Episode #3 Transcript: Why Is Chess Storming The World, Win At Chess And Life – Lessons From A Grandmaster… with Maurice Ashley

[(0:04)] Jax: Was that me or you? Or what was that notification? I am sorry, folks because I am breaking up here.

[(0:16)] Martin: Welcome to the Jax Jones and Martin Warner Show.

[(0:22)] Jax: Martin Warner is a legendary serial entrepreneur, inventor, startup coach, investor, and film producer with an active interest in media, film, high tech, education, and electric aviation. Among his accomplishments include the startup Holy Grail exit of fifty million dollars in a record seventy month of the journey, as well as holding a hundred and twenty plus patents.

[(0:48)] Martin: Jax Jones is an internationally renowned artist, music producer, and DJ, having sold over forty million records across pop-house and the dance genres. As well as, receiving multiple Grammy, Brit, and Ivor Novello nominations for his work. He is recognized for his visionary performances, marketing genius, and his attention to detail and execution. Jax’s curiosity and the cross-cultural journey continues to define the next year of his music and entrepreneurship endeavors.

[(1:14)] Jax: Finally, the podcast era has a leading co-anchored show, Jax Jones and Martin Warner delivering intellectually-curious, cross-cultural, light-hearted, and insight-focused conversations for their audience.

[(1:28)] Martin: With special guests that have achieved excellence in their craft or profession on subjects that matter across life, business, and art. Both Jax and Martin, know a thing or two about world-class excellence and aim to unlock the secrets, tips, insights, and inspiration behind their guests’ journey.

[(1:43)] Jax: Prepare to learn, laugh, and love the unlikely chemistry of best friends who aim to bring unique, relatable shows to the podcast universe.

[(1:53)] Martin: The title of today’s show is, “Why is Chess storming the world? Win at chess in life. Lessons from a grandmaster”. Our special guest is the great Maurice Ashley, grandmaster, and perhaps, the greatest chess-explainer in the world today. We are so happy to have him with us.

[(2:10)] Jax: Maurice is well-known for providing dynamic live tournament coverage of world-class chess competitions and matches. His high-energy, unapologetic, and irreverent commentary combines Brooklyn Street with the professional ESPN STAR sports analysis. 

[(2:27)] Martin: He has covered every class of elite events including the World Championships, the U.S. Chess Championships, the Grand Chess Tour, and the legendary man versus machine matches between Garry Kasparov and IBM’s Deep Blue. Traveling the world as an act of spokesman of many character-building effects of chess. Maurice consults with universities, schools, chess clubs, executives, and celebrities on how chess principles and strategies can be applied to improve business practices and assist with personal growth.

[(2:57)] Jax: Maurice also acts as a master of ceremonies, an inspirational speaker at business conferences and high-class chess events.

[(3:04)] Martin: Maurice has received multiple community service awards from city governments, universities, community groups for his work in recognition of his immense contribution to the game. He was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 2016 and the Brooklyn Technical Highschool Hall of Fame in 2018.

[(3:22)] Martin: Hey, Jax. Are you ready?

[(3:24)] Jax: Yeah.

[(3:24)] Martin: Let us do this.

[(3:27)] Jax: I got it, you are funny. You are a funny guy.

[(3:29)] Maurice Ashley: Funny-looking.

[(3:30)] Martin: Funny-looking, funny hair.

[(3:33)] Jax: To be honest with you, I am too sarcastic and I have realized I picked it up from my mom.

[(3:40)] Martin: Your mom? 

[(3:42)] Jax: My mom is notoriously hard-nosed and because I got so much abuse from her hard-nosedness over the years…

[(3:52)] Martin: You suffered it?

[(3:53)] Jax: No. Now, I bully people and I think it is normal.

[(3:56)] Martin: Oh really. Do not say that on public airwaves. Actually, you do not give me that. Now, I have seen you operate but you do not give me that. I think that is based on them. You are hard, but you are at your sensitized to it as well because I do not see that in you.

[(4:14)] Jax: I am not just like horrible, but I can make some jokes that are really close to the line. 

[(4:17)] Martin: All right.

[(4:18)] Jax: And you have to be quiet. 

[(4:19)] Martin: Hit me, I roll with the punches. It is a sign for me, hit me with it.

[(4:23)] Jax: I just called you vain. 

[(4:24)] Martin: Why would people call me that? 

[(4:27)] Jax: Because we have just spent ten years on your teeth. Literally, my daughter six years old now. She was just thirteen weeks ten minutes ago. 

[(4:36)] Martin: Do not you know, that is a great bit in the office with David Brent when you go, “You guys I am going to roll with the punches hit me with things.” So Gareth hits him and stuff. “Hey guys, we got a big hook nose.” Why would people say that? 

[(4:47)] Jax: It cannot roll with the punches until it is so good. 

[(4:50)] Maurice: I can roll with the punches now.

[(4:53)] Martin: I can roll yet. I do not take it much too seriously. Actually, my life is way too serious. No, my life is super serious, that is why I need humor. Life is what you make it but for the most part, I am on my own thinking about serious things, but actually, I do not want to do that all the time. I heard someone said online that what is easier to become an NBA player or become a Grandmaster interesting question because of just the amount of effort that gets you just to get to chess master and enter an IM and then to a GM. 

I used to think, I could do most things but if I devoted my whole life to it, I do not know if I could do what Maurice did. You did it at what, Thirty-three? Which I think is actually even harder because you get buried by family responsibilities and children, and all these other things that are going on. Life was tough but then to carry on, it is not like you were just doing an MBA or even a or even a Master’s, you were becoming a Grandmaster. That it is.

[(5:53)] Maurice: I would expect you to do it in your twenties. 

[(5:58)] Jax: These days they do it in their teens. 

[(6:00)] Martin: I know! But that is technology, right? 

[(6:03)] Maurice: That is technology. But even before people were doing it late teenage years, the early 20’s, that is the time you can do it in your mid-20s. By the time you do have family responsibilities as I did, I was married, had a child, it just gets tougher and tougher, that grind of having to make it living in a game, at that time, that did not have any real money in it. Only the very elite would be making any dollars at this game. So, you have to make it your passion. You are busy working on the side, I was teaching chess coaching chest.

I was also doing chest commentary but to also combine all that with what is usually required. The single-minded focus of becoming a Grandmaster is next to Impossible. It just is just extraordinarily difficult. So, for me to have taken it on at a late age of thirty-three, which is in the chest is almost geriatric, is what it was, its own bit of story itself. 

[(7:00)] Martin: So, if we can let us move, let us start the conversation because I think it would be lovely to learn a little more about your life. And I think there are some little things that would be useful to know and that was “Do you remember the first game of chess you had, obviously you were learning at that time, and who taught you?”

[(7:19)] Maurice: The first time I learned chest was in Jamaica where I was born. My brother played games with his friends. In fact, we are going way back, we are going to the ’70s. My brother and his friends would always get together and play all kinds of board games. In Jamaica, there was no television, and where there was a television, it started at six p.m., and it started with the news, kids had to play games. We just fell in love with playing games in order to pass the time, and chess happened to be one of them. 

I remember figuring out the four-move checkmate, it is called the scholar’s mate. I remember sugaring it out in Jamaica just this way of bringing this bishop out, the queen out, and checkmate. When I did it to an older boy, one of my brother’s friends, he said “Maurice has found out a way to win the game in four moves”. It was like, I had discovered Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. It was like, what? How did he do that? I am surprised actually that I did figure it out with anybody telling me that it was possible. 

