The Chess World Championship challenger has made a mistake
But this article isn’t exactly about chess.
I don’t know how many of you play or are interested in chess, but right now, the World Championship is going full steam. It’s like a boxing fight, between the two best players in the world, that lasts forever: the tournament takes up to 14 matches and lasts almost a month. The current champion is Magnus Carlsen, and the challenger, Ian Nepomniachtchi (can we call him “Nepo” to make things easier? Thanks). Usually, most of these games end up in a draw — and this concept is relevant in this article. To be the World Champion, you need 7.5 points, where victories = 1, draws = 0.5, and losses = 0.
To further explain, each Monday and Thursday the players have a resting day. That means that they played their third match in a row on Sunday. Add to that the fact that this Friday’s game was a bloodbath that took over eight hours, with more moves than any match in the Chess World Championship history, resulting in the champion, Magnus Carlsen, winning. As already mentioned, there’s a large advantage in each win, due to how high the players’ level is, and how close they are to each other in terms of skill. So far, the score was 3.5x2.5.
Therefore, Nepo was not comfortable in the subsequent games. Saturday we had another draw (4x3), and yesterday (05/12), another intense game.
And the challenger, already under heavy pressure, made a mistake.
A horrific blunder for that level of playing, according to people who understand chess (not my case).
Magnus didn’t stutter and took home the win again (yes, that’s ONE mistake. It helps to emphasize what we’re talking about). 5x3 is a nightmare score for the challenger. Pressured, tired, annoyed, he had the composure to go to the press room after a major defeat (which severely limited his chances of being the champion) and talked to the media.
Between the questions, three of them caught my ears enough to come here and talk about.
“How do you rate your performance today?”, asked the interviewer.
“Well, in general, I’d like to apologize for today’s performance”, Ian returned.
“Why?”
“It was probably far below than…, not even gonna say my normal level, but in general I think it was below than any GM [the highest title in Chess] level”.
“Were you tired after the third game of play?”
“No, I don’t think it’s about being tired”, Nepo cordially answered. “It was like some weird sequence of choices, but yeah, I mean, I’m just looking forward to the next game”
That interview caught me off guard for two reasons. First, Ian was very rational and cold, even after apparently losing control for a brief moment in the game. Second, he didn’t make any excuses from outside factors, he blamed only himself.
Being stressed, tired, or pressured are some of the most popular choices when justifying our failures or mistakes. Although those three little words can have a lot of impacts on our general performance in life, sometimes we just make mistakes. We blunder. Mistakes that not even ourselves expect from us, imagine about the “general public” (friends, family, etc.).
Naturally, we can use those concepts to justify even the most bizarre errors, and often this is correct. However, how many times do we accept (for ourselves, if it counts) that we simply made “some weird sequence of choices”?
Accepting imperfections and weaknesses is part of self-knowledge, a maturing process that we must not avoid: you can be insanely good at what you do, but you will make mistakes. Countless times. There’s not a lot of room for mistakes in a common person's life, but if someone at the very top, with a unique opportunity, can make a horrible blunder and not blame the outside world, we can do the same sometimes.
And, to quote a much better writer, that’s what this storm is all about.
