#449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery

Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery | Brought to you by Helix Sleep http://helixsleep.com/tim, ExpressVPN http://expressvpn.com/tim, and Athletic Greens http://athleticgreens.com/tim. Maurice Ashley (@MauriceAshley https://twitter.com/MauriceAshley) made history in 1999 when he became the first African-American chess Grandmaster. He is a three-time national championship coach, an author, ESPN commentator, iPhone app designer, puzzle inventor, and motivational speaker. Maurice is well known for providing dynamic live tournament coverage of world-class chess competitions and matches. His high-energy, unapologetic, and irreverent commentary combines Brooklyn street smarts with professional ESPN-style sports analysis. He has covered every class of elite event, including the World Chess Championships, the US Chess Championships, the Grand Chess Tour, and the legendary “man vs. machine” matches between Garry Kasparov and IBM’s Deep Blue. Traveling the world as an ardent spokesperson for the many character-building effects of chess, Maurice consults with universities, schools, chess clubs, executives, and celebrities on how chess principles and strategies can be applied to improve business practices and assist with personal growth. Maurice also acts as a master of ceremonies and inspirational speaker at business conferences and high-class chess events. Maurice has received multiple community service awards from city governments, universities, and community groups for his work. In recognition of his immense contribution to the game, he was inducted into the US Chess Hall of Fame in 2016 and the Brooklyn Technical High School Hall of Fame in 2018. This podcast episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep http://helixsleep.com/tim! Helix was selected as the #1 best overall mattress pick of 2020 by GQ magazine, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others. With Helix http://helixsleep.com/tim, there’s a specific mattress for each and everybody’s unique taste. Just take their quiz—only two minutes to complete http://helixsleep.com/tim—that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk free. They’ll even pick it up from you if you don’t love it. And now, to my dear listeners, Helix is offering up to 200 dollars off all mattress orders plus two free pillows at HelixSleep.com/TIM http://helixsleep.com/tim. * This episode is also brought to you by ExpressVPN https://www.expressvpn.com/tim. I’ve been using ExpressVPN since last summer to make sure that my data is secure and encrypted, without slowing my Internet speed. If you ever use public Wi-Fi at, say, a hotel or a coffee shop, where I often work and as many of my listeners do, you’re often sending data over an open network, meaning no encryption at all. A great way to ensure that all of your data is encrypted and can’t be easily read by hackers is by using ExpressVPN https://www.expressvpn.com/tim. All you need to do is download the ExpressVPN app on your computer or smartphone and then use the Internet just as you normally would. You click one button in the ExpressVPN app to secure 100% of your network data. Use my link ExpressVPN.com/Tim https://www.expressvpn.com/tim today and get an extra three months free on a one-year package! * This podcast is also brought to you by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. I get asked all the time, “If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. 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• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question? Now would be an inappropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:09Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:51Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:35Tim Ferriss?

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• 3:18Tim Ferriss?

  Visit expressvpn.com/tim to learn more. This episode of The Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, "If I could only take one supplement, what would it be?" The answer is inevitably Athletic Greens. I view it as, and a lot of you now view it as, all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it way back in 2010 in The Four Hour Body, and I did not get paid to do so. I've been using it since before that, and I use it in a lot of different ways. I travel with it to avoid getting sick, or to help mitigate the likelihood of getting sick. I take it in the morning to ensure optimal performance, and overall, it covers my bases if I can't get what I need from whole-food meals throughout the rest of the day.

• 4:03Tim Ferriss?

  And if you want to give Athletic Greens a try, they're offering a free 20-count travel pack for first-time users. I nearly always travel with at least three or four of these one-dose bags. In other words, if you buy Athletic Greens as a first-time buyer, you now get, for a limited time, an extra $79 in free product. So, check out the details at athleticgreens.com/tim. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/tim for your free travel pack with any purchase.

• 4:33Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot, what I would take if I could only take one supplement? And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase.

• 5:14Tim Ferriss?

  So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink AG1, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 5:33Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job, as always, to deconstruct world-class performers, to tease out their habits, routines, influences, favorite books, and so on, that you can apply to your own life. My guest today is a friend, Maurice Ashley. Maurice Ashley is an incredibly impressive human being on so many levels, and we get to really dig into a number of facets of his life story and lessons learned. Maurice Ashley is the first African-American international grandmaster in the annals of the game of chess, and he has translated his love to others as a three-time national championship coach, published author, ESPN commentator, iPhone app designer, puzzle inventor,

• 6:18Tim Ferriss?

  and motivational speaker. In recognition for his immense contribution to the game, Maurice was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 2016. His book Chess for Success, subtitled Using an Old Game to Build New Strengths in Children and Teens, shows the many benefits of chess, particularly for at-risk youth. His TEDx talk, Working Backward to Solve Problems, has more than a million views. He's also appeared with me. In the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu episode, which has some chess of the Tim Ferriss Experiment TV series way back in the day, joined by our mutual friend Josh Waitzkin. Maurice is very well-known for providing dynamic, live tournament coverage of world-class chess competitions and matches. His high-energy, unapologetic, and irreverent commentary combines Brooklyn Street smarts,

• 7:02Tim Ferriss?

  which we talk about quite a bit, with a professional ESPN-style sports analysis. He's covered every class of elite event, including the World Chess Championships, the US Chess Championships, the Grand Chess Tour, and the legendary man versus machine matches between Garry Kasparov, or is it Kasparov? I never get that right. And IBM's Deep Blue. Traveling the world as a spokesperson for the many character-building effects of chess, Maurice consults with universities, schools, chess clubs, executives, and celebrities on how chess principles and strategies can be applied to improve business practices and accelerate personal growth. You can find him online, mauriceashley.com, on Twitter, @mauriceashley, and on Facebook, Grandmaster Maurice A., and on Instagram, Maurice Ashley Chess.

• 7:47Tim Ferriss?

  Without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with none other than Maurice Ashley. Maurice, welcome to the show.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 8:00Tim Ferriss?

  I've been looking forward to this and hoping to have you on the show for so many years now, and we've had many different points of connection, but of course, it began with our mutual friend and also popular podcast guest, Josh Waitzkin, who has known you for a very long time indeed, and he has a quote, in fact, that is in praise of your book, Chess for Success, and it goes as follows, quote, "Maurice Ashley has been like a brother to me since I was 12 years old. I know the man, I know the competitor, I know the artist, and I know the teacher." There is a lot of terrain for us to cover, a lot of nooks and crannies to explore, but I thought we would begin with Maurice the Jamaican, and I was hoping you could describe

• 8:42Tim Ferriss?

  for us your beginnings, and we could just start with the genesis.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Well, yes, I was born in Jamaica, the island, not the area of Queens, and I grew up there, I was there until I was 12 years old before I came to this country. But probably the most significant thing that happened for me in Jamaica was the fact that my mother left Jamaica to come to the United States when I was two years old. My brother was 10. My sister was seven months old and she had this opportunity to come to the US, but she couldn't bring all of us at the same time. She should only bring herself. And her leaving was really quite an event in our lives. My father wasn't with us, living with us at the time. So we grew up with our grandmother.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  And my mother would send down stuff, supplies to Jamaica, whether it be foodstuffs, flour and rice. She'd send them in a barrel and she'd send books. She'd send like notebooks and she, I remember her sending like a softball and a glove. And of course, in Jamaica, nobody played softball, baseball, nothing. So I threw the glove to the side, not knowing what to do with it. And we used the softball as a soccer ball.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  It got pretty worn down pretty quickly. It really turned into a softball very quickly after that. But we, just being raised by my grandmother, she was a teacher by training. And so she would teach us so much as, as young people. So we were really well prepared educationally because of my grandmother. And she was 64 years old at the time of my mother left. So you had to imagine a 64 year old, having had seven children of her own, now suddenly taking on the care of her daughter's children at that age, you know, when she might be thinking about maybe slowing down and retiring, enjoying herself. But for the next 10 years, she took care of us. And that was really a hugely significant part of

• 10:43Speaker 01

  growing up, you know, living there until finally my mother got the resources and the paperwork through to get us green cards and finally bring us to the United States.