[(8:21)] Jax: How many games do you think it took for you to get to figure that out? 

[(8:25)] Maurice: It did not take long at all. I just learned the pieces and then, I realized that it was possible and I did it. That would have been a sign. If someone were a serious chest teacher sitting around us, at that time, and they had seen me figure that out of said, “Okay, we got to take this kid to the side and train him”, but it would not be for another five or six years when I actually left Jamaica and gone to Brooklyn, New York. Where I went to high school in Brooklyn Tech. When I saw a boy, a fellow classmate playing chess, I remembered I used to play this game in Jamaica. 

I thought I would trick him the way I had this four-move checkmate, the scholar’s mate, I would be able to beat him. He crushed me, it was not even close. He just destroyed me. I was in a library, the school library and I saw a book on chess. I did not go looking for it. It just happened to be there. In many ways, I feel like chess found me, and it is just kind of a strange thing. But anyway, I saw the book, I opened it, I went home to study the book, went back to play with my friend and he crushed me again. Turns out he had read that book and several other books. 

[(9:35)] Martin: Wow. 

[(9:36)] Maurice: That was the beginning of competitive rivalry and the love affair that became my whole life. 

[(9:44)] Martin: This gets to the next question then. At thirty-three, you make Grandmaster. Okay, we already know that is pretty tough to weigh yourself down and then, achieve it at that age. But I am interested in, what was the motivation behind just staying the course and doing it? Because you have traveled a lot of years. What was going through your mind? Was it that “I need to get a career still or I want to be in this space” or “I want to actually become the world champion?”. What was it that the winter your mind to become a GM?

[(10:13)] Maurice: When you are a talented chess player, those of us who are like get touched by it. Right? It almost becomes an obsession. It is just the way it is. You are in love with this thing. You guys know what it feels like, something you are passionate about, “I cannot wait to do this tomorrow morning. I am sorry I have to go to sleep because I really would like to keep doing this and when I wake up I’m going to do it again tomorrow.” That is how chest was for me. It is school became irrelevant, my mother kept looking at my grades like “What are you doing?” Because all I was doing was studying chest every single day and playing as much as I could.  

At some point, I wanted to become a Grandmaster because you see the title in the book. You see the Russians who have the title and then you have got to learn about Bobby Fischer and Great’s from the past and you want that title, you want to be a Grandmaster, you dream about maybe becoming a world champion one day. Well not all of us were going to become world champions, obviously. It is going to be one that is the elite of the elite. But to get that Grandmaster title was always on my mind and I felt like if I did not do it, I would have failed at something fundamentally in my life. 

[(11:21)] Martin: Maurice, can I ask you a question? For all the aspiring Grandmasters out there, me now, wanting to be a Grandmaster, as well. Would you say the skills that you are learning on the chessboard, did it echoed in other academic subjects, of the skills, like whether other signals or was it just chess? Were you really good at Maths? Were you good at Art? With the excuse that you say link at the time that you saw as a kid and just other areas or was it just you just a natural chess prodigy.

[(11:51)] Maurice: I was always very good at Math. I was always at the top of my class in Math, as a matter of fact. 

[(11:57)] Martin: I thought so.

[(11:58)] Maurice: I had a mind for that kind of analytical thinking, calculative ability, and problem-solving. I was a person who always loved puzzles, mind puzzles. You throw a puzzle at me and I am going to sit there for a while, and think, how do I solve this? That is the kind of mind, that is a chess mind. And yes, that was definitely there. And I would find oftentimes. I remember when I went to University that I would be sitting in philosophy class and the professor will be talking about cons and Hume and breaking down the whole process of Mind Descartes. The whole time everybody else was listening to a philosophy class, I am hearing him speak chess. 

[(12:41)] Martin: Amazing! 

[(12:42)] Maurice. This is all chess. I got better at chess sitting in philosophy class. I was getting free lessons and nobody would know I would walk out of the class. My mind would be blown about the applicability of those philosophical principles to the chessboard, and that is when I really started feeling how it intertwined, the cross-section of chess, philosophy, business, life, mathematics, you name it. It just became all one thing for me. 

[(13:11)] Martin: Let us just expand on that for a minute. When did you realize that beyond philosophy that you can help people by using chess as a metaphor for how you can lead your life or operate your life? When did it really crystallize? I can do something, I can explain the benefits of something over the board that translates to our own life. 

[(13:34)] Maurice: I can not speak to an individual moment, but, I think the first thing that happened was, I started coaching young kids at chess. This happened at first in the Bronx, and then mainly in Harlem, New York, and in Brooklyn. When I started coaching these kids who had a similar background to mine, coming out of the city, single-parent out, household, violence in the neighborhood, and I was able to speak to them using the medium of chess and give them core principles that they could use in their own lives and in school to better themselves. That is when I saw the real power, the impact of these chess principles. 

What is great about that is, now, I look at those same kids that are not kids anymore, they are older than you, Jax. They have grown with children and, they come back, and talked to me about how those ideas transform their lives. I have got hyper-successful kids who went to top universities coming again out of these impoverished backgrounds ended up in top universities, just in wonderful fields as medical doctors, financial advisors, and the like. They say “Chess was instrumental in changing my life”. I did not even realize some of them will say that “Did you even realize how much it impacted their thinking today?” And it is only reflected as adults that they are able to say, “wow”, the sword that got sharpened on the chessboard ended up being the same critical thinking tools that use right now in their lives. 

[15:10] Jax: I can only imagine when you were younger going through this whether it be at school and then becoming, it depends on the definition from what I have read, but the first African-American chess player, right? Grandmaster, I should say, or maybe the first black Grandmaster which is even broader, and broader in context all or more global in context. 

But, what was it like being in a big tournament, I am imagining as the tournaments that you are in at that time with GM Tournaments, and you were the only African-American or there are others at this time by the time you got there because you were thirty-three? What was going through your mind? Did you feel that you are at any disadvantage because it was not recognized? Did you feel that was an equal playing field? Did you feel that it was just about the talent and the thinking? What was the climate like for tournaments back then? Because for fifty-four, that was twenty-one years ago, right? Ninety-nine, right? 

[(16:11] Maurice: Well, the journey itself was fascinating because there were other African-Americans who are growing up in the United States. Being a chess player in the United States, there were other African-Americans who aspire to the title, but they were scared, few, and far between. The most prominent one, was a gentleman by the name of Emory Tate has passed on. He was the top player before me. He was the Armed Forces Champion. I think five times, the Armed Forces Champion. He was an extremely gifted player. You talk about a trash-talker, Emory was loquacious, and he spoke daggers. He had quite the life, by the way, a little bit of a ladies man, hard drinker on one side as well. I was much more low key than him. 

If he just had gotten a discipline together. He would have preceded me I think easily because he was extraordinarily talented but they also had Steven Muhammad, who was another person who was going after it but we get into that Grandmaster title. First of all, you have to break the international Master barrier, which I also did, I became the first African-American to do that, but it was a challenge for us. You have got to chess clubs early on and people thought we were Hustlers, he would just take us seriously, they looked at us as if we were not rigorous, analytical thinkers. We were there to try to win some money, take the money off of them. 

For me, that was that additional pressure, but when I started closing in on the title. The pressure that became very real was all the other African-Americans and black people, who would look at me and say, “You got to do it for us”, and I am thinking, I am trying to do this for me. I do not need any other pressure. Of course, I am desperate to become a Grandmaster, myself. But, so many of them would say, ” It mean so much, you got to do it for us”, and that is some serious pressure. I am going to tell you straight up. That is real. 

