely. Yeah. There’s some nice videos of me playing in the park back in the day in Washington Square Park some blitz. That’s fine I think the listeners will enjoy.
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| Mark Gleason: | That’s right.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | I have some funny videos. [inaudible 01:40:18] to be funny. In the middle of the game, there’s some person selling weed. Who knows? It’s something weird. It’s a high level game, whatever. It’s just this chaos. That’s a very fast blitz chess. Very fast. Yeah.
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| Mark Gleason: | There’s some great videos of you online. There’s some great YouTube videos. I mean there’s great videos of you playing in person that people can watch. There are some great online games that are annotated and not annotated of you online. There’s also some lessons that you have published online as well, right? Some commentary. I’ve read an article the other day that you had published with some commentary on a game. Now, is there anything … What’s in the future for you? I think you had mentioned perhaps thinking about writing a book with some of these ideas.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | I do have plan to be writing a book. I just began baby steps in the book and my YouTube channel, the plan is to grow it and to post about maybe two videos a week. It’s going to be centered around these ideas, colors, harmony and it will be fun. It’s mostly me playing most live. I make it while I’m playing and just talk about the ideas while I’m playing blitz against Nakamura. Again, number two in the world and a lot of other grandmasters.
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| I think my last video was playing some Hungarian grandmaster and there was some trash talk in the chats. It was during the video. It was interesting. He created a certain drama, almost like a movie. It wasn’t planned like that but I beat him two games and he wasn’t so happy so …
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| Mark Gleason: | That’s the funny things is that you are so adept at the speed chess that you will talk, you will annotate it, you will make jokes, you will distract yourself. You only got three minutes in your clock and you’re spending half of your time talking, joking around talking about the position and then taking one second to move, right? That is a skill that you have. That’s how good you are to this stuff is your ability to quick assess situation. Again, like that FBI agent who can peek around the corner and know exactly what’s going on, you’ve developed this kind of snapshot ability to a very, very high level which is what makes you so good.
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| Again it’s part of this thematic. Again, what’s amazing is not that you can do it. I mean that is amazing, too, but what’s amazing is that I can see a grandmaster, international master level move and be astonished by I have no idea where you got it from, then listen to your analysis and feel like “Wow. Looking at that way, I might have been able to find that move myself.” That is that accessibility factor that in my opinion, many of the high level coaches don’t have, right?
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| It’s great that you showed me the game that you played in the world championship where you did the following. I did learn something from that. It’s not that I didn’t learn something, I do. It’s different though when you could explain to me a whole methodology, a whole way of viewing the world, whole way of viewing the chess match which shows me the right move in this game and then in my next game, I can look at and maybe it helps me find the right move there as well. That’s I think what you offer which is a little bit different than other offerings out there.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Yeah. I’m trying to make deep ideas into straightforward and to simplifying to its core. That’s my goal. Just to mention, when I first discovered the ideas, I wasn’t even sure if they were correct. It makes sense but how do I even know this is even true? It worked for me so that means over time, it means a little bit but still how correct … Maybe it’s not 100% correct. I looked into other games.
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| I looked into Kasparov games so it’s interesting when we talked about Kasparov games. Now, he may not be the one to learn from necessarily especially for players not very super experienced. However, I do try to give the tools from my ideas to understand, the colors and the harmony. In the Kasparov games, I noticed that he’s actually using the same ideas. Now, I don’t think he used it consciously, but I believe subconsciously he’s still-
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| Mark Gleason: | Right. He’s arriving there by other means.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | He’s getting there by other means and it’s definitely a little more complicated style but I believe that the colors and the harmony can explain his game. It nice where you could, “Hah” then every game is now suddenly Kasparov becomes your coach as well.
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| Mark Gleason: | Right.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Because you’re like, “Hah, all right. Let’s give certain a formula.” I wouldn’t say it’s exact formula. I don’t think it’s that straightforward but it’s giving a-
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| Mark Gleason: | It’s a way of looking at the world, right?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Looking at the world, yeah. Now, when you see a Kasparov game, you could spend an hour and look at it through this and suddenly, Kasparov becomes a whole full-bodied coach instead of a coach maybe teaching you a little move or two and some tactics and excitement. Now, he’s really explaining a philosophy. Frankly, Kasparov maybe explaining it better than I can once you learn from me. That’s fair to say. It is fair, right?
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| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. That’s right.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | I’m trying to make him the better coach.
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| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. Profound ideas are like that, right? When you stumble across something which is just kind of this universal truth, it tends to make everything else make much more sense and easier to understand. That’s why perspective is important because human ability to focus is really, really … It’s innate. We were able to do it.
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| I don’t want to ruin this for anybody but there is a YouTube video out there you find where there’s people playing basketball and passing the ball back and forth and you’re supposed to count the number of balls that are being bounced back and forth. At the end of this video, they say how many balls and usually you get it right, and they say, “Watch the video again. And this time, see if anything unusual happens.”
