Ben Ballance

In his book All the Wrong Moves, Sacha Chapin writes about his quest to become a better chess player. As part of this adventure, he enlists the help of chess coach GM Ben Finegold.

Throughout the course of the book, Ben shares several rules to playing chess – two of which stood out to me:

1. Don’t give your pieces away (beginner chess players do this a lot).
2. Play each game of chess as though you are willing to play forever.

I think these rules are useful in non-chess contexts too:

1. Avoid errors as best you reasonably can.
2. Try not to view anything as “finished”. Everything is a work-in-progress.