You can feel that as you are trying to improve and get to the title, and every time I fail, I fell short, it was not just me I was disappointing, and I was well aware of that. 

[(18:21)] Martin: Tell us quickly, a quick summary of what does it take? What is the process to become a GM? How would you quickly describe the points to feed a ranking, playing, and feed a rated turnips? How would you say this? “If you are going to become a GM, this is how you do it”.

[(18:38)] Maurice: The technical way of doing it, is you have to get three Norms, which means you play in three separate events, and in each individual event, you have to perform at an elite Grandmaster level. And, you play against other Grandmasters and internationally ranked players, and depending on their ranking, there is a formula that dictates you have to get X-number of points. Let us put it in terms that everybody might understand.

Let us say, I had to try to become an All-Star basketball player. And, you said, “All right, You are going to play nine games of the one-on-one ball against LeBron James, James Harden, Steph Curry, you name it. The Greek Freak, just all the gangsters of the game. And, that is the only way you are going to get into the All-Star Game. There is no going to be any fan voting going on. There is no going to be the coach’s decision. Either you go in or you do not. There is no popularity contest. You have got to play these nine Killers one-on-one, just throwing Westbrook. What score do you think this person should get in order to become an All-Star? 

If you play nine of these players one-on-one, if you win five times out of nine, then, you clearly belong in the group. If you win four out of nine, you clearly belong, three out of nine, you are already pretty good. There is a formula in chess, that is very similar. Depending on the level of opposition you play against. If you were facing off, tear down of opposition, was not the names I just mentioned, then, you might have to get seven out of nine, you got to dominate this group. 

If it is just your average NBA players, you got to dominate those guys, seven out of nine, maybe even eight out of nine, and that is the process we have to go through. 

[(20:29)] Jax: We are not here about this, and your comparisons to the NBA and, what I hear are pressure and competition, and you just can not imagine in a game you are playing, the amount reminds you of like boxing, right? You know, when I always say that boxing, out of all the sports that you watch, is the most difficult in my opinion, you are receiving physical pain, and you have got all these people watching you, two lights flashing, you are just in this ring, you are getting fatigue over time, and you do not want to fail, right? 

The odds are stacked against you in some sense, right? And I feel in your journey, that was the case in some Arena’s, where you were the underdog if you agree, how do you manage all of that? What is your state of mind, when you are sitting on that board, Do you see it as a battle? Do you see it as this is what I do for fun? I am just going to show my skills. How do you manage all that stress? That sounds like stress to me, basically. 

[(21:21)] Maurice: It is stress. It is absolutely stressful, pressure, and it is funny because the players will become Elite, they eat stress for breakfast. 

[(21:33)] Martin: For Sure. 

[(21:33)] Jax: I aspire to eat stress for breakfast. 

[(21:36)] Maurice: Absolutely, you embrace straight. You want the stress, if there is no stress, there is no reason to play the game man. I do not want to play a game where I just know I am going to beat you. That is not interesting.

[(21:47)] Jax and Martin: Yes.

[(21:47)] Maurice: I am going to stack the odds against myself. You and I play, Jax, you are a beginner at the game. You are a novice. I am gonna say, “Okay, here is what I got to do”. I got to take almost all my pieces off the board, and now let us play because I need a challenge. I need to make it interesting because you are just starting out now, if you are at Martin’s level, I might just take a couple of pieces off. 

[(22:08)] Jax: Get it, Maurice!

[(22:10)] Martin: As long as that is the queen. I am all right. 

[(22:11)] Maurice: Maybe, I will take a few more up.  With that been said, I am glad you brought a box, and because I come from a warrior family. My oldest brother, Devin is a three-time world champion Kickboxer. My baby sister, Alicia is a six-time world champion boxer. In fact, she is in China right now. Head of UFC in the city she is in.

[(22:41)] Jax: That is crazy. 

[(22:43)] Maurice: I think she is in Shanghai, teaching boxing at a club there because she is WBC champion. We are all about, what the Warriors Spirit, the one-on-one, the intellectual battle, keeping cool under pressure, embracing pressure, and it is true when you are playing a chess game, you talked about boxing is the hardest sport, your mistake can make you in boxing. Let us say you make a big mistake,  a mistake you just expose your face, you get here, you get knocked down, knockout punch, but if you make a smaller mistake, you might just get knocked down, and you get back up. 

You might get hurt, by a wicked punch, but you can shake it off. At the elite level, one mistake loses the game, One! We are not talking about a situation in basketball when you might turn the ball over fifteen times during the game. You can not do that in chess. I will crush you if you make that number of mistakes. You just need one mistake from you that is serious, and I am going to put you at the edge of a precipice, the entire time. I might make a mistake in that conversion, but you do not expect it.

Grand Masters will hunt you down like you are a dog that the fox is coming after. You have got to be careful there. The point, maybe some flip, the fox that the dogs are going after, the flip is pressure for us, why we play. It is why we play. We love that feeling, the key to remember though is this, you cannot perform better under pressure than you do in normal most circumstances. That is counterintuitive. 

Most people disagree. People say, “Well, they are people who rise to the occasion, as Lionel Messi went”. Okay, you got a big situation. He is going to deliver right at that moment. You take a guy like LeBron James, the bigger the occasion the more likely to perform well, but, studies have shown that the difference between the Elite Performers and the average Amazing Professionals, is that the Elite Performers simply do not crack under pressure. They do what they do, like a normal walk in the park. This is what I do. Everybody is running away from the ball. “Oh, no, it is a pressure moment”, they say, “Well, it is just a game. I am in the same situation like I am in the gym practicing, just give me the ball. I am going to take the shot like I have done a thousand times before”, and that is the secret. 

You cannot be better than yourself, just be yourself. You find yourself in a pressure situation, you do not need to pump yourself up. “Okay, now I really need to get it done”, just do what you do.  And that is the secret of handling pressure. 

[(25:31)] Jax: I believe that because ultimately when you walk into the ring when you walk into that in front of those 64-squares, you are what you are. There is no additional thing you can do, at that point you execute, but then is it about preparedness? Is that what you are doing? Is that what separates you from the professional player to be an elite or is that last bit just God-given, an extra bit? 

[(25:58)] Maurice: Well, I think that everyone brings their own unique DNA imprint, to a competitive setting, and when you have doubts, is because of something that happened to you before, that caused you to be doubtful right now. You do have to dig deep, you do have to prepare, you do have to take away, eliminate those weaknesses in your soul, in yourself, in your psyche so that when the time comes, that does not call to you. That does not make you start to shake. We see that happen, trust me. You know when you have got them when they are in that state. 

To stay cool, it requires intense preparation beforehand, for you to be yourself when the setting arises. Everybody does it differently, people prepare different ways for that. For me, I think growing up in Jamaica, a crazy life. We grew up in a violent setting, when people think of Jamaica, it is a reggae Sunsplash and smoking reef for the whole time. 

[(27:02)] Jax: Is it a dangerous place to grow up. 

[(27:05)] Maurice: When you grow up in a hardcore Kingston and ghetto, it is a whole different ball of wax. It is about survival and then trying to thrive, and then growing up in Brooklyn, Brownsville, Brooklyn, Mike Tyson was from Brownsville. 

[(27:18)] Martin: It says it all. 

