Blog Post #95 - How do you win a Scholastic kids chess tournament?

There we were! (Where?- Dallas May 2013 k-8 US National chess Tournament).
3.5 days of chess in Dallas last year during May.

Once again playing chess - yes from my 2 year old who bought an orange Queen key chain and kept next to every available king in every board  that he could find and yell 'checkmate' to the dispair of most kids who were getting ready to play for next couple of minutes to hours!

I always wonder when a game starts to myself when will my son finish the game?

If he finished early win or lose he didn't play a good game. I expect him to play for at-least 30 min and he did play for closer to an hour!

Bobby fisher mentions about what he calls 'Best Move'. If you play the best move every time you will play the best game.

 If the other kids wins in that board at that time, the other kid was better and at least you put up a fight!.


I learnt quite a few things about chess games

Blitz - speed chess. Each player got 5 minutes to play and in total 10mintues game. Move to the other side and play the other color. So 2 games with same kid makes one round. So 6 rounds =12 games.

Kids were having fun. From 5-9 pm it became tiring.

Lessons from Blitz:

1. You can win using chess pieces or by using time(you must be fast enough to make the 'right move'.

2. By making your opponent lose time - making them think by playing your best move .

3. Sometimes Kids cried - these kids didn't want to lose like the rest of us. But some kids were bouncing back quick. we can always learn from kids not to be sad after losing. They know to treat these as games and move on. Losing one game out of 12 doesn't carry forward the loss unless you carry the 'sadness' with you along . Just like in life , in chess - a loss is temporary and specific as long as you treat it that way. If you see a loss or a setback as a starting point of series of failure you have the ability to make them true!. Next time when your child loses let them know that this loss will have nothing to do with the next game or next tournament and it is temporary setback.(Easier said than done!)

"Real chess" - 

This is the not so fast chess games - the one where kids could use all tricks available.

Here are some I gathered

1. Using fools mate and cheap chess tactics and tricks can be applied to win fast!. 

4 moves 5 minutes both are kids are out! What happened? One kid knew some 4 step strategy to finish the game.

This is not considered good as the winner didn't show respect for the game and neither the loser.
It is said that Bobby Fischer wont sign autograph to anyone who didn't play chess and worse yet - he might even sign their books but not anyone who played bad!
You better to good or don't play at all to get Bobby Fischer's autographs  was his message.


2. Using time  - In one grand master Game Mikhail Tal vs. Bobby Fischer , Tal took 10 minutes to move the e4 pawn as white. That 10 minutes was used by Tal to look,re look and do everything to irritate Bobby Fischer. For Grand Masters and Novice time is a critical weapon. When you know your next move and when you resist the urge to move and try to find the better 'best' move  it brings the best out of office. Easily said than done!

3. Using rating - Some kids will say  - Your rating is only 400 I will beat you. This helps the kid boost  their morale and the enthusiasm of the other kid . As a tactics it works well for the kid with the higher rating to demoralize even before the game starts .

Your kid needs to be reminded that he/she has to beat this kid and may more to improve their ratings and it is the game that will determine the rating and not rating that will determine the game.

4. Using Grade - Kids  from a higher grade have a mental maturity and an advantage to tell the 'little' kids that they are - little. A 1st Grade kid who can beat a 5th grader gets offended when the 5th Grader says play your best game my little 1st grader!.

5. Using Size  - Once my wife mentioned that a 7th Grader who was playing my 1st Grader was looking like a real Houson Astros baseball player as opposed to a kid wearing a Houston Astros T-shirt. Size matters!
Some kids look naive and petite. Don't underestimate or overestimate based on size.

6. Using words - Some  kids use foul language, bad words and non polite words. Some kids use kind words - "Please don't take my Queen!" . Sometimes kids ask questions like - "What should I play next?" or "can you play this move?" .  In either case - harsh or pleasing words can affect the outcome.

7. Using body language - RLS - restless leg syndrome,  moving hands over pieces, throwing pieces away or on the board - anything can be out there when you face an opponent.  Be friendly with the person on and off the board. Don't get carried away with body languages.

