In the middle of the match, I felt a strange calm ness I hadn 't experienced before. It was a type of euphoria. I felt I could run all day without tiring, that I could dribble through any or all of their team, that I could almost pass through them physically. It was a strange feeling and one I had not had before. Perhaps it was merely confidence, but I have felt confident many times without that strange feeling of invincibility.
PELE (world-renowned Brazilian footballer) Such an experience has been called many things. Baseball players tend to call it 'the zone', Maslow called it 'peak experience', some know it as the 'runner's high' , 'being in the groove' or ' tuned in' and recently psychologists have re ferred to it as 'flow'
Daniel Goleman, in Emotional Intelligence,
describes it thus: "Flow is a state of self forgetfulness, the opposite of rumination and worry: instead of being lost in nervous preoccu pation, people in flow are so absorbed in the task at hand that they lose all self-conscious ness... In this sense moments of flow are egoless. Paradoxically, people in flow exhibit a masterly control of what they are doing, their responses perfectly attuned to the changing de mands of the task. And although people per form at their peak while in flow, they are
unconcerned with how they are doing, with thoughts of success or failure - the sheer plea sure of the act itself is what motivates them."
Wow. What do you think? Perhaps it's never happened to you, or you're one of the lucky ones to whom it happens regularly. Personally I have had some experience of 'flow' but only quite rarely, and all I can confirm is that there is definitely some sort of 'self-forgetfulness' , an increased pleasure in activity combined with diminished concern for the outcome. I remem ber feeling this way in the second part of my game against Nigel Short at the British Cham pionship in 1998 where I defended a bad posi tion against the odds and even created some winning chances.
Whatever you think of 'flow ' , it is a good starting point for considering the 'form' of a chess-player and how and why it fluctuates be cause I think 'flow' is really just what happens when you're in your peak form. So now ask yourself when you felt you were playing your best chess. In most cases I think you'll find that it was a time when you were very much enjoy ing the game, and somehow it seemed to come naturally to you. It may have been after a period of chess study or even just a big change of life style or location; anything that might give you a new hunger and appreciation for the game. Then think of your worst periods, where noth ing seemed to be going right. I suspect in these cases you had no particular hunger for the game, were playing with reference to external factors like points or rating, but without real love for the game as such.
This is a bit speculative of course, and won't apply to everyone, but I hope it rings true for most readers, at least to some extent. It is cer tainly my own personal experience and these days I see a direct correlation between my en joyment of chess as a game, and my competi tive success. On those occasions where I did well, I almost always felt a little nervous be fore the game or tournament, not in a fearful way, but in the sense that the forthcoming chal lenge really mattered to me. And mattered not just because of the potential outcome, but be
cause I somehow identified myself with the forthcoming struggle and was in no way resistant to the fact that I was about to play chess. On the other hand, when I've played chess just because
of some prior commitment to do so or because I didn' t have the imagination to think of something better to do, I found that my lack of enthusiasm manifested itself in an unhealthy disregard for the details of the game, careless ness and more :;oncern for the result than the process.
What I ' m suggesting is that there may be a significant relationship between your form and the extent to which the result matters to you rel ative to the taking part. I'm not interested in the 'chess as art or sport?' issue here, and 1' m not
saying there is anything wrong with playing chess for purely competitive reasons. My point is just that to have any chance of playing your best chess, or reaching 'flow', you need to care about the process itself. As a crude example, if you're trying to win a tournament it's a good sign if you are disappointed when your oppo nent doesn't turn up, because it suggests that the ' 1 ' in the score chart is not all that matters to you.
The most important point here is that 'the outcome' and 'the process' needn't be mutually exclusive. It is fully consistent to love playing chess and to love winning. But the difficult question is how to think during the game when you want to win, but fear that if that's all you want you'll jeopardize your chances of doing so.
Two of my Dutch league team-mates know this well. IM Jan Guftasson and Lucien van Beek tell me that they never enjoy losing, with Lucien adding that the thing he enjoys most about chess is the moment when it becomes clear that he's going to win, or at least that he's not going to lose. I suspect these sentiments are shared by many and I'm reminded of GM Mi chael Adams saying something like the follow ing when I spoke to him in March 2000: "I've never understood these players who lose but then say they enjoyed it because it was an inter esting game ... I mean, chess is a competitive game, and the result is what you play for. If I lose then I'm not happy." Even in these cases, which may be the norm in chess, it is not true that they play only for the result. Indeed, I think you' 11 find that the tournaments in which they played best weren't necessarily those which they wanted to win the most but rather those where they identified with themselves as
chess-players the most and sat down at the board to play their games and enjoy the strug gle without many thoughts of the result.