[(27:21)] Maurice: The intellectual gangsters and ethical gangsters that come out of Brownsville, I can say, Brownsville was so tough. Mike had to get out of Brownsville. Imagine what it was rioting. 

[(27:36)] Jax: It was like, “I really need to go”. 

[(27:36)] Maurice: We also have this saying in Brownsville, “Never ran, never will”. That is the attitude you bring in. We got the same thing in Bayford[?] Stevenson[?], “Do or die, bedstyle[?]”. Brooklyn had that kind of flavor to it. So, we grew up with the pressure of Survival by itself. When you got to the chessboard in National competitions, this was light-weight to me, this was nothing. I just have to focus on the board. I am not ducking bullets. 

[(28:02)] Jax: Sure. 

[(28:02)] Martin: Yes. 

[(28:04)] Maurice: I just need to handle these pieces in front of me.

[(28:06)] Martin: I think we are reaching the first main conclusion point, and we talked a lot about preparedness and how brutal the game can be in terms of your mental approach to the game or stress. The question is when I think about the things I have learned,  to me, is you can practice pressure management or Stress Management. One, through knowledge. Two is by traveling the same, Journey. Three is knowing you got a solution. 

It sounds obvious. But those happen. Do you think you can teach pressure management at the highest levels of chess? Like at the world championship. Because the stakes keep growing, right? You got a young kid, you know playing Magnus or whatever, anything to myself. 

[(28:58)] Jax: Magnus got real. 

[(28:59)] Maurice: Jack, do not let Martin diss you for not knowing Magnus Carlsen, he likes to toss around his knowledge. 

[(29:07)] Martin: I only care about Maurice Ashley, right now. 

[(29:07)] Maurice: Other people do not. Seriously, come on now leave the young man alone, Martin. 

[(29:15)] Martin: I did not want him to insult you, right? your GM, you know that. 

[(29:16)] Maurice: That is not insulting to me at all. Are we describing those who you do not know? I am looking forward to, one day Jax, beating you terribly at the bar.

[(29:27)] Martin: I had beaten once. Listen, we were playing on chess.com and he was playing like a learner game, right? he was moving pieces and allow me to show and explaining things to me. And, then last game, I got a discovered checkmate, check the keyword discovered checkmate. He did not see it. 

[(29:46)] Maurice: Wow.

[(29:48)] Martin: And the records are there. I will send you the screenshot. 

[(29:50)] Maurice: Is this a real story? 

[(29:52)] Martin: It is a real story. This is not any chess piece buried in the garden story. This is a real story. 

[(30:00)] Jax: I know you would say that. I am trying to arrive at a point where my good friend can win for the night, right? Because it is just in the spirit. 

[(30:07)] Maurice: For the night? It is like, ” I am going to drink and leave”. 

[(30:10)] Martin: I do not know if I did not sip. But I am getting it to happen. But, it was beautiful. I discovered check. My beautiful favorite. 

[(30:19)] Jax: Here is the thing though. He got some kids coming up that are probably, sixteen, eighteen, or nineteen. and they are incredible, maybe they will become better technical players, the stress on him, with what? fifteen years more experience, and he is at his prime, but he is now starting to get old. He is at this point, where-. 

[(30:37)] Maurice: I was only thirty years old. So, old is tough. I still got few years to[?] go[?] to[?] the elite level. And, Magnus is the best player in the world. 

[(30:45)] Jax: I want to ask you, Maurice, as someone who is done a few things. I feel like I have achieved a lot when I play chess. It was the first time in my adult life. I would experience a crushing defeat. And it was humbling, and it was I had to check myself. It was not an emotion. I have felt in a long time. You know, if you fail your driver’s test, right? And you feel like, devastated. I remember I think I did my first-year, economics at University, and I think I failed that. Only two things, I have ever failed, and then to just get smashed by Martin so hard-. 

[(31:19)] Maurice: Even worse. 

[(31:19)] Jax: Yes. 

[(31:20)]  Maurice: Because it is Martin. 

[(31:23)] Jax: Yes. Because it is Martin. 

[(31:23)] Martin: Are we ganging up?  What is this, The brothers? 

[(31:28)] Jax: One thing I know,  when you play people, and they can often see your mistakes, occurring and you are going to take advantage but when that happens to you, has that happened ever happen to you. And, where do you draw from for like your mental resilience? Because I had to go to add to do like ten press-ups. I had to go and eat some Snickers and get myself over that. Has it happened to you? How have you bounced back? 

[(31:54)] Maurice: I feel your pain. I think you are describing it. I am putting myself in your shoes. And, you know the moments when that has happened to me, the big moments and I did not answer Martin’s question about pressure. So, I am going to put those two together.

[(32:10)] Jax: Wonderful. 

[(32:12)] Maurice: And, Martins’ question about pressure. When I was trying to get, The Grandmaster title. I played against a Grandmaster from Germany, the name is Michael Betshel[?], and we were playing this incredible game. And I played a shot on him. That was so beautiful, and then, I hit him with another blow, and then I had a choice between two moves and one of the moves was greedy. I grabbed a rook is in my hand. I got it. It is like a truck, it just tantalizing. 

It is like chocolate, you just can not resist but the other movie was just to take a little Pawn, and by taking the part I would leave the Rook sitting, there is another wreck I was after, but I would stabilize the position and create all kinds of attacking trajectories, right? I am looking at this position and I had to make a choice, and I ended up going for the greedy choice. I took the rope and it was a trap, and he proceeded to me, like a stepchild. It was just nasty what happened to me after that. 

If I had won that game. I would have gotten The Grandmaster title, I failed. And threw away the title, in one injured issues moment. It was about pressuring and cracking under the pressure. After the game, another Grandmaster, Alexander Shabala, had seen the correct move. He said to me, “Listen, you are going to get there, but this is important for you to remember. In order to become a grandmaster. You must first be a Grandmaster”. 

[(33:43)] Jax: Okay. 

[(33:43)] Maurice: Those are the wisest, some of the wisest words I ever heard, “In order to become a grand master, you must first be a Grandmaster”. 

[(33:54)] Martin: What does that entail? 

[(33:55)] Maurice: His point was this, that just illuminated so much for me because what he was saying was, you are trying to pass your driver’s test. In order to pass your driver’s test, you must first know how to drive. It is not about the test. We are not testing you, and then magically, you learn how to drive in the middle of the test. That would be a bad deal. Right? We are putting people on the road and drive. You should know how to drive before you take this test. So, it is a state of preparedness that tells you, when the moment comes, I will be ready. 

And, part of that, is if you do fail, when I finally got my Grandmaster title, the second game I played out of the nine. I lost and it was on my birthday. Happy birthday, Maurice. You just got checkmated.

[(34:53)] Jax: I bet you thought you were going to have a good day as well. You are like here, today is going to be a good day. 

[(34:57)] Maurice: I was devastated on that day. Today my birthday and I got beat up while I am trying to get this title, but the resilience, the self-belief to come back from that loss, and then proceeded, to win a number of games in a row, against Elite competition, that is what allowed me to get the title, as I bounce back and did get the title in that tournament. 

It is about previous successes. Well, you know that you have been successful in your life, you know, you will get to take another driver’s test. You know, you are a smart guy, you are going to have another chance. So, for me and for us, we get used to losing, like a chess player. I have lost so many games in chess. It is not funny. I lose constantly against elite players, when we go back and forth, particularly in Blitz, you lose all the time. That is not the mark of a champion. 