8. Using speed - when you are ready and the opponent is not.  If the opponent has figured 5 moves and you didnt - you need to watch out.

Remember once you find a best move in chess you have to wait to find a - better move. This is something you need to remember all the time! Speed doesnt win the game not even in Blitz

9. Laughing or smiling or blushing - and make it appear as a win . At time kids smile or blush to appear more confident than they really are!. Even if one kid has the winning change the other one can use laughing as a means to demoralize the other kid.

10. Calling on Authority to complaint against your opponent - This is practiced more often than you can realize. Most of the time little kids and adults are afraid of authority. When one kid calls the authority and complains it is natural for the other kid to feel nervous and has to defend. Now instead of chess you are negotiating your actions "I didn't touch that piece". "He moved the piece back and re-moved"

You can use all the lessons above for most sports and real life - corporate and personal.

Play well - win or lose be gracious to your self and the other person.

It's just a game.

Keep Playing
Siva

Blog Post #93 - Letter writers - Famous letters from history !

When I was young and in college (long time ago!) my mom used to write letters and I was so happy to receive them and read/re-read them. Now, other than my office emails,junk mails and other useless emails in my inbox there is no letter of significance in my inbox (and in my deleted mails).

We write emails,facebook posts, tweets,useless blogs(like this),comments and everything else that may not be stored and sold in auctions in the future. I want to bring attention to few letters in history that changed the course of history or created history.

If you know more letters like these please post them as 'comments' to this post.

Science Letters

In one of my previous post I had written about Einstein and his letter to FDR.

Link to the post here. 

His letter was ignored by the US administrator up until the pearl harbor attack. After that the letter gained significance and the rest is history(always rest is history then what is geography?)

I read recently in the book 'Disappearing Spoon' about the letter Georgy Flyorov wrote to Stalin which encouraged Russia to start a nuclear program. Imagine one letter starting the entire nuclear program !

Charles Batchelor - right hand man for Edison wrote a letter a gave to Tesla . 

I had written another blog about Tesla and the letter he brought with him. Link to the post here 

Spiritual letter 

I had also mentioned earlier about Mother Theresa and her letters to Vatican,

Link to that post here

Mother Theresa was skeptical about her role ,God's plan and trust in Jesus. She wrote them as letters to Vatican which was published as part of her claim to Sainthood. Being divine is no big deal. Being a human and attaining divinity is where Mother Theresa proved to be worthy as a Saint and one of the greatest humans who walked on this earth!

From the Prison

Indian freedom fighters wrote letters - Gandhi . I was amazed to see his letters where he signs "I am etc.." or "Yours etc.." . Look at some of his famous letters here

As the events of the Birmingham Campaign intensified on the city’s streets, Martin Luther King, Jr., composed a letter from his prison cell in Birmingham in response to local religious leaders’ criticisms of the campaign: “Never before have I written so long a letter. I’m afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?” (King, Why,94-95). 

     From this link

MLK wrote his famous letter  from Birmingham JailMandela wrote letters from Jail.

Here is a collection of 12 letters from Mandela.

1 country got independence, 2 others got equal rights for all humans by men who wrote letters from Jail(among other things)

There is a old Crazy mohan ( a Tamil play writer )joke  I remember where a person is asked "Do you read  letters to the editor?" The other promptly answers "I don't read letters not addressed to me".

I encourage y'all to read some of these letters(not addressed to you) to understand what they individuals tried conveying using an apparatus called pen on an unique piece of something called paper - in this day of apps and web - hand letters written letters are like painting inside a cave!

Keep writing(electronically of course!)

Sivakumar Manikanteswaran

Blog Post #92 - Mystery and Puzzles What's the difference?

While reading Malcolm Gladwell's book "What the dog saw" I came across  this interesting difference and I think it helps most of us to find out what we are dealing with in life and in business (and in business life and in the business of life!).

