Meeting one's heroes is debilitating, but reading their business books is mortifying. The 'How To Be a Chief Executive' genre is resistant to parody. Nor is genius sufficient to overcome the problems, as Garry Kasparov proves with How Life Imitates Chess. Kasparov is probably the greatest chess player of all time. His 120-games-in-under-three-years struggle against Anatoly Karpov is, as he writes, 'one of the most intense head-to-head rivalries in sport history'. Nobody has played chess so aggressively at such a high level for so long.

A chess game is divided into three stages: the first, when you hope you have the advantage, the second, when you belive you have the advantage, and the third, when you know you're going to loose!" Tartakower And I might add that in everyday life, “victory” can simplistically, perhaps a little romantically, be defined as happiness.” The book is a good read for people who want to know more about Mr. Kasparov’s approach. It outlines the history of the game without the customary platitudes. This book almost has shades of being a self-help book, almost. The book isn’t that, but it’s so versatile, and the book harpoons so many little nuggets of knowledge that it can certainly be used as such a tool.Seeee, el ajedrez enseña cosas, lo mismo que el tiro con arco, la jardinería, el trato con chimpancés, la simple cotidianidad, y realmente cualquier otra actividad a la que una persona se dedique intensamente, y a lo largo de mucho tiempo. Este último es (¿cuándo no?) el factor tiránico, porque es el tiempo invertido en el aprendizaje de patrones, de recurrencias, de secretos, el que fija las lecciones aprendidas y las hace útiles. Don’t spend so much time worrying about the other guy that you lose sight of your own goals and your own performance.

This is what I call the gravity of past success. Winning creates the illusion that everything is fine.” Play your own game, but be able to adapt. As Darwin says "Failure to adapt brings dire consequences". Buy the rumors, sell news.’ Anticipation of something’s happening can be more powerful than the event itself or, put another way, is inseparable from the event itself.” One of the most highly regarded strategists of our time teaches us how the tools that made him a world chess champion can make us more successful in business and in life.The insights about chess and how the stages of the game apply to business were logical, with the points well made. I especially warmed to the sections on the differences between strategic play and tactical play. (“strategy is knowing what to do when there is nothing to do”) That Kasparov knows he is a genius is also not in doubt. He retired from chess not to spend more time his family, nor even to be President of Russia, but to change the infrastructure of Russian politics. His failure, so far, to have pulled this one off has left him spare time, some of which he uses to lecture chief executives about the antics of other CEOs. Si la intención del libro fue ser un self help: fracaso. Además sumamente pedante hablando de sí mismo y sus victorias. Strategy without tactics is the slowest way to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. It seems whatever Kasparov does, he does it fervently and so the chess master preaches how the intricacies of the game of chess display basic truths in life. As usual he is confident in his conclusions drawn from his expertise in chess, even though he claims "I have observed there is little evidence that chess masters possess talents beyond the obvious one of playing chess.”