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| You watch the video again and there’s a man in a gorilla suit walking around the people throwing the basketball, like in and out like a figure eight. It’s around the people throwing basketball that you didn’t notice when you were counting the basketball. That’s how focused you were. There’s a guy in a gorilla suit walking around and at no point where you’re like, “Hey, that’s a guy in a gorilla suit, right?” That just shows how the human mind is when it’s focused on one perspective and it’s not thinking about something else.
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| That’s the value here. It’s like you have a golf game and you’ve always been focused on hitting the ball, and when you’re watching Tiger Woods on TV, you’re also watching how he hits the ball, right? Then I speak to you and you say, “Look where his shoulders are pointing. That’s where the ball is going to go. Don’t look at the ball. Look at his shoulders. See how he pulled the shoulders back. That’s why it hooked left. See how he pushed it forward. That’s why it hooked right.”
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| All of a sudden, not only does my … That’s simple universal truth, right? Now, all of a sudden does my game get better by being conscious of where my shoulders are pointed. Watching people who are doing things now, I get more out of it. I see why they’re doing it so well and I see why I’m doing it so poorly or whatnot, right? Because there’s a universal truth there.
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| That’s kind of how I feel is that by shifting the focus in your way, you’re saying take your eye off the ball for a second. We’re also focused on the tactic. In this case, in chess, the tactics is, am I [inaudible 01:47:34] a piece. “If I trade this, will he take back? Will I take back and he takes back, and dah, dah, dah?” That’s the ball. The tactic is the immediate, the perceptual. I’m in the moment. I’m right here. I’m middle of the forest but all I see is the tree in front of me.
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| Your methodology gives you a way of stepping back into position a bit and looking at this completely different way and saying, “Where are your shoulders pointed? Where are your feet pointed, right?” What’s the back [swing 01:48:01] look like? I mean all of a sudden, you’re looking at where’s the dark? Where’s the light? Do I have too much dark? Is dark squares even relevant? I have more dark but is that even relevant? I mean how is dark currency going to spend later in the game? Can I create a situation where dark currency will spend good later in the game?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | If you can’t, then sometimes what you’ll do is you’ll give back the bishop for the knight and so you’re like, “Hah.”
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| Mark Gleason: | That’s right.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | “My dark bishop [inaudible 01:48:23] let me reinvest back in the trade” so it’s very interesting.
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| Mark Gleason: | It’s the dynamic but those are the decisions that everybody struggles with in chess. I just did this. Do I trade again? Do I trade my rook for the knight? Do I trade my bishop for the pawn? Do I trade my bishop for the [inaudible 01:48:37]. All those trades unique to the position is what determines whether those trades are correct or not and you give another lens to judge what the correct trade is. The unique thing is they don’t know you’re judging it that way, right? So, if you’re doing this and other people are not doing it, it’s a differential advantage. Not only does this improve your chess.
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| If you’re looking at it this way and they’re not, you’re going to make some crazy looking moves, right? We’re doomed. You make this move. People go, “What the heck is that?” Right? That’s what a grandmaster move looks like. It looks like this crazy move out of nowhere that you know has a point but you don’t know what it is. Now, if you’re my level, you have the advantage of making a crazy looking move where everybody thinks you’re stupid. They think you’re made a blunder, right?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Sure.
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| Mark Gleason: | As a matter of fact, if you’re over board, it’s usually good to be like, “Hah” and look really concerned about this trade you just made for this rook for this knight but … Yeah.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | It’s also I believe it’s overall vibe of what you focus in colors and harmony, and when an opponent plays, I feel like sometimes when an opponent plays against this style, it’s very disconcerting because he starts feeling like he’s not really playing an opponent. He’s not really playing against him. Like, “Wait, does this guy even know I’m here?” And I’m not, I’m playing against myself in a way or against the mood and it becomes kind of disconcerting I have noticed the harder I try, the more aware I am of an opponent sometimes or often the more they fight back because then they feel like more engaged.
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| When you’re just there and like, “Hey, I’m chilling I’m having my coffee at the board.” I’ll sit back [against you 01:50:25] at least two feet. I’m chilling. I’m just happy to be here. Thank God. I’m just happy to be playing chess, to be here and then everything else is a bonus”, and then I’m trying to create some kind of interesting … A pawn here may have some value [long-term 01:50:40] maybe and you just experiment. An experiment is maybe what creates the suspense.
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| Maybe the fact that I don’t know makes it more interesting because going to the dacha theory, this is supposed to be good. “Let’s see if it works. This is exciting.” Then I’m excited because I don’t know. Then when you’re playing someone that has that mentality, it’s very disconcerting because no fear, more than no fear he maybe even appreciates the suspense, the uncertainty then it becomes very bad very hard to play.
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| Mark Gleason: | Yeah. Many people played better by playing the man or the woman, playing the person across the board and getting inside their head and having a rationale. That’s why playing computers you can feel when you’re online whether you’re playing computer versus a human. There’s a lack of engagement that comes from computer just making the best move irrespective of your plan because in chess, chess is about me making my plan or responding to your plan.