• 10:52Tim Ferriss?

  When or how does competitive drive enter the picture? I love doing homework on friends of mine before they come on the show because I always find these things that I have never known, such as some of the athletic accomplishments of your siblings. Could you describe your siblings a bit and then speak to the competitive aspect?

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Well, yes, we are a competitive family. My older brother Devon is a kickboxer, boxing trainer now, but he was a three-time world champion kickboxer. And my sister, the baby, Alicia, was a six-time world champion boxer. And so we always joke about who's better and who's got more accolades and we always try to one up each other and you know, one gets into the Hall of Fame, the others are upset and the other one gets into the Hall of Fame and like my sister's not in the Boxing Hall of Fame yet. So we're, she's like, oh, man, how you guys got that on me. So yeah, we, we definitely are a very competitive family. It started, I think it's, it started very

• 12:01Speaker 01

  young. I mean, my mother, despite not being a competitor herself, had a tremendous drive, our family had a drive to succeed. You know, our circumstances were extremely modest. Jamaica wasn't what people think of it as, that at least the Northwest side of Jamaica is Montego Bay and Ocho Rios and Nick Grill and you know, a party and all that, reggae sun splash. But we lived in Kingston. And Kingston was people packed on top of each other in not great conditions. And so we knew we wanted to be something special, but you just wanted to have the resources to be able to do that. And I think it was really fortunate that we finally got that opportunity in my mother's diligence. And eventually my father re-entered

• 12:44Speaker 01

  our lives as well. And he, he's a dancer. He's a dance teacher. He was a professional dancer, danced with Martha Graham and, and was very accomplished at his own dance company as well. So, you know, the family was just a pretty driven bunch.

• 12:59Tim Ferriss?

  Why did it come to pass that you moved to the US at 12? How did that happen? And why did that move happen?

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Again, my mother, she wanted to bring us up, but she couldn't by the rules at the time, just bring her family with her. So she was allowed, in the sixties, there was a mass immigration of Caribbean folks, but you had to come by yourself in the main. And then after you had proven yourself on your own citizenship papers, et cetera, you were able to bring your family up. And, and so a lot of children, they were called barrel children, which meant that parents would come usually by themselves to the country and then they would send down supplies in a barrel. And so you'd wait for that barrel to be shipped so that you could open it up and get all the goodies from. Uh, from your parent.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  And that barrel was an indicator of how much my mother was working in order to supply materials for us to be able to survive in Jamaica. And it took her 10 years and that's what happened. It just took her 10 years. She was in New York the whole time. She's at first she was a nanny. Then she got an office job and saved up her money and got herself ready because her three children were going to be with her and she wanted to be able to afford that and take care of us. And so, uh, in 1978, we finally were able to come up and it was, it was just like her dream basically come true. A dream come true for us as well because we had been living without our mother for 10 years. And you can imagine when that finally came to pass, it was just, it was just like a fairy tale.

• 14:32Tim Ferriss?

  Was it also strange to be reunited after all that time?

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 14:37Tim Ferriss?

  Or was it?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  No, absolutely bizarre. I mean, my, for us, our grandmother was really our mother, especially for me and my sister, right? Because we were so young. I was two, my sister was less than a year old. And so we, we didn't have intimate knowledge of this woman. She would visit us when she could, every year if she could, but sometimes, uh, it took longer. And we would write her letters. It's funny, she showed us the letter, she saved the letters we wrote her from over 40 years ago. And I didn't know she had them until last summer. And she took out this pile of letters and these are the letters. Actually, it's my daughter who went down to interview her. My daughter's a budding filmmaker to interview her.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  My daughter said, do you know that grandma has letters that you wrote her from 40 years ago? Like, what are you talking about? She says, yeah, she's been saving them all this time. So when I finally go down to visit her again, I see these extraordinary letters that we wrote to her that kept that connection. And you know, you imagine it's not email. This is letters, handwritten letters being sent and waiting in expectation for letters to come back for our mother to, to tell us about our life was, where she was and, and uh, for her to hear from us. And I was a pretty poetic kid. I told her, you know, wrote poems to her, how much I loved her and how I missed her and all that, you know, it was.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Quite an extraordinary thing to do, to be able to go back and see myself as a six-year-old, seven-year-old, eight-year-old, you know, as my thoughts evolved and my intellect grew as I wrote her letters. So it was, it really was an extraordinary thing. Very strange to finally meet this mythical figure who would sacrifice so much for us to have a better life.

• 16:26Tim Ferriss?

  Where did you land in the US and how did chess enter the picture?

• 16:32Speaker 01

  We ended up in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Now, Brownsville is the same neighborhood that Mike Tyson grew up in. And I often make the joke that Brownsville was so rough that Mike had to get out of Brownsville. And it was that tough. I mean, my mother was able to get us this apartment that she could afford, which was a two-bedroom apartment. There were four of us. So my brother, sister, and I were in the one room, one bedroom, bunk bed, or the roll-out bed, actually. And my mother had the other bedroom. And my brother at the time was 20 years old. So you can imagine a 20-year-old having to sleep in the same room as his younger brother and sister. But, you know, he got his life together pretty

• 17:17Speaker 01

  quickly, went to school, then got work, and then moved out. But that's what she could afford. And it was just, you know, what it was. And Brownsville in the late 70s, early 80s was what you can imagine what Brooklyn was. Not today's Brooklyn. You know, you've got Starbucks and lattes and Park Slo Moms, you know, that's, forget it. This was BK. This was hardcore. This was drug dealers shooting every single night. Not necessarily at anyone, but just to remind the neighborhood who was in charge. They were... Prostitutes in the corners, you had car thieves. I mean, it was, it was a hot mess.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  It was Brooklyn urban blighters at its worst. New York has changed a lot since then. Brooklyn especially has changed a lot since then, but then back then it was really tough. And to answer the second part of your question, sorry, and chess came into my life when I went to Brooklyn Technical High School. Now, I knew the rules of chess, actually. I knew the rules of chess from Jamaica because we played a lot of games in Jamaica. We didn't have television. TV came on at six o'clock at night and the first thing that came on was the news and it was two channels. So you didn't want to watch that as a kid. So you learned to play games. And I had a very passionate love of games and it was a lot of board games, whether it was checkers, which we call draws,

• 18:43Speaker 01

  whether it was card games and chess was one of those games that my brother and his friends got hooked into. And I kind of played around with it for a bit. And my brother said, I used to be in the backyard, just moving the pieces around by myself. I don't even recall doing that, but later I came, when I came to the US, in high school, I saw a friend playing. And that's when I got involved. I started playing. This guy I thought I could beat, he just crushed me. And I couldn't understand him, you know, again, competitive side, it's like, what's going on? And it just so happened, I was in the library, that I saw a book on chess and that's where the love affair began.

• 19:20Tim Ferriss?

  What was it about the book? If my research is serving me right, this is a book, I believe by Paul Morphy, if I'm getting the name correct. Maybe, maybe not, but what was it about the book on chess and your experience that gripped you so much?

• 19:38Speaker 01

  It wasn't by Paul Morphy. It included Paul Morphy as one of the greatest chess players of all time. And I don't know if it was solely the book or the fact that I wanted to kick my friend's ass. Like, I think that's the case. Like, wait a minute, there's a book? Oh, I'm gonna take this out. His name was Klotar Kolos. His family is from Haiti, another immigrant family. And, but everybody called him Chico. And Chico just had mauled me and it's like this, and then there was a book? Wait a minute, I'm taking out this book. I'm gonna study the book. And then I got something for Chico. And I read it. I was fascinated. Wow, there's strategies?

• 20:19Speaker 01

  You're supposed to do certain specific openings and these ideas? I didn't know any of it existed. And then I, so when I was done, I went back to play him. And the first game I played him crushed me again. And it turns out that he had read that book and many other books. He, he had game and I was stupid thinking that I was gonna get him. But then that really stoked the fire. And from then on, we played chess every single day after school, like every single day. It was basically school, homework, chess. And that was my life in high school.