According to Gladwell in his book

The national-security expert Gregory Treverton has famously made a distinction between puzzles and mysteries. Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts are a puzzle. We can’t find him because we don’t have enough information. The key to the puzzle will probably come from someone close to bin Laden, and until we can find that source bin Laden will remain at large.

The problem of what would happen in Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein was, by contrast, a mystery. It wasn’t a question that had a simple, factual answer. Mysteries require judgments and the assessment of uncertainty, and the hard part is not that we have too little information but that we have too much. The C.I.A. had a position on what a post-invasion Iraq would look like, and so did the Pentagon and the State Department and Colin Powell and Dick Cheney and any number of political scientists and journalists and think-tank fellows. For that matter, so did every cabdriver in Baghdad.

Gladwell is an amazing mad scientist! He pays attention to what our national security expert talks about and helps us solve the puzzle(without any mystery!)

Example In the business world - 

"It seems that Web Analytics probably fits into the "mystery" category. The problem is that we tend to think of it  as a puzzle.."   - check Avinash Kaushik blog at Link

In life we try to solve puzzles and we may think most are puzzles. Puzzles are when we try to think - give me some more information and I will find it!

Will your son become a master piano player ? Tell me when and how he practices paino every day and there I see a Beethoven and a Mozart if he is practicing 4hours a week for 10 years(apparently abandoning everything else!) . We solved a mystery. There is no puzzle here in hindsight! 

After 10 years I can tell you about a master piano player but today this looks like a puzzle!  

In a puzzle we blame the medium. Give me more , Give me more is the message!

In a mystery the problem is on the receiver and not the medium. The information may be available and sometimes too much information . What you infer with the information is what solves the mystery .

Take Enron (as the example) Gladwell sites in the book - all the data was in front of everyone. They didnt pay tax for 4 years because IRS believed they didnt make money . If someone took time to check the IRS records and the financial statements from the SPV(special purpose vehicle).

During World War 2 the Nazi propaganda minister gave all details on radio on an upcoming weapon (V2 bomber) and all it took was someone to listen to previous speech when the minister did acknowledge when U boats were devastated. The credibility was established that he would lie to his people to boost morale (even if he might lie to the world!).

Mystery requires the receiver to spread the information and solve with the given information without additional information!

Final exercise

Consider this from  a blog 

A wealthy man lives alone in a small cottage. Being partially handicapped he had everything delivered to his cottage. The mailman was delivering a letter one Thursday when he noticed that the front door was ajar. Through the opening he could see the man's body lying in a pool of dried blood. When a police officer arrived he surveyed the scene. On the porch were two bottles of warm milk, Monday's newspaper, a catalog, flyers, and unopened mail. The police officer suspects it was foul play. Who does he suspect and why?

What you solved was a puzzle or a mystery? Answer - Mystery not puzzle. You didn't need any information All you needed was to use the available information and found the murder was the paperboy.

Keep Solving

Sivakumar Manikaneswaran

Blog Post #91 - What do you know about past tense? - Not your grammar class!

It is very interesting to understand the intricacies of  Past !!!

I was recently listening to a religious discourse and this orator talked about the 3 past tenses in Sanskrit and I was surprised to learn about the same. Thought - why not share it with my friends and enlighten them!

The next time you want to talk about the what happened in the past 

think about which past tense you are referring to

Anadyatanabhaviṣyan - Imperfect
Bhuta - Perfect
Paroksabhuta - Remote past

Anadyatanabhaviṣyan - Imperfect 
Let's say  we hear you discuss with a friend about the lunch you had last week. So you and your friend were present. Unless your friend (or you) have some kind of memory loss you both can confirm. There is no need for an external party and there are no doubts this happened!

