Luck, Positive Thinking, Skill?

It has always been a mystery to me to understand how certain chess players are able to turn things around from worse or losing positions and win the game. I have a feeling that many other chess players too have thought about this certain occurrence in chess! I decided to voice my thoughts in this regard and start writing my first blog.

Firstly chess is considered to be an extremely logical and intellectual game where the element of chance is greatly reduce as compared to let us say card games. And in fact isn’t that completely true? After all  the rules are fixed and clear and there is no breaking away from them at any point, there is no home/away advantage ( a chess game is played with the same rules whether played in China, Spain or India!) and there is no question of weather or any such external factor affecting a result as in games which are played out door. So is there no chance factor in chess? Well, I wouldn’t say that! All of us who have played chess have experienced these thoughts at some time or the other- “How did I miss such as simple move which would have won the game” “He got the easiest pairing possible” “Gosh I am always facing him with black pieces!” “I had 4 different ways to win, saw them but chose the fifth way and lost!”

There are many possible explanations for winning from a losing position, losing/drawing from a winning position etc. The most basic one is all these being attributed to luck. Some people are born lucky in chess just as in other facets of life! They always seem to get the best result even out of hopeless situations. Is this an excuse developed by the so called underachievers to justify themselves? Well it may be, but I feel this concept of luck in chess can be broken down into something more tangible for us to understand.

Firstly, as my friend Magesh Chandran believes there is no such thing as a lucky happening (everything is fully deserved) in a game of chess. If an opponent blunders it is either because he lacks the skill or he couldn’t stand the sustained pressure he was subjected to or any other possible reason, but that which is purely rational. There is another school of thought which says if you are positive in your approach and do what is to be done, you are more likely to be ’lucky’ than others who are not. This can possibly be a good explanation as the psychological stability of players is not so apparent when the game is viewed purely from a chess perspective. If you take a look at the so called lucky players they do have some fine quality which separates them from the others, though we may not be able to find them out that easily.

Thanks to my room mates of Spanish tournaments ( Arun, Magesh and Satya) with whom I have had a chance to philosophize about chess and life and from my own experience I got to dig deeper for more explanations. I agree that in this cosmos everything is deserved if one looks at it in the bigger perspective. People may assign different names like God, Universal mind, nature etc but to me it is beyond doubt that there is a far greater force than what appears to the mortal mind that is taking care of this drama of existence! The law of Karma provides the only reasonable explanation to the so called inequalities and injustices in our world. I feel that the same could hold true for the chess world too! People who turn out to be lucky in a chess game may have good Karma in store apart from their skill and positive thinking! Scientific mind tends to agree that good result happens out of good preparation. The reasoning of Karma theory is exactly the same but only differs in terms of the time line for action to get translated into results( the time line can be 6 months 1 year, 6 years or 1 life too!).I have seen/ experienced unbelievable cases of losing on time/ touch piece blunders and several results happening to favour one particular person at different times which don’t have a pure skill/positive thinking explanation to it!

As of now my feeling is that apart from skill and positive thinking, Karma can also be a factor in explaining what luck is in chess. But I am happy to keep the curiosity going and keep my mind open to various other possibilities too, for the greatest charm in life is that it is uncertain!

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