• 20:55Tim Ferriss?

  So never underestimate the, the hellfire fueled redemption from an ass kicking. I think would be one moral to take away from that. And the next chapters that followed, I've done a little bit of reading. And I suppose we could start with the Black Bear School of Chess. What is the Black Bear School of Chess?

• 21:16Speaker 01

  That is indeed the next chapter. The group itself, Black Bear School, was a group of largely African American males. One Latino brother in there as well. They were a group who played chess together, either in the parks or at each other's homes. They took chess deathly seriously. They studied books. They studied encyclopedias. They studied chess material magazines in other languages. Even if they didn't speak them, they would get out a dictionary.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  From a magazine, I remember you have a German magazine or a Russian magazine, Chokmatny Bulletin, and they would take a dictionary and go over each word, translating word by word to find out what was in the material. Which, you know, you think about, I mean, it's no Google Translate, right? You don't speak the language, you're literally trying to figure out word by word what the explanation is. Of course, the piece names were different, but they were consistent. So, for example, in Russian, a bishop is a sloan, and it would look like a capital letter C. So whenever you saw that, you knew that was the name of the piece that was moving, and then you know what square it was moving to. So at least the games, they could go over very easily.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  But the explanations, they had to look up and do it very slowly. So you can imagine the seriousness they took chess with. And I got to meet them when a friend of mine, who I was beating, told me that he knew a group that could beat me. And I was a big trash talker, so when he said that, I was like, please, bring it. And he told me about the Black Bear School, and he took me to one of their homes, the home of Willie Johnson, who remains a mentor to me today. Everybody calls him Pop, but he's just like, he was like a father figure to me. And I went and I played Willie that first game, and he was just so friendly and amicable, and he thought he was gonna teach me a lesson. Then it turns out that I was good enough to hang with him.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  And that was my indoctrination into this group that just was so amazingly competitive, you cannot imagine. I mean, we were already competitive, and these guys were out to kill each other every single day, every single time they played. They'd play on the weekends, they would stay at Willie's house from Friday night until Sunday, and just be playing chess. And generally speaking, we're talking about blitz chess, not the slower classical version where you stop and think for a while, but the fast version where it's just like dynamic and the clock, as you know. So it was just fun to be in that kind of group. And they didn't teach me anything. When I was the youngest one, I was a big trash talker.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  They were very upset when I talked so much trash, and they said, you gotta respect your elders. They were generally about seven to 15 years older than me. But they knew I had competitive fire. And so their way of teaching me was to beat me down, send me home and make me go study. And that was training by fire.

• 24:22Tim Ferriss?

  Just to define some terms, you mentioned classical chess and blitz chess. The way I've heard you describe the difference, and I want you to fact check this and correct me if I get anything wrong. But in classical chess, you might have a four hour session, say back in the day, four hour session, a break, you'd sort of recuse yourselves, study the position, come back the next day, play another four hours. You can take your time. With blitz chess, how much time does each side have? Or I guess it varies, but the way that you guys played?

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, five minutes per side for the whole game. It's a two faced clock. So each side has their own time. Whenever I make a move, I press the clock and the other person's time starts ticking. My time freezes. And we play the game that way. If you run out of time, you lose. So you can imagine five minutes total per game that you have even faster than blitz. You have bullet, which is one minute per side, which, which is really like Edward Scissorhands speed. These are moving. But five minutes was still plenty fast, but enough time for you to study the position somewhat, get a good feel and go. A lot more instinct, a lot more tactical tricks and traps. Some definitely room for strategic play. But classical chess,

• 25:33Speaker 01

  back in the day, as you described it, you would adjourn games after the first time period. When computers came along, you couldn't adjourn games anymore because people could just go to the computer and ask for help. So that killed adjournments. And now games could last between three and a half to six hours. There's no set time because you keep getting time added depending on the number of moves you play. And it varies. But like I said, between three and a half to six hours. That gives you ample time to study, to be accurate, to analyze all the moves, to play strategic niceties, nuances. But that's not what we grew up. But in Brooklyn, it was, it was all body blows. Just hit them, hit them again, hit them again. I mean, and guys had tactics. When I say tactics, I mean moves

• 26:18Speaker 01

  that were like pyrotechnics. You know, you, you think, where did that come from? You thought you had the position under control and And somebody would drop a move and it would just explode on the board. It's like, what? That's playable? So you, you just had to be absolutely fierce and focused and maintain that discipline all the way through because these guys were, were true ninjas on the board.

• 26:43Tim Ferriss?

  So, so let's talk about focus and maybe a, like a cow drop under the foot of focus. Smack talking, right? So trash talking is an art form and there are different schools in this, this art, different approaches. Could you describe some of the, the different schools of trash talking or different approaches to trash talking? Because this is something I had very little exposure to, but I'll give people a preview. Well, we'll probably talk about this a little bit later, but you and I spent some time together for the Tim Ferriss experiment, this TV series that was done a handful of years ago. And we got this one clip of you playing this, this trash talking player in a park in New York City that went completely viral,

• 27:27Tim Ferriss?

  has close to seven million views now. It's just amazing. And you, you do see how it's used to knock people off balance, right? So could you speak to just trash talking in general? Any way you want to tackle it?

• 27:42Speaker 01

  I think the most critical thing about trash talking is that it actually is very much an individual thing, right? It's more who you are than what you're trying to do. So each person approaches it their own way based on their personality. And if you're low key, your trash talking is going to be understated. You're not going to be loud and braggadocious, like all in the guy's face, because that's not who you are. So you would throw your own self off if you did that. You insult a person or get inside their head the way you would as yourself. And so you have the people who will just be real sarcastic,

• 28:25Speaker 01

  low key sarcastic, right? It won't even necessarily be fancy. You know, they might say something like, really? That's what you're gonna play? I mean, it's, you know, there's nothing, nothing big, nothing fancy. But it'll be in your brain somewhere. It'll plant that earworm, right? And then they'll start over and over. Somebody like Ralph Mauth, who would always say, no matter what the situation, that's what she said.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  Just every single time. That's what she said, you know, um, I'm whipping your ass. That's what she said. Like whatever, whatever it was, that was always his line. Then you had guys who would quote Shakespeare, like Vinnie Livermore, who was played by Laurence Fishburne in Josh Waitzkin's movie about Josh Waitzkin searching for Bobby Fischer. And Vinnie, he'd be quoting Shakespeare the whole time. He's like, you know, you gotta know Shakespeare to quote Shakespeare. And clearly, this guy knew Shakespeare. So that was another way. Or there'd be people who stayed very, very, let's call it sexual in the conversation, like graphic.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  And that was, that really would throw you off because chess pieces would morph into sort of like, you know, sex toys, uh, in the description, like what, like, how did that come in your head, dude? Like, could you please just play chess? But that's where the conversation would go. And, and, uh, and anything they were doing, you know, like the rook is penetrating into the rear. You know, like what of your position? Really? Okay. We're gonna go with that. So everything and anything that come at you, depending on who it was that you were talking to. And also, of course, you, you also have colorful language, right? And you couldn't avoid that either. So yeah, trash talking, really, I would say it's not so much a generic art form with various schools.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  And so much more so, the person expressing themselves at the board in a way that allows for them to feel like they're in flow and potentially disturbs your equanimity. And if that happens, then, then you're done. Like I saw people who were better chess players just lose their cool at the board because the other guy just kept talking. And, and the worst thing to do to a trash talker is tell them to stop talking. Now you're done. Now you're like, really? Okay, I'm gonna stop talking. You know, I'll stop talking because I want to respect you. So I'm gonna stop talking right now. I mean, really, you're a better player, so let me stop saying anything and disrespecting you by talking. That's what's gonna

• 31:03Speaker 01

  happen. It's just gonna be unending stream. And you're never gonna get past it. So the best thing to do is to keep cool. And so for me, that was real, really good training in not being distracted, no matter what was happening around you.

• 31:15Tim Ferriss?

  Did any of those players in the Black Bear School of Chess, Black Bear School, go on to play elsewhere? And where did you go in terms of evolution from that point?

