Play the Next Best Move

Good Advice for Chess and Life

I’m typing this from the Austin Grandmaster Chess Academy.

It’s 10:42am CT on a Saturday. Emerson is 42 minutes into his first game. He’ll play four rounds of chess—each game will be about two hours long.

Now…

I just chatted with a couple awesome parents and then sat down in a little room where the parents hang out while their kids play.

Emerson is on one of the top four boards which means his games are live-streamed. I can watch live and then enter each move into chess.com to see how he’s doing. That’s what I just did.

He’s 15 moves into his game.

He’s up.

Awesome.

So…

Today we’re going to chat about what Emerson and I chatted about as we set the intention for the tournament.

It’s based on some wisdom he recently got from the Hall of Fame coach I still need to tell you more about.

That wisdom?

He told Emerson to simply “play the next best move.”

I got goosebumps typing that.

It’s SUCH powerful wisdom.

His coach shared that in the context of their training sessions in which they were reviewing his games.

He noticed that, when Emerson gets AHEAD, he tends to calculate less and can then lose the lead. When he falls behind, he may press too much and lose a game when he could have drawn it.

So…

His coach told him that HE DOESN’T CARE whether Emerson is ahead or behind.

What he wants him to focus on is very (very!) simple.

Play the next best move.

That’s what we were talking about in between sets of burpees as we walked around the neighborhood where the chess academy is based before his first round.

I told him just how *brilliant* that wisdom is—for chess AND for life.

Then I told him that one of THE all-time best mental toughness coaches who works with some of THE absolute best golfers wrote a whole book on the subject.

That guy’s name is Bob Rotella.

We’ve featured a bunch of his books including How Champions Think and Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect

He also wrote a book called: Make Your Next Shot Your Best Shot.

Watch any truly elite golfer playing at their best and you’ll see them do EXACTLY that.

They know how to flip the switch. Focus on their next shot. And dominate.

I can say that with absolute certainty after having the opportunity to work with some of these guys (goosebumps) and then WATCHING them put it into practice at the biggest golf events in the world—from Luke Donald and his European Ryder Cup winning team to Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose competing at the Masters to Aaron Rai dominating the final holes of the PGA Championship.

They know how to make their next shot their best shot. And they RELENTLESSLY TRAINED themselves to be able to do that in the most pressure-packed moments of their lives.

(Goosebumps again.)

That’s Today’s +1.

I don’t care whether you feel like you’re ahead in the game of life right now or you feel like you’re a little behind.

Make your next shot your best shot.

Play the next best move.

All day.

Every day.

Especially…

TODAY.

P.S. After typing that I might have just taken a sip from the European Ryder Cup YETI bottle Luke sent me after supporting him and the boys. 🤓 ⛳️ 🏌️

P.P.S. Emerson won. Just played one of his cleanest, most precise games ever. Awesome. 👏

Quick context. As you know if you’ve been following along, Emerson is REALLY (!!!) into chess. He wants to be a Grandmaster.

We home school him so he can (and does!) spend nearly all day every day crushing it. 😆 🤓

So…

A couple days ago I shared the fact that he got to 2600 on http://chess.com in both Blitz and Bullet. As I said…

For normal humans, that doesn’t mean anything. ChatGPT summarized it by saying:

“Emerson is 2604 blitz on http://chess.com, ranked #5,110 globally. With an estimated 25–35 million active/ranked blitz players, that puts him at roughly the 99.98th percentile—about the top 150–200 players out of every million.”

Now…

When I shared that and an image of his growth trajectory with a dear friend, he said: “Amazing! That is a nice, steady trajectory for my man E!

And: “That #5,110 sounds so insane when put against possible 35 million people 🤯🤯”

To which I said: “Thank you!!!”

And: “The best parts are the diminutions in performance (!!) and then the plateau of latent potential then explosive growth….

TEXTBOOK mastery!!!! Goosebumps.”

That’s Today’s +1.

Let’s joyfully go for our goals and remember that growth does NOT exist on a straight up and to the right arc.

There will ALWAYS (!) be painful plateaus and even a few steps back and a diminution in our performance.

The master KNOWS that. And keeps training. Knowing the next burst in improvement is just around the corner.

Let’s know what we want. Go ALL IN. Embrace the journey.

And focus on making TODAY a masterpiece.

P.S. We celebrated Emerson’s big milestone with a trip to one of his favorite restaurants for lunch then to see the Odyssey then we went back for dinner. Hah.

As we enjoyed our second meal there, I realized we went to the same restaurant and sat fifteen feet away from the same table 4 years ago after his first tournament. Look at how much he’s grown!! 😳!!

So humbling and so inspiring.

(Added a pic of him with his state championship trophy from 3.5 years ago and a recent pic with the same tournament director to capture how big he is getting as well. My goodness time flies!!)