The mark of the champion is how you react to a loss and that is what we try to teach kids from a very early age when we teach them chess. How do you react to a loss because you are going to lose. You are going to get better and then lose smarter, but you are going to lose. You are going to be a big mistake, smaller mistakes, but you are going to lose, along the path to greatness, a number of losses for you to learn from. And, that is how life is like. 

[(36:15)] Martin: Let us do this. Let us talk more about how to affect your life by having some knowledge of Chess whether it is for you at a distance or whether it is employing a particular strategy or practice in chess and it may get you to reframe or think about your actions in life. So, I have read a lot about this you are a Master at it in terms of Chess explanation. I am looking to boil down some things for the audience, it is not just terminology like a stalemate, something simple.  

What are the things that chess can teach us? a great one. Let us talk about the opening. What does having prepared openings, life favors to prepared. What do openings teach us, as it relates to Life, as a metaphor, as a particular practice?  

[(37:02)] Maurice: Sure. Absolutely. I will take that one on. I am going to go deeper than the opening. Everybody knows preparation is necessary, right everybody. Failure to prepare is preparing to fail. That is what the famous John Wooden quote. It is just the way life is. If you are not going to prepare, and you do not just jump in with the sharks and try to learn how to swim, that is not going to show.

Grand Masters at the highest level is not only about preparing set sequences, all these moves are memorized up to move ten, fifteen, it is all prepared. A lot of times it is but the real players show up at the point when their preparation ends. That means somebody does something you have never seen before, surprise. And, when all your preparation goes out of the window, and you still have to perform and what are the principles that you have prepared in advance, to be able to handle a situation that you are not prepared to deal with.

[(38:05)] Jax: Can you sum up the principles at that point? 

[(38:07)] Maurice: At this point, first of all, the idea of not being surprised, be prepared to be surprised. 

[(38:19)] Jax: That is good. 

[(38:19)]Martin: That is great. 

[(38:20)] Maurice: You feel me? 

[(38:20)] Jax and Martin: Yes. 

[(38:21)] Maurice: That is core. You cannot map out this game. In the first four moves of chess, there are three-billion possibilities, you are not capable of mapping all that out. That is not what the human mind does. We are not computers, sooner or later, a surprise move is going to come. Because you know, a surprise is going to come,  something is going to be different from what you have mapped. Then, it is important that you cultivate the frame of mind of being prepared to be surprised. When it comes to what will you do, you will laugh or you will be intrigued. 

[(38:58)] Jax: But that is the keyword here, is your intrigued. You are not scared. You are not running away. You are curious. 

[(39:06)] Maurice: The great players when the window key move having a go. “I have never seen that before. This is fascinating. Hold on a second”. But, let me get deep and that is when they get deep. That is when they know all the skills that they have cultivated over years and years, will be needed to deal with what this player will be dropped on you, and they might have actually prepared this one move in their own laboratory at home for years. Just to drop you. 

[(39:33)] Jax: To get you. 

[(39:32)] Maurice: Just on your unsuspecting self, as you just walk into it. You got to have the mindset that, “Yes, I will be surprised, it will happen at some point. Now, how do I handle it?” And to handle that situation, once you have that mindset, once you come in with that mindset, then you are going to cultivate things about Equanimity, discipline, serenity, breathing techniques, to be able to say, “Let me just chill. It is not the end of the world. If it were the end of the world, my preparation probably would have shown it, especially now, that we have computers that can break a lot of it down”. 

“What is that? I would have seen this move. Let me just settle down and figure this out”. and to me, that is where the real super Grandmasters are, in their confidence that surprise will not wail them. Something they did not expect will not derail them. And in chess, you cannot be as your way out of the problem. All right, there is a famous quote in chess, “Lies and hypocrisy do not last long on the chessboard, your ass will get checkmated”. That was not part of the quote, that second part. I just said that, make it added that all. 

[(40:48)] Jax: How was the Brooklyn-. 

[(40:49)] Maurice: But, “Lies and hypocrisy do not last long on the chessboard”. So, you have got to come with it when the surprise actually hits. “Boom! what does happen?” You have been served right now time to rise to the occasion and I think that is the mental training I have studied. All kinds of texts outside of chess to prepare me for the world competitive, Cutthroat[?] world of Chess and I think that is something we should know. 

A lot of people do not talk about that because they want me to give solely insights from chess. What makes you a chess Grandmaster is not only that you play chess, is that you study psychology, is that you study martial arts, is that you study Elite performers, and you cultivate, call the techniques from those disciplines in order to bring it back to the chessboard and the only because you are interested in whooping somebody on the board. You bring other disciplines and I will say that is one of the key techniques to success or whatever you are doing inside of your discipline, is to make sure you steal from other Elite performers. 

[(41:59)] Jax: Wait, I mean it sounds like you are working as an athlete, as we talked previously about boxing. Athletes go through psychology training whether envisioning the win, or dealing with pressure, or making better decisions, and I just want to go back to something you said, where you said you were breathing, and you are open. If I am being honest with you, that sounds a lot like meditation, being present, not looking too far ahead, not looking at the past choices you made, you looking at what is right in front of you happening right now, and that helps you become a better manager, that helps you become a better husband, wife, brother, sister and dealing with your daily life if you can stay in that moment, and take a breath, and just deal with it, with curiosity. Like, “Ah cool”

[(42:52)] Maurice: That is right. I love that being present in the moment is absolutely essential as well. One of the biggest things that helped me, catapulted me, to The Grandmaster title was when I realized that there was this core principle about Chess that I did not understand and it was, that I was too aggressive on the chessboard. That is my aggression was being used against me constantly, by the elite players. When I was doing that growing up in Brooklyn. It was fine. I got to that Elite level, the rarified air of the Grandmasters. They were taking me down when I was being too aggressive, coming at the new quickly, finding the holes in my missed in my moves. 

What that led me to was another realization about a connection to a discipline in martial arts called Tai Chi, and then from Tai Chi, I went to Aikido, and Aikido, that is all about taking advantage of the opponent’s energy. There are no aggressive moves in Aikido at all. It is all about blending with that energy, taking advantage of the energy to cause them to spiral and fall to the floor. I started studying Aikido just before I became a Grandmaster. I started studying it shortly after by the time when Chuvalo[?] told me, “In order to become a grandmaster, you must first be a Grandmaster”, and part of the Aikido discipline is meditation as well. 

It is a piece inside of the storm because if somebody is coming at you, they are punching with all their might, the harm that they could do to you. Physically. It breeds fear, you do not want to get hit in the face. You are going to react,  you are going to tense up, you are going to tighten, and to be at peace with the fact that this punch that coming at you with all its might is actually the energy you want in order for you to put them on the floor. 

Not any of your force, not any of your energy. It is their energy coming at you, the harder they come, the harder they fall. That kind of presence requires an incredible equanimity, peace of mind that you can stay present to the moment, and show no fear at the arrows coming at you. And things like meditation, breathing critically important, staying present in the moment. 

[(45:14)] Martin: We have compared chess to boxing. We have compared chess to martial arts. Why is not chest in the Olympics man?

[(45:23)] Maurice: Chess will probably end up in the Olympics, at some point, because people realize how intense and competitive it is, and actually we have a chest Olympian. 

[(45:37)] Martin: You do?

[(45:37)] Jax: I did not know that.