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely. These players ended up becoming master players, like legit chess masters, not as far as grandmasters and international masters, which is the highest levels of chess, grandmaster being the highest thought you could have. But these were strong players. Now, the problem for the Black Bear School, in my opinion, as I was coming up, was I recognized that it was a bit too much infighting. Players wanted to beat each other. So you had the best players like William Morrison, who we called the exterminator, or George Golden, the fire breather. And then you had guys like Ronald Simpson, as I mentioned, Willie Johnson, Ernest

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Colding, Mark Mears, Chris Welcome. These guys were serious, high-level talents. But their best wish was to destroy each other that day. And for me, coming up as a young player, as in my teens, I didn't see the value in just beating them, because the people I was reading about in the books were grandmasters, famous players. And I wanted to be like the people in the books. I wanted to play at that level. And the only way you could do that was if I left the group or didn't stay just inside the group and played in the clubs in New York. And I was very fortunate because New York is a hotbed for chess activity and some of the strongest players in the country

• 32:52Speaker 01

  were living in New York. So I started going to the Manhattan Chess Club, the Marshall Chess Club. Those are the two venerable clubs and playing against the grandmasters there. And that took my game to another level. And it eventually allowed me, in fact, to come back to the Black Bear School and become the president, as we called it. I started dominating those guys because I wasn't just about playing inside this one group.

• 33:18Tim Ferriss?

  Did you decide to go to the clubs? Did someone else suggest it?

• 33:21Speaker 01

  No, I did. I did. Once I found out that clubs were there, I wanted to find out, you know, who played there. Where can you find the best players? And so I went, a friend of mine, Sam Singh and I, we hung out. He had a beat up car, but it was good enough. And we would drive to the city regularly and play tournament chess, play against all the masters and international masters and grandmasters of the club. And that's, that really took our game to another level.

• 33:51Tim Ferriss?

  What is the atmosphere in the, a venerable chess club? What does that look like? What does it feel like?

• 33:58Speaker 01

  As you would expect. It was not Brooklyn, I can tell you that, not Brownsville. It was different. It was definitely different. You know, you had people who were coming out of work, businessmen in suits. They didn't quite know what to do with a young black kid from Brooklyn. And so it was, it was definitely a different vibe to what I was normally experiencing. But chess is chess. And once you see good moves, you understand you're playing against a player. So I wanted to be that player whenever I played against those guys. And, you know, that's what it was like. So it was, it was definitely a much more formal affair, but it was, as long as it was about chess, then I didn't care.

• 34:42Tim Ferriss?

  I want you to correct me if I'm getting this wrong, but I read about a moment when things seemed to have crystallized for you in a way, and that was watching Tiger Woods in 1997. Was that an important moment for you?

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. You're fast forwarding, big time though. So now I'm way out of my teens. I'm now, uh, at that time, I'm thirty-one years old. So we're jumping fast. I had gone through many experiences before then, but I, my quest to become a grandmaster was seemingly stymied. Because by then I had a daughter, uh, I, I had to work for a living. I was teaching chess actually primarily, but I was also doing chess commentary and the like. And so I was fully involved in, in sort of fatherhood and, and making money. And my dream was to become a grandmaster. So by the time we get to Tiger in ninety-seven, he, he was at the Masters.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  And he dominated that Masters. You know, remember that was his coming out part. And that really struck a chord for me because when I watched him be a, a dominant player in a sport that largely didn't look like him, and I was in the same boat in my sport. Chess is a sport, yes. And I felt like one day I wanted to do that. I'd been dreaming about that for so long. And I had never done it. So when I saw Tiger do that, I went into a bit of a depression at first. I was like, what the heck? You know, I'm distracted by all these things that I'm doing and I'm not focusing on my game, my craft, you know, my passion to finally do what I've always wanted to do.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  And that eventually turned into inspiration and search, the quest to finally do it. And I was very fortunate because at the time I was working in an organization, Harlem Educational Activities Fund, that had a sponsor by the name of Dan Rose. Uh, he was a philanthropist actually who gave to this fund to help young kids in Harlem. And I was teaching in his chess programs and we produced national champions and the like. And he heard about my dream and he said, listen, I'll support you on this quest. As long as you come back to Harlem after you're done and get back, which I was very happy for that deal. And I was able to stop everything I was doing and just focus on chess. And about nineteen months later, I got my final norm that made me a grandmaster.

• 37:01Tim Ferriss?

  So I want to dig into a bunch of aspects of this because this seems like it could be fertile ground for exploring quite a bit. When did the depression get transmuted into inspiration? Like, how long did that take?

• 37:17Tim Ferriss?

  What did it look like? Because a lot of people, and I've certainly had these periods where I go into a low and I might recover to baseline, but it doesn't get translated into this new source of momentum, which seems to have happened to you. So how did that happen? And how long did it take?

• 37:35Speaker 01

  You know, in this specific case, it took as long as it took for me to find out that I would have a sponsor who would make it financially feasible for me to pursue what I wanted to pursue. Right? So this is a bit different from what you're describing.

• 37:50Tim Ferriss?

  Were you kind of telling as many people as you could? And that's how it wound its way back to this philanthropist? Because that was, I mean, it was sort of manifested, not in the secret sense, but he somehow heard about this dream. So I'd just love to hear you describe how that came together, sort of accidentally, indirectly, or otherwise.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was sort of incidentally. The woman in charge of this foundation, her name is Courtney Welch, she was a friend of mine as well. So she knew, of course, she was the one who hired me to teach these kids chess. And I don't know how long after this happened with Tiger and I'd been marinating in my spirit and, you know, I was like a caged tiger, if you will. And I was talking to Courtney about it. And of course, she was the head of the foundation that Dan supported. So she knew him well. So when I was talking to her, I said, you know, I can't believe what would happen. This thing has really been bothering me. And I feel like I'm not doing everything I'm supposed to be doing.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  I'd really had gone to the top of coaching. Like I said, my kids had won national championships, my students. I was doing commentary, I was traveling the world doing commentary. I'd done a CD-ROM by then. And it felt like I was doing everything that was just peripheral to what I really wanted to do. And I was basically letting her know that this is where my spirit was. And she was the one who said, well, why don't you just ask Dan? And that hadn't even occurred to me. Even though he was just basically one degree of separation away, I said, I don't know. Okay, I guess. And so I just did. And very quickly, he said, I love this. You know, you've done so much for the kids and for our organization.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  I'd be happy to support you. And I feel like that's an important thing to like when you have a dream, you're not on an island, right? You're not isolated. There are people around who will sense your sincerity, will sense your drive, will sense your determination. And sometimes it just comes together. And I feel very fortunate that this all happened for me. But I feel like this happened to me at various points in my life, that a window opens because I'm manifesting out there that this is what I want. It may not have been a specific person to to help sponsor me and sponsor my quest, but just somehow it just opens. And I always have faith that something's going to happen. You just have to keep at it, keep that window, that window open, that spirit open for

• 40:19Speaker 01

  possibility to come to you and just don't lose that passion, that drive, because it's not happening right away.

• 40:27Tim Ferriss?

  How does someone, and this is as much for me as for people listening, become rated in chess, becoming a master or a grandmaster or anything in between? Is it a function of racking up competition points? What is the process for progressing upward through the ranks in chess?

