Taking the Long Way on Our Trip to Win at Chess

I travelled to West Yellowstone for a meeting in May. Because of the cost of flights, I flew into Billings and had a 3.5 hour drive to West Yellowstone. And I enjoyed every minute of it (before and after my meeting)! What a beautiful country we live in! If you have vacation time in the future, drive through Montana! And make sure you take time to visit Yellowstone. Isn't our Creater awesome? Wow!

Flying and then driving 3.5 hours can be profitable in chess. Sometimes in our games, we rush to win and end up losing. We lose perspective on the game and miss important elements on the journey. Sometimes we are too focused on our moves to realize the consequences of our opponent's move.

It may benefit us to take a step back when we are not being timed. We can flip the board around look at it from the perspective of our opponent. If you are playing OTB, you can even stand on the side for a fresh pespective. We should not get so wrapped up in driving toward the win that we miss the beauty of the scenery. I don't know how many times I have missed checkmate in 1 moves because I was focused in the wrong place.

In a recent game, I captured a pawn with a knight which was captured by another pawn. So I am two points behind, but it opened up a line to capture his rook, put the king in check, and capture his other rook. But I had to plan out the whole 3.5 hour drive to gain the perspective needed to end up 8 points ahead in the game. Look. Plan. Then move. And win!