Bhuta - Perfect
When we discuss about Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi we are referring to perfect past. This past is a time you not witnessed but guess what you have a lot of sources to confirm that there was a man named MLK Jr and he did like Gandhi's books and Gandhi has no idea about MLK as Gandhi died in 1948 much before MLK was ready for prime time! The truth is we can check on both not only from internet but also interviewing people who lived or know people who lived at that time. In short - verifiable past

Paroksabhuta  - Remote Past
All the stories you read about the past - from the caveman to Archimedes, from Socrates to Aristotle, from Aryabhata to Confucius ( I want to stay away from Religious figures). We dont know how they lived, what they did,how they spoke, we think we can verify the time but we may not be really sure!   Take Socrates for example - he never wrote anything and there is no recording on what he said except what is in "The Republic" and other books that Plato wrote. What Plato attributes Socrates is what we know as what Socrates said - "An Unexamined life is not worth living "  may as well have been said by Socrates or Plato - who knows?



So the next time you discuss the past (which most of us do all the time) check if it - perfect,imperfect or remote past. 

There are 2 futures in Sanskrit- google them! They may sound like Greek or Latin - and don't forget Sanskrit is one of the ancient languages like Greek and Latin and people at that time didn't use their time to text,email,facebook,follow,poke,tweet,whatsuped but rather think more about what to think,how to think,what to say,how to say,why to say .. all the other useless stuff that was cool at that time!

Keep Learning
Sivakumar Manikanteswaran

Blog Post #90 - Why are we seeing more chevy cars on the roads now?

The blog title has nothing to do with GM or Toyota. If you want to learn about cars quit this post now! This is about a book!

Think Like a Freak from Steven Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, and journalist Stephen Dubner I want to discuss about the great stuff I learnt from them .

I loved freakonomics and superfrekonimics from these brilliant authors. Freakonimics is also available in neflix to watch for those non book readers and people who have no time (isn't that all of us? - what is time anyway and why is it always in short supply these days)!

The book starts off with something amazing..
 In world cup - if you were asked to kick the penalty kick that will decide the fate of your nation 

Will you kick in the center -Where there is more probability to win ?

or 

On the side where there is statistically less probability to win?  

(closer to the goal post where it looks like a cool shot for you and the goal keeper to kick/catch!)

To answer, you don't need to understand soccer but  about the people.

People want to convince you that they tried along with their best effort not just use statistics and kick in center - if caught it will look like you didn't try hard!

Here are some key points from the book.

1. Be willing to say, “I don’t know.” 

You think you are good at saying I don't know? Let's find out soon . "The cost of saying “I don’t know” is higher than the cost of simply being wrong. None of us want to appear foolish or overmatched, so we often place the importance of protecting our own reputation over the collective good." - from the bn link 

What is knowing? 

Once you know that you -  will know what it means to say "I don't know". 

From the book the authors quote a study in England with 5 year old kids.. let's check how good you are?

I am going to tell you a story.

A little girl named Mary goes to the beach with her mother and brother.

They drive there in a red car.

At the beach.

They swim.

Eat some ice cream.

Play in the sand.

And have some sandwiches for lunch. So that’s the end of the short story.

So now I’m going to ask you the questions.

Warning - If you want to check your facebook or email or twitter - close this post and come back later. This is not a simple exercise and this will help you know more about you than what you do about yourself now. If you are tired see you tomorrow!

If you got past all the warnings answer the questions

---scroll down----

Did they have fish and chips for lunch?

Did they listen to music in the car?

What color was the car?

Did they drink lemonade with their lunch?

What flavor ice cream did Mary have?

Did you know which questions had the answer "I don't know" ? 
-----scroll down----

Did they listen to music in the car?

Did they drink lemonade with their lunch?

What flavor ice cream did Mary have?

If you had answer one of these 3 questions - next time remember that there is an  option - I don't know! ( I answered all 3- lot of work pending for me!)

Do you know how to peel a banana?  If you can answer yes to this question and see this video Link then you will know how to peel a banana.

Unless you acknowledge you don't know you can't learn.

2. Ignore boundaries.

"Who is Bill Gates?" When I asked my son Arnav he didn't  hesitate and answered the guy who lost to Magnus Carlson

Watch the game here 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84NwnSltHFo

When all you know is chess then Bill Gates looks like a loser to Magnus Carlson!!!  

Kids are amazing and my  kids are fascinating (so are yours!).