• 40:47Speaker 01

  You got to beat people. Sort of comes down to.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Well, chess has a ranking system, what we call a rating system, that was invented by a Hungarian mathematician, Arpan Elo. And he came up with a way of waiting results to compare players against other players. And once you start that and somebody has a number, and then you play against that person, you get a certain number of points for beating that person or for drawing that person, or you lose points for losing to that person. And then you find out where you are on the totem pole. And that is, you know, now you've spread that out to millions of people and chess players

• 41:32Speaker 01

  all around the world get these ratings. Now, we have class players, so class A, B, C, D, on down. Then you finally become a title player is when you become an expert or a master, an international master, international grandmaster, and you're moving up the rating scale. But again, you have to do it by beating people at that next level for you to bring yourself up or dominating your level, which means you don't belong in that level anymore. So you just start accumulating a massive amount of points. It's very similar. Tennis is pretty much the same thing. To get the title officially, however, titles like international master or grandmaster, you have to perform at a certain level, rating level against other internationally ranked

• 42:15Speaker 01

  players. And those numbers, it's again, a formula depending on who you're playing against, very specific numbers. But man, they put that level so high that people spend years and years of their lives trying to attain the norms, as we call them, and you need to do it three times. So imagine taking like the bar in law and somebody says, you're gonna have to take bar three times. You're gonna have to pass it three times. Except the bar, at least you can study for and the, you know, there's content on there that you have to learn. In chess, you have to deal with the fact that whatever you know, there's somebody sitting across the board trying to destroy you and prove you wrong. And that's a very different kind of ladder to

• 42:59Speaker 01

  have to climb. So no grandmaster wants to be the one that somebody else stepped over to become a grandmaster themselves. And so it's, it's cutthroat. It's trial by fire. It's amazing. It's like the top black belts in karate, right? Your Bruce Lee's, imagine having to fight Bruce Lee if you want to call yourself a professional fighter. I mean, that's, that's the kind of stuff you have to do in chess. And so it's, it's quite a journey.

• 43:27Tim Ferriss?

  So let's talk about the dusting off the gloves. So you are teaching, you're commentating, you're doing very well in these various fields. You've created instructional materials. Then you decide to get back, get back in the ring to Try to actualize this, this dream. What does it look like to get back into training shape, so to speak? What do you do?

• 43:53Speaker 01

  So first things first, all the chess books get pulled out. You've got to have material, stuff to learn. At the time, one great development, we're talking 1997, was computer databases on chess. So we're talking about collections of games of famous players or even not so famous players that were, that were archived and in such a way that you could research individual players. So that meant that if I had to play Tim Ferriss, if he's played in a tournament somewhere, that game gets archived. I look up your games and I say, oh, so you like the Sicilian Defense. Let me make sure I prepare because that's what you're going to play against me when I play you in a couple of weeks' time.

• 44:38Tim Ferriss?

  It's like watching tape on a boxer.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 44:41Tim Ferriss?

  Or any sports sport.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  We're able to record all the games. It's one of the great things of our chess is we have games from hundreds of years. We have games from centuries ago, right? Easily games from the 1500, the Italian players, Italian school of chess. We have games purportedly Napoleon played. There's some doubt whether it was him, but nevertheless, all the top chess players of the past and certainly those of the present, we have their games. So that is important because you're talking about initially hundreds of thousands of games. Now the databases are seven million to eight million strong, meaning number of games. So what, so I could research the best players if I'm going to play world champion. I research, boom, Magnus Carlsen's name comes up and I see all his games.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  But not only that, I'm able to very easily check which, which are his favorite lines. Well, that guy plays everything, but you know, where, where does, where is an inclination? What, where does he, when does he lose? What kind of things happen to cause him to lose games? What kind of situation am I trying to avoid? So that's when you have to really dig deep into the psychology of the player through the information you're getting from their games. That was a huge part of our preparation. You can't do that half-heartedly. You gotta be ready. You got, you have, that's digging, that's note-taking, that's research at the highest level. And you gotta study your openings. So like I said, so you combine openings, book study, database, openings, and then on top of that, you need to have a trainer.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  You need to have somebody who has had great experience in chess, who may be retired now and has been through all the wars, but now is in advisor role. And you pay him that money or pay her that money because they're gonna say to you, you know what, this situation right here, you should be doing this. This thing right here now, that's not you. You shouldn't try studying that. Try this, this line. And then you call them up, you got a big game. Hey, what should I do in this game? I'm playing so-and-so. And they help you and you do the research. So it's all that support system. The top players have more than one person on their team. They have a team, a real team. You know, so you just get that together so that you could be prepared, like a fine-tuned assassin, ready to play.

• 46:55Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This podcast episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Sleep is incredibly important to me. I study it. I research it. It is my end-all, be-all. It determines so much else. And I've been sleeping on a Helix Midnight Luxe mattress for the last few years. I also have one in my guest bedroom and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. Helix was selected as the number one best overall mattress pick of 2020 by GQ, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others. Just go to helixsleep.com/tim, take their two-minute sleep quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life. They have a 10-year warranty and you get to try it for 100 nights, risk-free. They'll even pick it up from you if you don't love it.

• 47:40Tim Ferriss?

  And Helix is offering up to $200 off all mattress orders plus two free pillows at helixsleep.com/tim. One more time, that's H-E-L-I-X, sleep.com/tim for up to $200 off.

• 47:57Tim Ferriss?

  What does it look like to build mental and physical stamina for the game of chess? I mean, you said earlier, and it is a sport, referring to chess. I can't even conceive of trying to concentrate on a single game for six hours. It's hard for me to conceive of, and I consider myself pretty good at focusing. But when I lived in, I lived in Japan as an exchange student, it was my first real exposure to any chess. It wasn't Western chess, but it was shogi, which is Japanese chess, and then Go, which is a whole separate animal. And I was toast after 30 to 60 minutes, complete toast, worthless.

• 48:41Tim Ferriss?

  So how do you build mental and physical stamina for high-level chess?

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Well, physical is easy. You just get on the treadmill, you go swimming, you run, you bike, you do whatever it is that you have a good time doing, preferably you have a good time doing, but you make sure you get that cardio burn because you're going to need reserves of energy when you're playing for that long. So exercise is a must. And you look at all the top players now, nobody's overweight, nobody's overweight. In fact, you're burning so many calories when you're playing from the intensity of it. I know they just did a study, which I think is completely insane. The numbers that they came up with, something like 6,000 calories burned during a chess

• 49:27Speaker 01

  game, which I find that's, I know we're like doing a lot, but that seems like over the top. But that's essential, first of all. In terms of the mental side, I think a big part of mastery in that way has to do with the fact that you start experiencing it as a youngster. So you train over the years and years and years. You learn by doing. Right? When a kid first starts playing chess, kids are not stopping to think. Like, first move that comes to mind, boom, that's what I'm gonna play, boom. So that works for a while, and then you do that against a good player, and then you lose. Yeah, you make a mistake, and boom, you lose again.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  And then it's the kid that stops and says, okay, I need to stop and look now because that person is actually threatening something with their moves, and I need to respect that. And so they stop, they start slowing down. And the more you do that, the more you start training yourself to be more thoughtful and respectful of your opponent. And that's the, that's the building of the discipline of the mind that happens very early on, which is why we teach chess to kids, because that process happens automatically. And I'm sure, as you said, you were toast after thirty-five, sixty minutes, but if you loved it enough, or if you couldn't tolerate that ass-kicking enough, and you'd be back and back and back, you would just keep doing it and doing it and doing it.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  And soon, you would get that stamina, so that you could go an hour and a half, two hours, two and a half, and beyond. The other thing that some people use is meditation, and a way of quieting the mind and the spirit, so that you can really focus and not get ahead of yourself when you're playing. That's a huge part of it as well, that kind of mental training, and anything you can do. I did Aikido, martial art Aikido, for some years as well. And that was extremely, extremely helpful in censoring me and getting me to, to recognize the openings that were possible in my opponent's position, that I would be there because they were overly aggressive. So we use every trick in the book.

• 51:35Tim Ferriss?

  I was gonna ask you about Aikido chess, because I found a mention of Aikido chess. Could you elaborate on how you tie those two together?