[(45:37)] Maurice: For decades. In fact, the current champions, China, before that was the US, before that with China again, the Russians used to dominate. We do have a Chess Olympiad, but I think that most people look at chess and they do not see the intensity of it, particularly the physical intensity, the fact that you have to be in shape to play is something people do not understand. If you look at the elite players in chess, right now, almost none of them have extra body fat on. 

[(46:08)] Jax: No. 

[(46:08)] Maurice: Extraordinary. Maverick[?] Carlson, Fabiano Caruana, Maxine Vasilichcrav[?], Anish[?] Giri[?]  They were all fit, you lose so much weight pounds, thinking when you are playing chess, the intensity of the Fist, they have done studies and the number of calories that you burn when you are playing chess. It is intuitively, it is counterintuitive. 

[(46:34)] Martin: I think there is a distinction, I think the controversy over and it is been going on for years, this Olympics question. As you said, you have an Olympiad, right? We have countries entering it. It is just a distinction that it does not get appraised and it is not included in the four-year Olympics which is a bit that feels wrong because the mental fatigue translates to the physical fatigue, and it is just as difficult. If not more difficult mentally to endure a series of games than it is to run a hundred meters. There is just as much preparation. 

[(47:07)] Jax: I would rather watch chess in archery. I am just being real. Like, “Archrecy, who is doing got archery”. It is reserved for stack dudes and Lads night out. 

[(47:21)] Maurice: I do not do specialist. I am just saying I do not this specialist. Because they need to prepare as well. 

[(47:26)] Jax: I do not want to get arched by the way, because do not wanna get shot. I do not feel right.

[(47:30)] Maurice: I do not know, archery is hard. It really is incredibly hard as well. I do not specialize in this, but chess has an intensity, and a drama, a compelling storyline that is hard to tease out when you do not know how to play, when you do know how to play, and you get commentators like I am a commentator. I describe to you exactly what the psychological challenges in a moment. The tension that a player is feeling when a mistake made, the pain that they are hiding, at the moment when they realize that they are in trouble and will have to suffer, they are ever going to try to make a comeback in that individual game. 

There is something torturous about the chess experience and people love to hear about it. They love to hear about it. But if you do not know how to play chess then I can understand. It looks like paint drying because people are sitting there for a long time playing, what is happening now though is a lot of Chess tournaments, because of this pandemic, they have gone online. And, they are playing Blitz and Rapid chess where games end in an hour, thirty minutes, sometimes, even only ten minutes, and also that is the different frenetic pace that people are not used to when they watch chest and that is much more like boxing. 

We are bringing that element now to the broader audience and seeing the fan base for chess just multiply. 

[(49:02)] Jax: You mentioned the Queen’s Gambit. I am sure that is going to have an impact. 

[(49:06)] Maurice: It is had an impact. yeah chop, the top chest sites have seen a tripling of their membership. I mean tripling as you would you think it is extraordinary, the amount of money that suddenly coming into chess, people are watching chess on Twitch, has streamers on Twitch. I am streaming on Twitch now. Myself, I got to get into the game because there is much interest has been cultivated from the Queen’s Gambit. Everybody wants to hear somebody explain chess to them, in a way that they will have fun to listen to.  

[(49:39)] Jax: I think what made the Queen’s Gambit, so magical, which leads us to the next topic is, you had this parallel between her coming-of-age story, and then the game she was playing on the chessboard. And as you said previously how you were playing aggressive, which I would take that as your upbringing and where you grew up, you had that style, that flare, and I just think that is what I found fascinating when I was playing with Martin, is when I was backed against as a beginner, my raw personality came out, which I am from South London, not Brooklyn, but it is again a hard environment to grow up in. 

I started getting aggressive. I wanted to take it, I just wanted to get angry and the only thing I do is move this chest piece as aggressively as possible and hope that checkmates him, but did not. And why did I on the last game? I would love to explore where else you see those parallels, where Martin was leading with that question. 

[(50:38)] Martin: Let us talk about the character traits in life and I will give you an example of something, where I saw it in you the Queen’s Gambit talks about if she plays angry, in the book and in the film, you told me about the book Maurice and they said she gets too angry, and then

that is when she is exposed. The interesting thing, Jonathan Ross, and it was the book you recommended to me, Maurice is it, he talks about the fact that you can see the pain, Magnus refers to it many times. 

He gets annoyed and frustrated when a player decides to play a move and take something gratuitously early and says that there is no need for that violence. And I can see he means it, within the context of the game but like that “Really, you do this to me”. That is just an unnecessary way to think either it is too dull or it is going to create complexity that does not want to deal with in the game. But there are all these emotions that are bubbling up and I think, maybe, I am wrong, but for me, I see the output as a trait, chess teaches me compassion, chess teaches me the right moment to be empathetic. It tells me if I have got an anger management problem. 

[(51:47)] Maurice: First, I would like to say this chess amplifies whatever tendencies you have. It amplifies and exposes your general tendency. So, a lot of times you can see a person’s personality very clearly in the way they play chess. It will just come out and when you talk to Jax about those moments when you feel your back is up against the wall. And, your reaction is to be aggressive in response. That is you right. That is your personality. Maybe your background, your other people when someone gets aggressive, they go into a shell. 

They feel they need to defend, they need to protect that is their best way of dealing with the situation, and an important thing to recognize when you are playing is that the game is revealing to you some truths about yourself that you can then, discuss with your partner, afterward or meditate about on your own. Why did I respond that way? What in me caused me to react to this situation the way I did? And if I made a mistake, what about me contributed to that mistake being made? 

It is beautiful that chess, someone described it as almost like an Ouija board and I am showing you, things about yourself as you play, and you want to actively take away those ideas, those moments when they happen so that you can grow from them. You have to literally be immersed in your own self-growth. Not just, “Oh, I am playing this game and I am trying to win”, but what am I revealing about myself to myself when I play this game? And, I think that is something that is much trickier to do in real life. 

Normally we learn the most about ourselves when another person tells us. Your significant other says, “You know what you always do”. Maybe you do, maybe somebody else told you that, so you go. “Oh put two and two together”. I just found out something about myself that I might not like, or may not have seen unless somebody else told me. The chessboard tends to do that as the way you think, the way you approach the game, the kinds of reactions you have when under pressure, the mistakes you make. How you react to those mistakes?

Those traits are revealed to you, expose to you, and you want that right? Because we want to grow, as people we want to grow, please show me where I can learn, where I can get better, where I can grow. 

[(54:41)] Martin: Are all the other Grandmasters like that?

[(54:46)] Maurice: I believe so. I believe that you become a Grandmaster because you are about that, you are about finding the truth as to what you do wrong because the thing

is those qualities about yourself that are imperfect or that contribute to failure, will expose you on the chessboard and make your bad moves. And, getting better moves, becoming a better player. To speak more knowledgeable, getting better openings. It is not going to help you. It might help to improve your potential results. But only if these other qualities drag you down, are managed if not eliminated, at least managed. 

You have to know that about yourself. You have to be look back and go. “Every single time this situation happens. I do the same nonsense”. I have got to change that and that is self reflectiveness is part of our process. That is something that we should do in life. But a lot of people do not do, a lot of people look at the results and try to fix the results, and not realizing that how much they are contributing to that result in the first place.

[(55:59)] Martin: I have got an idea for you, Maurice. And I am your greatest investment partner for this not. That we need more shit to do in our life, but I wish to chess computer will say, “Look you are revealing this thing. Look it up his a way to get rid of it”.

