Wanna conquer all? Start w/ one.

What I'm thinking about today:

Josh Waitzkin—the chess prodigy of Searching for Bobby Fischer fame—teaches chess according to this principle. With a new student, he starts with just a pawn and a king against a king. With three pieces on the board, it’s complex enough to teach the essential principles of chess, but not so complex as to be overwhelming.

If you start by studying complicated chess openings with all the pieces on the board, it’s difficult to focus on the principles because you are overwhelmed by how much is happening on the board. So while his student’s ambition may be to become the greatest chess player in the world, they start with just three pieces on the board. -Taylor Pearson