• 51:43Speaker 01

  One of the greatest books I've ever read, it's called Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere. It's by O'Radey and, I wanna say Weston, but I think I got that wrong, Westbrook. Anyway, it's Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere. And I remember when I first stumbled on this book, and the book is, the book is about Aikido, but as I was reading it, I felt like I was reading about chess. And I was really struck by that, how they were so intimately connected in the idea of your opponent, the focus you have on the opponent, on the attack, on defense, on centering.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Chess is very important to control the center of the board, so the primacy of centralization, the dynamics of the struggle. And when I saw that, I said, I gotta study Aikido. I gotta actually go on the mat and not just do this from a theoretical standpoint. And I went, fortunately, there was one in my neighborhood. I went to the dojo and it was really life-changing. It took my game to a totally different level, just learned to recognize, primarily Aikido is defensive, so Aikido recognizes the flaws in attacks. And I would say, like, I'm from Brooklyn, we had a school of chess that said, you attack,

• 53:05Speaker 01

  that's how you go. My friend Ronnie Simpson used to say, ever forward, never backward. So he's not backing up. When he's coming after you, you're supposed to die. But you did that against the best players, and somehow they would sidestep your attacks and bring their pieces inside the gaps that you left behind. And that's exactly what Aikido and many of the soft martial arts are about, is finding the gaps and letting you get as much of your attack as you want off, but just getting off-center enough that you miss or you barely hit. But then the return coming at you is gonna come with tremendous force.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  And when I was able to physicalize that, like get it into my body and then internalize it, and then transfer that into mental mapping onto the chessboard, my game went to a completely different level. And that really is what took me to becoming a grandmaster, as far as I'm concerned. Because being able to do that meant that you had to stand in the middle of the energy, the tornado coming at you, and just find that soft point and say, no, I'm fine. Everything is okay. This attack's not gonna work. That was a whole different way of thinking that I hadn't studied before. And because of it, I was able to change the way I played and improve as a player.

• 54:29Tim Ferriss?

  What was it like when you became a grandmaster? Can you, can you tell us about that experience? Was it all you hoped it would be? Were you shocked? Was it anticlimactic? What was that experience like?

• 54:42Speaker 01

  It was depressing.

• 54:44Tim Ferriss?

  It's depressing.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  It was depressing. It's extraordinary. At first, at first, you know, there was the whirlwind of becoming a grandmaster. I got a lot of press around being the first African American grandmaster in history and all that. But when you're on a life quest, right? This is something that you always dreamt about doing. Every day you wake up and your North Star is this goal. Right? This is what you want out of life. Like, I want to become a grandmaster. I don't care about anything else. I want to become a grandmaster. I would wake up thinking, please don't die today, Maurice. I don't want to die. I just want to become a grandmaster. And that fueled my passion. I mean, I'm serious about that, by the way. That's all I wanted.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  That's all I wanted. So when I got there, there was that feeling of elation, joy, satisfaction, relief. Like, it had finally happened. I had many false starts. I came this close so many times, only to lose the last game that I needed to win. I mean, it's, it was such a hard climb of the mountain. And once you get to the top of the mountain, you look around, you get your chance to look. And now what? Like, you, you got a nice view. That's great. How long can you stay on the mountain? You just, you know, that's not, that's, the human mind doesn't work that way. It's not like you're just gonna sit there and have no fun.

• 56:11Tim Ferriss?

  Mountain climbers do.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Right? So you need, you need another mountain. And that, like, next six months, I couldn't find another mountain. I was just like, oh, I don't have to think about this again. There's nothing almost for me to do. That was my thinking. It took me a while to, to stop and say, you know what? You can just become a better player. Maybe focus on the world championship title. I was already 33 years old. Late to the game, as it was, starting chess at 14, that's already geriatric as far as chess is concerned. So.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  The odds weren't high that I was going to become a world champion. Let's put it that way. The odds were like slim to none. But you need a goal. You need something that even if it's unreachable, it drives you. And so when I reset, that goal allowed me to now say, let's become better. Let's get better again. And I refound my love for the game beyond the competitive drive and the goal setting that I had. And in many ways, that was more beautiful than the goal itself. Because it was a rekindling of why I played the game in the first place. And one of the great truths that I learned in becoming a grandmaster is that I was a beginner again.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  And that beginner's mind has never left me. I'm still fascinated by the game. We're talking about 20 years later. I'm still fascinated by little things about the game that just continue to amaze me that it's possible on the chessboard. And that evergreen freshness that chess has is what draws us in. And it's made me happy all these decades.

• 57:59Tim Ferriss?

  Let's talk about beauty and captivation because I'd like to take that lens and apply it to coaching and teaching. You've had some very successful students, very successful teams. How do you hook kids on chess? How do you make it captivating? How do you help them see the beauty? What have you learned in all of your teaching? And also, what were some of the names of the teams?

• 58:28Speaker 01

  The Raging Rooks, that was a great team. That was my best team. In fact, they won a middle school championship in 1991. Straight out of Harlem. My teams were, both teams were out of Harlem. And we didn't have any stars on our team. We didn't have big time players, masters and the like. We just had kids who loved the game and had passion and heart and would listen to whatever I told them to do. The Dark Knights were another team that we had and same deal. And for me, it really wasn't about creating stars. Or even winning a national championship. Again, the idea of setting a goal is important because it allows you to focus.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  But you asked me what I learned. The two things I learned from coaching. Number one, I was very lucky that what I was coaching was chess. Because the the activity was the real drive. Chess is just a great game. Chess is just a great game. It's been around for 1500 years because it's a great game. It doesn't get old. We're living in a video game age and yet chess is thriving online. I mean chess with Covid shutting everything down. Chess tournaments are bigger than ever. Chess participation is bigger than ever. People are following chess players now. Like like like never before. Ikaru Nakamura went from he's a top player, went from like 10,000 followers on Twitch

• 59:58Speaker 01

  to almost half a million. I mean.

• 1:00:01Tim Ferriss?

  Holy cow. That's that's in the last handful of months.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:00:06Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  It's been incredible because people are inside and they want something fun to do it. So not just fun, but meaningful. Right? Something they think kids are gonna have, not just a good time, but not waste their time. They're gonna learn from it. And so chess has just exploded online. It's incredible. So the game holds an eternal fascination for the human mind. And it really is a part of world culture, played in all all countries everywhere. The International Chess Federation has over 200 country membership. I mean, it's just really a ubiquitous game. And so for me, it's easy when I put chess in front of kids because they're gonna be fascinated.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  You got the chess pieces, the king and queen and brooks and knives and bishops and pawns. They got these shapes. You've got the board and kids just wanna touch and feel and move and what do what do these pieces do? So the love of the thing itself is critical, the love of the thing itself.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  And as a teacher, what's critical is the love and passion of the teacher. Because if you're just teaching people, if you're just there to make a buck, if you feel obligated to do it, people pick that up right away. Kids pick that up even quicker. It's when they see how much you're on fire about what you do, when you're fresh to it, that other people will say, hey, I want a piece of this. I'm listening to this guy. I want to learn. You know, I had so much fun coaching chess to my students. For me, it was sports. I'd be, I'd be bringing in basketball. I'd be bringing in martial arts. I'd be bringing in trash talking. You know, you saw a good move and I'd be like, that was juice.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  That was juice. And then they start quoting me. Oh, that was a juice move right there. You know, the teacher brings that energy. The teacher brings the passion. And I think when, when that happens, it's easy to take people to the next level because they can feel you. They can feel that you love what you do and you really want to impart this to them. And for me, that makes, that made and makes talking about chess really a simple affair. Because I've got one of the greatest pieces of world culture that is perennially fascinating. And then I got the fact that I'm in love with it. So you combine that and people want to hear it. People want to learn.

• 1:02:35Tim Ferriss?

  What would your advice be to someone like me or anyone listening who is hearing your descriptions, your life story, and wants to give chess a shot in the sense that they really want to actually dedicate some time to become a competent, not necessarily a hyper competitive chess player, but a competent chess player? What would you suggest they do?

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  Easy these days. Everything's online. Everything's online. You got great websites. You have chess.com, which has resources up the wazoo. Very inexpensive to get, whether it's puzzles, whether it's.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Videos, instructional videos, whether it's being able to watch tournaments, whether it's playing anyone from all around the world. There are millions of people online all the time. You can just challenge them to a game anytime you want. It's a quick game. You can play five-minute blitz. You can play 10 minutes. You can just tailor it. Call it how much time you have. Uh, that's one website. Lichess.org is another great website.

• 1:03:40Tim Ferriss?

  How do you spell that?

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  L I chess.org.

• 1:03:43Tim Ferriss?