[(56:15)] Martin: Give me the calculation, right? I will look at the notation. So, I know where went wrong right on the step-back three steps. I have now got a different solution to that frustration or that moment. 

[(56:24)] Maurice: Martin, that is what they pay me the big bucks for. 

[(56:28)] Jax: I thought you were looking for your-. 

[(56:29)] Martin: he is doing it analog. That is what Maurice is doing. 

[(56:32)] Maurice: No, but I thought you took what you want the chess computer to be your Mentor, right? 

[(56:37)] Jax: Martin too much aggression and I will go back. 

[(56:41)] Maurice: I am a methodology guy. Everyone knows it right. I want the science in steps. You fucked up here, step back three steps and stop making the same mistake. Right? 

[(56:50)] Jax: Can we linger on steps for a sec? Because here is the magic question, I remember when I was playing Martin, when I had my crushing. I will keep alluding back to this because the more I joke about it, the easiest going to become. But he talked about, he is like, “Dude. I know what kind of player you are. You are going to be like a two moves ahead kind of guy. I am already at five moves ahead, and it took me years to get to that”. How do I think more moves ahead? And how do I do that outside the chessboard?

[(57:19)] Maurice: Gentleman, by the name of the group’s. Psychologists did a study of top chess players, Grandmaster versus what we call experts. Experts are an actual title. It is not just a generic description. It is not like all the Grandmasters are experts, no. If you call me an expert would be an insult because I have already passed that level. So, it is Expert Master, International Master, and Grandmaster, right? 

They got a bunch of Grandmasters together, and they got a bunch of experts together, and they have them look at the same position. They said, “What do you see when you look at this position”, and the experts describe their thoughts and, the Grandmasters describe your thoughts, and what they found is that the experts looked at more possibilities than the grand Masters. 

[(58:10)] Jax: That is interesting. I was not expecting that. 

[(58:12)] Maurice: You were not right.

[(58:15)] Jax: Fascinating. 

[(58:17)] Maurice: But what the Grandmasters say is, “You are looking at possibilities that are not relevant to the situation”. “You are looking at too much, you are overcomplicating it”. So, why your head is spinning and exploding Martin, is because you are looking at too much stuff and not getting at the core of the situation. What a Grandmaster able to do is get to the heart of it, and therefore, only look at a limited number of moves, because only these moves matter. 

[(58:46)] Martin: And, you are saying to me, Maurice. No, the Grandmasters boil it down to the essential. What is right now, the right path. They get through an opening fifteen moves or whatever. They get King safety or whatever, and then boom, there it will themes. But it is about one thing during the name game, and they are like, maybe looking at two or three things, or maybe one thing for me. I think that does not that ultimately change. 

Because of the algorithm, we think of the 64-squares, one move presents, sometimes, you know, I am not talking about pins a skewers or it can. Present two or three completely different scenarios. You have to look at them all because there are threats, there are checks or their captures.

[(59:31)] Maurice: When their threat-. 

[(59:32)] Martin: They get complicated. 

[(59:33)] Maurice: Let me say. The worst thing for me, to be a thinker, at the board is when there are too many possibilities to look at. The best situation is when it is just a core idea that presents itself. And, that is what I am building on. It does not mean, by the way, that that core idea does not sprout multiple options. But if I have the correct idea, what I am really after his control of a week square. What I am really after is trying to bottle up your queen. 

But I am really after, is I am trying to exploit a misplaced night on the side. But I am really after, is your exposed King. If I could just get to a core idea then the possibilities I looking at will be limited because it is only based on that central idea. That is what I am thinking. Maybe, I should go after week one or to week square, or the king or the knight or the queen. Let me look at all of them. 

That is what my mind is going. I have to get to the essential and I want to get to the simplest idea possible. Now if there are such things as threats, concrete threats, concrete captures that present themselves, then, I do have to look at what will be dangerous. 

[(60:51)] Jax:  Now, we are talking about the same thing. 

[(60:54)] Maurice: That I have got to calculate that. I have got to work out the man. 

[(60:56)] Martin:  Right. 

[(60:58)] Maurice: That is something I can avoid. But most situations will be a combination of ideas and threats. Threats will just be, “I am trying to take your piece man. I am your knight is sitting right there and I am trying to take you”. You got to do something about it. That is a threat. You want to take my knight. You can not just have my knight. That is not cool, my knights are important to me. So, I have to deal with a threat, then I have to look and calculate, what is the best way to deal with the threat, but a lot of chess is not about the attack on the knight. 

It is about what are, I to be doing overall? Do you know the overall, just thought that what is this situation? What should I be doing? Should I be thinking about checkmating your king? If I am thinking about checkmating in your king. “Hey, you just attack my knight, but I am trying to blow your king’s head off”. “You can have my knight”. I do not even calculate any variation that defends my knight because the position is saying, “Blow up this guy’s King”, he is busy chasing down a lower Soldier. That will channel my thoughts in a different direction. 

So, for me, I want to know the essence of the situation and I think that that is something that sometimes when you get into discussions, arguments with folks in life, they have not figured out, “what is the core idea here”. What is the core idea? You are the same. I know you guys are the same because you are businessmen. People will bring up some tangential[?] BS[?] that has got nothing to do with what we are talking about. Let us get back to the essence of the story and if you are not distracted by what looks like something real, but you are really focused on the true essential in a moment. And, that is when you are at the highest level of performance. 

[(62:45)] Martin: I want to pull this down for the audience because you mentioned something else here, and I think I can bring clarity to a representation I made and that is it. In chess, you may be forced to look at different options, maybe from attack, or a threat of capture, or check or another potential threat or line the a particular line of moves that the opposition is playing, but as what you have going on to say is if at the top of the pyramid is the boiling down or all of that to the centralization of an idea, a single truth something that you are in pursuit of whatever the root causes, a week square, does not matter. You and I selected a King or weak knight, whatever it is. 

It is the pursuit of an idea, and this is not a business lesson, but I think this applies in life in business. With your fundraising or you are launching a product to market, in the end, the reason products sometimes win, is time to market. It is a battle of that centralization of an idea and the timing, and the messaging to get to market. So, VHS and betamax, a better product. VHS will had already had a footprint. You think about fundraising, we can talk about all the great things the team has, but we missed the idea behind the market, if it is funded in the right way, we can get to market. 

But, we still have to do the option analysis. We have to look at the choices because we could see threats, those could be competitors. They can be a lot of thing and interests. That is when I talk to you I think, “Oh, you did that to me. I got to deal with that before I get back to my idea”. But, you are saying, it is both. If you had to sum up, Maurice five or ten. It is not a particular list. What do you think the best lessons chess can teach you about life? 

[(64:33)] Maurice: The number one that I could go on at list is that the other person’s opinion is probably more important than yours. 

[(64:45)] Martin: Okay. I like it. 

[(64:48)] Maurice: We know our own ideas. We know our own opinions. We hear them all the time in our heads, we know that. But, if we can respect, really hear the other person, really hear them, know where they are coming from. There is magic there because if they also feel really hurt then they are more likely to agree with you or to follow a path with you, follow you anywhere you want to go. 

It is extremely important to listen carefully. Now, you say, “How is that a chest straight? When I play chess, you make a move. I have to deeply understand why those moves play. It is not about, “I got this great move. I want to kill this guy with yeah, there is-“. No, it is, why that move? Why did you do that? All the reasons, I do not want to know just part of the reason because the the part I do not know is one that is going to get me killed. 