Lev Polugaevsky has written about this sort of thing in great detail. For the interested reader I strongly recommend the book Grandmaster
Performance, particularly the chapter on 'Psy
chology of the Chess Struggle' . His notes to a crucial, 'must-win' encounter with Portisch are invaluable: "Should I cultivate a calmly indif ferent attitude to the coming battle ... or should I arouse in myself a feeling of maximum com petitive aggression? Neither of these was really suitable - the first because it inclined to wards a rather quiet game, the second since it was very easy to 'overheat' . What was needed was a synthesis of these two conditions - enor mous energy plus cool reason, but how was it to be attained?"
How indeed? Polugaevsky gives an interest ing anecdotal answer but nothing from which we can generalize. This is my concern here: not just what sort of state you need for a must-win situation, but how you can internally prepare yourself for each game to yield maximum chances for success.
Gumption
First see to it that you, yourself, are all righr,
then think of defeating the opponent. The Way of the Spear
The problem with flow is that it seems to be something that 'just happens' and is all or noth ing. What we need is something we can work towards ourselves, and will give us a chance of reachingflow. Here I would say that if what you need to make the most of your ability could be
summed up in one word, that word would be
'gumption' ; a colloquial Scots word from the
1 8th century with a variety of meanings and uses.
There is no exact definition, no one knows its precise origin, and most dictionaries give a poor interpretation of the way it is most often used in the language. I am currently writing a book on the concept and hope that there will come a time when it is as familiar a word as 'en thusiasm' , 'composure' or 'practicality' In deed it might be considered as a cocktail of
these three things, as well as being a bit more. Unlike flow, we can feel relative levels of gumption, and when we feel full of it, we can say we are 'gumptious' In any case, it is my conviction that we need gumption for our spir its every bit as much as we need water for our bodies and neurons for our brains.
So how does it apply to Wanting? The quote above is pertinent because it refers to preparing yourself internally for the battle ahead. You are trying to cultivate something like 'psychic gas oline' which will fuel you throughout the ups and downs of the forthcoming challenge. When you feel gumption for a task (game of chess) you identify with the task at hand and somehow feel untroubled by any resistance you may ex perience, knowing that that is part of the pro cess. A gumptious player could 'just play' chess and not be distracted by thoughts of how he's doing, or what he should be doing instead. He brings himself directly to the experience without imposing any stale opinion about it. He is ready to create and he is ready to react, with out any prior judgement of which should come first. You can recognize gumption as that qual ity of mind where you feel you are doing the right thing in the right place at the right time.
In this respect, what I find tragic is to see children being forced to play chess by parents when they have no particular love for the game. This is sure to kill their gumption for chess be cause gumption tends to happen when we per sonally identify with what we're doing, and you'll never feel it if you spend your time in a pursuit that doesn't allow you to be who you are. Similarly, you have little chance of feeling gumptious if all you care about is gaining a par ticular result because then you're liable to re sent the fact that you have to sit down at the board for however many hours. Then, rather than identify yourself with the chess struggle, you'll think only about the position with refer ence to the result you are seeking, and thus won't feel any identification with the position at all; it will seem alien to you. Furthermore, lack of gumption may be one of the symptoms
of Looseness, which we'll consider in Chapter
7.
There are many ways to cultivate gumption, but the main way is simply to be silent for a while. In a practical sense this would involve a
pre-game walk or arriving at the board a bit early. The aim is somehow to combine your de sire for victory with the love of the contest and the silence helps to remind you that they both come from yourself. Gumption is also created when we have a break from chess and return to it with freshness and enthusiasm or when we have the flush of pride in ourselves after a great result, and we wish to repeat the experience.
I am now going to consider three scenarios and the potential 'gumption traps' they entail. These are situations which occur as a direct re sult of Wanting and threaten to sever the links between desire and combat. The first is when you are hoping to win a game but the position seems very drawish and you're getting frus trated, the second is where you are much worse or completely lost and can't find the will to put up any resistance, and the third is where you are much better or winning and just wish your op ponent would resign.