  I.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  And I mean, tho- those sites have really done it right. Uh, in such a way, uh, as to, as to give you everything you could possibly want. So you can learn chess better. There's another site, chess24.com. Chess two, the numbers two and four.com. You get professional folks. You get the world champion on there a lot. You can watch the top level play with top level commentary. Once you get to that, you know, level of interest. I mean, it's amazing how chess has teleported itself online in this way. Uh, seamlessly, seamlessly. If I had these kind of resources when I was in Brownsville, oh my goodness.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Out of the dangerous, I might have turned into a player.

• 1:04:35Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any, you mentioned puzzles. Are those situational exercises? Where you are effectively in a preset situation on a board and have to, in X number of moves, do Y, something like that? Is that what you mean by puzzles?

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you made it sound so boring.

• 1:04:51Tim Ferriss?

  No. Well, I used, I, no, I, it's, it's, I don't mean to make it sound boring. I mean, when I, when I was in, uh, Japan, this is a long time ago, I was 15, but there's a, there's something called Tsu Me Shogi, which is, I, I'm trying to figure out if it's the same thing, which is a book of these. Exercises where it's like, all right, here's a situation. What do you do? And I found it completely addictive. I found it fascinating.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  It is, and it's the best thing about about chess is when you get to look to see how you would win the game. If we watch LeBron James go up for a shot, right? And he does like a 360, puts it between his legs, switch to his left hand and dunk it, right? Flush. All you can do is go, wow, but you're not doing that.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  But in chess, we have the opportunity to take a position where one of the greatest players of all time may have been behind either the white or the black pieces. And it says, okay, you get to be Gary Kasparov or Magnus Carlsen or Paul Morphy or Alexander Alekhine. You get to be that person right now. What's the brilliant move to win? Or a series of moves? And you sit there, you know, you figure it out. And when you sit there for a while and you can't really figure it out. Then finally you do this calculation that you try this, you try that, and then you realize what it is. And usually it's just a work of art and you're able to copy that yourself.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  Man, you feel like a genius after that. What a great feeling. I could play like him, right? But yeah, not really. You got to get that position yourself. That's the hard part, but it's so much fun. It's so much fun to be able to to get inside the minds of the great geniuses.

• 1:06:46Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any favorite, favorite books related to chess? If somebody wanted to, in addition to the websites and electronic tools to have something to take with them on a trip or on a weekend when they want to kind of in an analog way, dig into chess? Do any resources come to mind?

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  I mean, there's so many great books out there. My friend, Grandmaster Yassir Zirwan, did a great series called The Winning Chess Series. Winning Chess.

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  Strategies, Winning Chess Tactics, really lucidly explained, simple language, great little situations for you to learn a lot from. I think that series was very, very popular, published by Microsoft way back when, but it's evergreen. And I think it's, I think that I could list a lot of books, but that series was pretty spot on.

• 1:07:43Tim Ferriss?

  And we'll link to those in the show notes. We'll find the proper links to everything we've been talking about and put those in the show notes for this episode. Let's continue with books. So one of the, one of the bullets that I have here for discussion is the importance of biographies. Can you expand on this, please?

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. Biographies are some of the most inspirational materials out there. I think people, people read different things, right? But if you really want to, to know the journey, the path to mastery, the path to becoming a champion, the obstacles that you may have to overcome, how to deal with those obstacles, there's nothing like reading the lives of great people. And it's almost like the secret sauce for success along the lines of motivation and deep learning, deep patterning. I remember when I read Jackie

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  Robinson's autobiography and I was reading it actually on a plane to Germany where I would play in a, in a big tournament that ended up giving me the second step, the second norm, we call it, out of the three norms that I needed to become a grandmaster. I remember reading it on the way on that plane and then finally finishing it up after I landed and I was back in the hotel. And I was so inspired by his journey because here I was trying to become the first African American grandmaster in chess history. And I'm reading about this man who had broken the color line in baseball and the challenges

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  that he faced. I had faced some racism myself, but it paled in comparison to what he faced. Like, I couldn't even talk about my experiences. When you, when you look, you listen to the people putting a black cat on the field, calling him the N-word, left, right and center, just screaming, spewing hate at him from the stands.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  And then his dignity and strength in dealing with that just was so absolutely inspiring, that fortitude that it took, that mental toughness to be able to stand up to that and still perform at the highest level, win Rookie of the Year and end up winning World Series for the Dodgers. I mean, just even thinking about it right now, I'm feeling inspired inside. But those kinds of materials, that's what I think really is a secret recipe for growth along the path to success. And I think it's extremely important to find those stories and read them and study them. Because you'll call on them on your quest,

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  your journey, you'll call on them along the way. You'll remember something will be happening to you and you'll remember, oh, I read about this happened to this person. There's nothing like learning from other people's experiences.

• 1:10:41Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any other favorite biographies or biographies that come to mind that have made an indelible impression on you in some fashion?

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  The one that jumps to my head is another great African American Frederick Douglass. And he had it even worse than Jackie did. Going back in time, obviously Frederick Douglass was in the 19th century. I don't even understand how he became what he became. I really don't. I think about somebody who was a slave for the first 20 years of their life. And to teach himself how to read and then to become so well spoken, so articulate, so learned, to stand up after having been beaten to a pulp so many times, finally escape, of course,

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  and then to go on with little bitterness in his heart to fight for a cause that is simply an eternal one, right? One of the great causes of... Of humanity to fight for the for the liberty of human bodies. I mean, I I really just sit in awe at the grandeur of someone like Frederick Douglass. He's one of my favorite people in history. And he's one of those people you say, OK, who you want to go back and meet and sit down and talk to? Please give me three days. I need three days with Frederick Douglass. And his biography is really what what makes me want to do that, particularly his second one.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  He has three autobiographies, right? Those that he wrote. There's a great biography on him also by David Blight. That's like the definitive one, but he wrote his own as well. That's he was just remarkable.

• 1:12:23Tim Ferriss?

  What was it about the second autobiography that struck you?

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  It was fresh. It was fresh to what he was experiencing. By the time he got to his third one, he was already sort of seeing it through the lens of his experiences. And that was many years later. But the second one was enough of his life out of freedom that he was able to to really describe it in a fresh way. And you should think about what, you know, humans have to go through. I just I can't understand it. I sit today, you know, with the social unrest that's going on in the U.S. now, but I sit today thinking about what happened to African Americans

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  at that time. And I just I don't I don't understand how, you know, people people kept their chins up. You know, you're working as slaves. You're working for someone your entire life, your entire life. All you know is working for someone else with no compensation. How do you do that for hundreds of years? How do you do that? I how do families tolerate that? And then you could get beaten at any moment on the whim of your master. You move to the to the rhythm of someone else's drum. You get sold if they're choose to do so. You're separated from your family members if they choose to do so. And somehow.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  You're not suicidal, depressed at least. How do you keep your head up? How do you keep your head up and forge a destiny for the future generations? And produce people like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman? It's stunning to me. It's absolutely stunning. It's a story that is not truly well told in schools. Deserves to be because it was just absolutely beyond comprehension and so inspiring.

• 1:14:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, incredibly so. If you're open to it, could you speak to your personal experience or observations related to the current moment? You mentioned the social unrest, the current moment, current events. What are you seeing and experiencing?

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  I've been really down. I guess it's both ways, you know, down about all that's going on right now. That we could be in 2020 and that this discussion is so relevant as though we're back 60 years ago, back 100 years ago. Like issues that a Frederick Douglass would notice and say, what? You guys haven't solved this yet? Are you serious? I think that the reason for that is because what happened in the society is essentially America tried to solve a problem by legislating it. And as Denzel Washington said, you can't legislate love, right? You can't legislate respect.