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| Humans have a certain way of sharing and shadowing each other to their detriment. I mean sometimes [inaudible 01:51:45] martial arts, right? Sometimes you end up being lulled into a sense of timing which actually you’re going to lose, right? You shouldn’t be doing that but it’s just so natural that you’re reading him and he’s reading you and you’re falling into a timing and you’re trading punches and trading ducks and doing this and doing that when what you should be doing is another way of combat which is called systema, which is Russian, where it’s totally off time. His punch is not even that fast but you get hit by them and you almost even … It don’t even register in your brain because-
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Little moves, yeah. Little moves.
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| Mark Gleason: | There’s no timing. It just happens and so disconcerting because you don’t even it see coming. I mean you see it coming but it didn’t register somehow, and so playing a human that can somehow not even play your plan. They’re taking a part of your plan without really engaging with your plan like a normal human would. It is disconcerting. It’s disconcerting when somebody is just making the best moves and playing their own game in their head [inaudible 01:52:40] You’re not a factor. Again, this goes back to the man, the sailboat against the sea. Yeah, you’re trying to beat the sea in a way. The sea is a force of nature. It’s not a person, right?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Exactly.
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| Mark Gleason: | It’s you against yourself testing yourself in a tumultuous sea. Playing as strong opponent is the sea and you don’t take it personally if the sea sinks your boat, right? It’s just the fact that you need to become a better sailor and you need to sail that tumultuous sea a little bit better, and so you’re right. There’s a different psychological dynamic that happens and I think it makes you more empowered and it has the potential to disempower them in the match.
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| Just for the record then, would you say that some of the APEX Level to Power concepts that we talked about here can help people in their sport psychology and their approach to life and their approach to finding harmony?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Absolutely. Absolutely. It will help life and … I cannot say that much about life but I’m sure it has helped me a lot. It’s helped my life a lot. I really, really mean that and it could definitely help chess. I didn’t know this APEX. Ever since I met Mark I’m learning about this. I definitely did not know any of this as a kid but I as a chess, I had the excellent mentality. It was essentially all this and that’s … I believe my mentality is what got me to where I was. Definitely some talent but my mentality was excellent. The top 0001%. My mentality was stellar and that’s why I got to where I was, to where I am.
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| Mark Gleason: | Well, we have loved having you here. Is it possible that we might be able to lure you back?
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Absolutely. I was thinking myself like, “Oh, sure. It can’t be the last time. I hope I could come back.” We might be able to have-
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| Mark Gleason: | Well, I’m sure we’re going to have some good response from our listeners. You’re a very engaging character. The other reason that makes you a very good coach is you’re a very interesting person to know and talk to. I have a few ideas. We can kick it around. I’m thinking one thing we could do is do some commentary and background on something like the US Open or some other big tournaments that are going on. You can give us some color for the people you played and how they approach different games.
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| We might even be able to do a black and white investing in color analysis. We can do a podcast. We can do a YouTube podcast where we also comment on a game. I think the advantage of having me is I am basically the placeholder for the listener, right? Because I’ll be asking the questions they’ll be thinking. Maybe we could walk through a game perhaps and you could explain some of your ideas. I’ll ask all the silly beginner questions quite naturally that everybody else is going to have anyway hopefully, and a few are just my questions.
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| It might be a valuable and a fun thing to go through that and put that out there and get the response from the fans and see how we’re doing. Please come back when you write your book or even if you have a chapter from the book you want to come back and talk about, we would be extraordinarily grateful if you’d come back and talk to us about that.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Perfect. My pleasure. Again, my email, anyone could email me questions about if they have queries about chess and things, questions they want to talk about in chess, they could always email me and I’m happy to connect with them.
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| Mark Gleason: | Very good, very good. Your information will be in the show notes. We’ll make sure that’s available so anybody who goes to LeveltoPower.com, level T-O power.com, you’re listening on the podcast, go to our website or just search for Yaacov Norowitz and you come right there. There’s not too many of those fortunately. Though I did have to put it in chess so if there’s enough Norowitzes out there to cause a confusion, but once you put in chess and also search for … So, Norowitz, N-O-R-O-W-I-T-Z …
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Chess.
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| Mark Gleason: | … and chess and then for some good fun put in Nakamura, N-A-K-A-M-U-R-A, and you guys got some great games out there which are hugely fun to watch and again because they’re so fast, you just see them go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You just see a game, right? Every couple of minutes there’s another game starting. It’s fast and furious.
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| On behalf of all chess fans, thank you for everything you do to chess world. You create beautiful chess that we all enjoy watching so we thank you for that. Please come back and see us again soon.
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| Yaacov Norowitz: | Absolutely. Looking forward.
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| Mark Gleason: | Very good. Well, you can change your level, change your life, and you can change your world. Welcome to APEX Level to Power.
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| Speaker 2: | This has been the APEX Level to Power podcast with your host, Mark Gleason. The podcast where your opinion changes but you still get to feel right. The one ability we cannot give ourselves is credibility. You have to give them to us so please like, subscribe or write a review. Change your level, change your life, and you can change the world. Welcome to APEX Level to Power.
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