Instead of asking a question "what is wrong with the educational system" you might ask "how can i make educational system work for my kid!" The authors discuss about the guy who ate too many hot dogs.. ignoring what was previously limit and doubled the number from the previous world record by not asking the question - "How can I eat more hot dogs?" to "How can I make these hot dogs more 'eatable'? " (Check the book or google to find how to eat 50+ hot dogs( a year's supply for most carnivores ) in under 12 minutes !

3. Think like a child. 

I took a lot of time to explain about the car industry the other day- counties  in which cars in made all the way to Tesla electric cars. While we have the Hyundai to the Toyota Arush (my little one) loves Chevy and BMW.

Arnav my elder son started teaching Arush how to locate these Chevy cars which comes in all shapes and sizes and eventually asked me...

Daddy - Why are we seeing more chevy cars on the roads now?

Once you who what you are looking for , you find it everywhere! 

When I asked the question - what language do they speak in USA Arnav mentioned

In America people speaks all languages, in India they speak all languages and in China they speak all languages.  

When do we say people speak German in Germany when we know some people in Germany discussing in Italian while others in Telugu. 

I think the question needs to be the "What is the official language of USA or not what language do they in USA?" . 

Children learn new stuff because they are ready to ask naive questions. Do you catch yourself asking the question "This might be a stupid question ... and " . ? Most people think asking questions are stupid and asking stupid questions make them stupider??!!! Do you?

4. Incentivize people, but don’t manipulate them. - Next post

The story is always about how a British General in India offered bounty(money) for each cobra skin brought to him and magically the population of cobras increased in India. People started breeding cobras and killing them. Brought them to the king (aka British General in India - who thought they were kings) and god money from Saheb!

The wrong incentive always pushes people to do stuff that you may not want . Think about it before you offer any incentive to people or kids .

5. Get your garden to weed itself. - Next post

You must read this pdf to know the answer to - why Nigerian e-mail scammers prominently say they are from Nigeria ?

From wikipedia quoting bible - Link

The story is recounted in Bible - Two young women who lived in the same house and who both had an infant son came to Solomon for a judgment. One of the women claimed that the other, after accidentally smothering her own son while sleeping, had exchanged the two children to make it appear that the living child was hers. The other woman denied this and so both women claimed to be the mother of the living son and said that the dead boy belonged to the other.
After some deliberation, King Solomon called for a sword to be brought before him. He declared that there was only one fair solution: the live son must be split in two, each woman receiving half of the child. Upon hearing this terrible verdict, the boy's true mother cried out, "Oh Lord, give the baby to her, just don't kill him!" The liar, in her bitter jealousy, exclaimed, "It shall be neither mine nor yours—divide it!"
The king declared the first mother as the true mother, as a true, loving mother would rather surrender her baby to another than hurt him, and gave her the baby. King Solomon's judgment became known throughout all of Israel and was considered an example of profound wisdom.

6. When facing a tough decision, flip a coin. - Next post

No one knows the future. Experts who claim to know a lot are wrong 40% of the time. More times than even flipping a coin  - which is closer to 50% for larger number (not for all numbers remember that!)

Now when you want to quit anything you have 3 problems that you are trying to address

1. If you quit people and animals (the whole world) will think you  are a failure. 

2. You already invested time in the career,money in the project et all - sunk cost.

3. Should you quit and do that? or many other things which are other opportunities to consider - opportunity cost.

Here is an example

Let's say you are painting your home and you are not good at that(what are you good at?). Your room is painted half way and it looks ugly!

1. If you quit painting the room you may be perceived(?!) as a bad painter (which you are !)

2. You spend 3 hours in it and $120 and trips to homedepot(or lowes!) and think this can be completed in next 2 hours.

3. Should you hire a painter or ask a friend ?What will you do with that time you get? - opportunity cost.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2014/06/27/6-surprising-ways-thinking-like-a-freak-can-help-you-succeed/

Now you know how to think like a 'Freak'

Keep Learning 

Sivakumar Manikanteswaran