I need to know all the reasons, “why?”, I need to know your fundamental motivation for every single move you make. To me, the other person’s viewpoint, being at least as important, and likely more important than mine in a given setting is the greatest lesson chess teaches. There are other lessons, of course. Patients as a weapon. Not just as a virtue but as a weapon. Because the person who blames,  and it happens great place, it happens in negotiation. 

You just want to get to the end. So, you quickly say the number, so that you just get settled on the number, instead of being willing to sit back knowing that they want something too, and just being patient. Maintaining that tension, as we call it. 

[(66:34)] Martin: Friction.

[(66:35)] Maurice: And just being okay with that. It is not a problem. I am okay with this setting and the tension, and the stress of the moment, and let the other person crack first. Stress is a teacher. The pressure is a good thing. Actually, I believe you should train for pressure by putting yourself in pressure-filled situations. And in fact, where there is no pressure, just are a little bit in there to make it interesting. 

[(67:07)] Jax: How do you do that?

[(67:08)] Maurice: You just do it. Let us just do it. You know what? You handicap yourself? Something too easy. It is not worth doing. You got a handicap yourself. 

[(67:17)] Jax: Let me, time also is very cool. 

[(67:19)] Martin: But, by the way, Maurice. When we play, I would like you to play blindfolded. 

[(67:24)] Maurice: I would love to. 

[(67:28)] Jax: All right, I will play as well. You will beat me in five minutes. It will not be a Scholar’s mate, but you will beat me in five minutes. 

[(67:32)] Maurice: You will be in five moves. I am sure. But blindfold is not enough of a handicap, Martin. 

[(67:41)] Martin:: All right, you are at three. Give me a couple more gems, right? Patients. I get it. Understanding their opinion, for sure.  Understanding stress and it is okay, by embracing stress. 

[(67:53)] Jax: embracing stressed 

[(67:52)] Martin: By practicing on the board. 

[(67:54)] Maurice: Use your opponent’s energy against them. Losses business of knowing exactly when to be aggressive, but also knowing when aggression fails, and when you can use the other person’s energy because you can feed off at that moment. That is very difficult to do, very difficult. One of the highest Arts is to completely get inside your opponent’s head that way, and see where their energy is, and then, use it as a way of producing. That is the Aikido principle. 

[(68:35)] Jax: Yes, cool, man. 

[(68:37)] Martin: I fear a lot of people. That is at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy. That is a tough thing and goals[?] of the game.

[(68:45)] Jax: It sounds like you have to detach from yourself. You have to be fluid. You have to be dynamic. It is just, so many things are like removing ego, all sorts of things. To allow yourself to do that. I think that is why it is difficult because people, I know myself even as where sales playing Martin in my base level of reaction was aggression. You use view things from your eyes and your lookout, and  You need to just be a rat all around, just like seeing it. “I am very relaxed”. 

[(69:22)] Maurice: And now you, got me going. I am gonna give you another one. This is huge. Learn to embrace failure. We have talked about this. 

[(69:30)] Jax and Martin: Yes. For sure.  

[(69:30)] Maurice: Learn to embrace failure. The moment I fail in a chess game. It is a moment of Illumination. I want that. I want that because if I win the game because I do everything right. I did not learn anything. I just showed them what I could do. That is a good feeling, I trained for it. It happened. But the flip side, when I do something wrong. It is a moment of my own self reflection and says, “Wait for a second, what did not I understand?” And if I understand that, I am going to be more dangerous. 

You do not want me to understand, why I do things wrong. You do not want me to do that. Because once I fix that, you are going up against an even more Elite Grandmaster, right? You want me to swallow in defeat, you want me to cry about it, be upset about it,  insist I am going to beat you next time. You do not want me sitting there going. “Okay, I see where my mistake was. I learned something today. I am going to be better for it”. 

So, you should be happy when you understand a mistake that you have made. If you lose, it is fine, you learn from it. And that is what chess teaches us, to really dig deep. One of the things that teach, to dig deep into the reasons for your failures. Do not make excuses, face them down, learn from them because the flip side of that, the other side of that is growth. 

[(71:03)] Martin: I wanted to expand on that because it is business, it is critical. We see mistakes. We can intellectually understand them. but their euphoric moment comes from when you employ a different practice. because you actually demonstrated that you learned from that failure. that validation is what makes you grow. In other words, like,  “I did this wrong”, two weeks later, you do the same thing. I think, “God, I did not learn from it”. Right? 

[(71:28)] Jax: I think that applies in relationships.

[(71:29)] Martin: Everything. 

[(71:30)] Maurice: You understand this principle It becomes easier in a relationship because nothing will say to the other person. “You know, what I was wrong, you are right and I just learned something deep about myself. Thank you for teaching”. 

[(71:44)] Martin: I love that. 

[(71:47)] Jax: Yes, beautiful. I think it would be sick to get on another chat at some point and cover Mastery because that is a whole nother level. We have this dedicate ourselves. 

[(71:58)] Martin: We have some ideas around this, and I think that is a thought for a part to you.

[(72:05)] Maurice: Yes, man. I would love him. I love him and the vibe is great. You know when you are around the geez, man. “Oh, jeez there get it done”. You know. And the young jeez, as well. 

[(72:17)] Jax: Save man. 

[(72:23)] Martin: Well, for the first podcast, I talked about my great passion for chess. I loved it. I do not know about you. I thought was really awesome. Maurice was great fun. 

[(72:34)] Jax: He is amazing. 

[(72:35)] Martin: But, so cool. It is so cool. 

[(72:36)] Jax: That was cool. 

[(72:39)] Martin: Now, all the things he does, puzzle making and app developing. He is got plenty app. Where does he find the time? 

[(72:45)] Jax: What do you mean, he is getting an app?

[(72:47)] Martin: He is getting an app. I think you if lookup. I know, I looked at it. What was it now, Maurice Ashley teaches chess, if you look at that on the iOS or playing ads in the Android store, he got an app and it will just commentating all the other things he does, is Building Products as well. I mean crazy and good for him. 

[(73:09)] Jax: He is a polymath. 

[(73:09)] Martin: Yes, for sure. No question. All right, so, A thought for the day. 

[(73:15)] Jax: What is your thought for the day? what are you thinking? 

[(73:18)] Martin: So, yesterday it came to me.  And I have this common themes. How do you get on your game? How did you get ready? And I think this an external environment and internal environment, that is going on. And it is all about life feeling in balance then ultimately being prepared. If things are happening in my life around me, that is a problem. So,  I have got to be able to normalize that, set that free. For me to focus. That is my outside going. 

My inside game is, what are the feelings that make me feel prepared? and it is the feelings that can send us, off-kilter. If I feel good about being prepared, it is those two things. It is the feelings of my outside environment a fine, and my ability to feel prepared, equals, I think I am going to have a successful game. I am going to be on my game. That is my thought for the day. And when I think about this podcast, I think, how did I feel? Did I feel good coming in? Did I feel prepared? and did I get a successful outcome? And I am pleased to say I believe With God successful outcome. 

[(74:22)] Jax: I agree. I love that chat and in the essence of the great Maurice. Along with think is the wrong thing. That is my thought for the day. 

[(74:37)] Martin: By the way, that is proprietary. You just stole that thing for him, right now. He is going to probably give you an invoice and say, “Hey, that wrong. Oh, no, he said that came from chess”. 

[(74:41)] Jax: Yeah. Chess owns it. 

[(74:42)] Martin: Laughing at the wrong thing.