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  You can try to legislate fairness, but you can't make everyone everywhere get on that same page. So laws were put into effect like when the 13th amendment, 14th amendment, 15th amendment happened and then reconstruction happened for the brief time that it did. But then. People's hearts hadn't changed, so immediately after Reconstruction came this redemption period in the South where they just simply undid all the benefits of those amendments and carried out terrorist campaigns against African Americans through intimidation, through burning

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  down homes, through burning down neighborhoods like in Tulsa, through lynchings and the like, that set it all back and putting in clauses, anti-voting clauses, making it very difficult to vote. If your grandfather hadn't voted, then you couldn't vote. Well, of course, my grandfather was a slave, of course he couldn't vote. Now, all these impediments to keep African Americans down, and then you fast forward to 1965, 64, 65, and you get the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, and those are again implemented as federal laws, but you can't legislate that on the ground, people would necessarily embrace

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  this principle and begin to carry it out in every way that the nefarious fingers of segregation and racism had entrenched themselves in such a way as to make it very, very difficult to undo. So, a lot of people want to hope that these laws somehow changed everything fundamentally, and there have definitely been changes. I mean, you can go to a hotel now, in places you couldn't before, eat lunch calendars you couldn't, etc. But so many other issues remain, whether it was in fair housing because of redlining, African Americans couldn't get loans for homes, whether it's education, because if you live in a poor neighborhood,

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  your taxes pay for your school, but your school is going to obviously be underfunded because you're in a poor neighborhood. Or whether it's incarceration, where African Americans are incarcerated at a greater rate than others, and then this current issue of police brutality. And if these things weren't literally attacked, like, you know, to so you could address them comprehensively, then they weren't going to be solved. It's really that simple. They simply weren't going to be solved. We sort of hope for a certain evolutionary effect, if you will, like, it will happen over time. The law is there, is there in place, therefore now, everything else was going to undo itself magically.

• 1:18:14Speaker 01

  And what history has shown is that it just didn't. And sooner or later, you'll have these flare-ups that show the inequities that exist. And if the greater society, that is the majority in this country, doesn't feel impassioned to make the change happen, the change won't happen. It's just a tyranny of the majority. You know, as Alexis de Tocqueville said, "Democracy has its tyrants as well." And the tyrants are actually the people, the majority of the people. The majority doesn't feel that an issue is that important, they won't address it because they don't see it as a problem. And until the majority sees it as a problem and embraces it and now wants laws to effectuate

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  that, it simply will not change. That's the only way it changes, is the majority gets on board with it, and a minority group can fight for those things, but they can't vote the way they want it to go. They can't legislate out those things out of existence, because they're simply always going to lose the vote. So I think, as great as democracy is, this one fundamental issue that the majority, so natural, right? Majority usually is supposed to win. If there's ten of us, ten buddies, and eight of us want to go to the movies, and two of us want to go hiking, it's, you're, the eight of us want to go to the movies, that's what's going to happen. It's so natural that you don't think about it. It's just the way things function. But we have a responsibility, anywhere there's a majority, I don't care where it is, the

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  US, any, any, you know, it can be Nigeria, wherever it is, the majority has a responsibility.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  To very carefully address the concerns of the minority. Uh, because otherwise you turn into tyrants without knowing it, but just just taking care of your family. Like you take care of yourself, your family and your friends. That's all you need to do, yourself, your family and your friends. But once that is amplified to those like you, you turn into tyrants without knowing it. So we're dealing with that right now. And I'm, I'm not sure where it's going to end up. You're old enough, you feel like, yeah, maybe there's going to be change. If you're young, you feel like, yes, it's a time for it. But we have to see how it shakes out.

• 1:20:26Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you for sharing all that and elucidating it. I mean, and certainly giving voice to it so, so well. Are there any particular changes or any particular actions that you would like to see in the next, say, two to three years? If you could direct things in any way, do any particular changes come to mind that you would like to see? Is it more a cultural shift that needs to happen by attention being paid by a majority to the, the plight and inequities that affect the minority? Are there any other particular examples that come to mind for you?

• 1:21:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that first one is big, right? That's where it all starts. If the majority doesn't realize or doesn't take an interest, doesn't care, doesn't focus on the concerns of the minority. And again, minority in any sense, then whoever has to vote wins, right? And so that has to be where a mental shift takes place. That's where it all starts in, in terms of legal structure.

• 1:21:36Speaker 01

  And then in terms of specific, concrete steps that can be taken. So I can start talking about, you know, you need to address over incarceration of young black men. Or you need to address. Racism in police departments, even if it's just a small percentage, but that small percentage needs to be rooted out aggressively. And you can't have good cops ignoring bad cops, right? I don't care if it's, if you might say, whatever percentage, no, the percentage may, we don't know the percentage, but let's, let's say it's ninety-eight percent. That two percent has to be weeded out aggressively. You need to address the stress that police officers are dealing with when they're on, on the job.

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  You know, it's an extremely high-stress position. Give them help, give them evaluation. Maybe they need a little extra time off, whatever it is, to make sure that they're coming to a community's whole and healthy and, and ready to be champions of justice that we expect them to be. So, you know, that's, that's specific areas of concern we can address. I think that, for me, the two big ones are police tactics and education. I, I came from a family that said, you pull yourselves up by the brute straps, you work your tail off, you will be successful. That was our formula, right? But you can't have structural impediments that stop that from happening.

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  And the reason why policing is so important is because police have the right to take life. They're the only group in society that just has the right to take your life on a judgment call of somebody who might have just joined the force and maybe twenty-two years old, but has to make a, a snap decision and just makes it, and then this person's lost their life. So that's important because it traumatizes the community when that happens. If it happens unfairly, it happens regularly and unfairly, even in perception, that's traumatizing to the community because when one black person feels under siege, I guarantee you, the larger group feels under siege. And I don't want to think about my son walking down the street. My beautiful son who's just graduated high school and has all the aspirations of becoming

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  an artist and then somehow gets mistreated a certain way, I couldn't survive life if something happened to him. Just, I couldn't imagine anything, right? So it's important that that is a place where we feel safe, we feel respected, we feel like justice is properly served by those who are champions of justice. You want to look at every police officer and say, this person's a champion of justice. They're a hero. And when you see stuff like what happened with George Floyd and the person on, this guy who I won't name, we know his name, but I don't want to honor him as such, putting a knee on a man's neck for nine minutes, you're not a champion of justice. Then the rest of us have to watch that and the rest of us are traumatized by that and

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  one of them's angry and now there's a reaction. We've got to get to that good place, right? We've got to get to that good place. And education, the inequities in education, everybody knows it. Everybody on any side of the aisle knows it. People trying different things, whether, you know, Republicans who believe in choice or, you know, loosely speaking, and Democrats believe in public school and approving that. I don't care what it is, that cannot be unfair because that's going to keep a group down. There are other things as well, of course, but to me, those are the two major areas of concern. I'd love to see great movement on both of those. As I watch right now, I'm just, I'm concerned. I'm concerned because

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  now you're, we're also living with COVID and attention shifts easily. I don't know that the results will come, but I think if we have good-minded people who feel like they, they really want to see change happen, and I love the fact that corporations are, are jumping in on this as well. It probably has to be private because when it's, it's government, you know, question mark, question mark, question mark. Each person has to be in the middle of this fight.

• 1:25:38Tim Ferriss?

  On the education front, I mean, you've spent time as a educator, as a teacher, as a coach. Are there any particular problems that you saw within the systems that you were part of? Or challenges, or handicaps, or opportunities that stood out to you? Or particular challenges that kids you were working with faced that perhaps were unaddressed? Does anything come to mind when I ask those questions?

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  It's like, how long a list do you want me to put together? I mean, the biggest thing is lack of resources or good resources in a school. Right? If you don't have a lot of money, the school doesn't have the top computers that it needs. So kids can go in that room and use those computers. The school doesn't have the latest books for kids to read, or enough books so that every kid can have a book. I mean, kid teachers are facing this every single day in neighborhoods all across America. And it's sad. I mean, it's completely ridiculous.

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  When I came to this country, for us, it was a joke, the American school system. Because I came to the country from Jamaica, where I went to one of the top schools. I tested into one of the top schools. I spent a year with Wilmer's Boys High School, but I was only 12. I was 11 when I got in, 12 when I came here. And I tested into the top class in my middle school. I took a reading test, the school guidance counselor, whoever it was, I remember just having me do a reading test. I was reading on a 12th grade level. Great, you belong with the special kids, the smartest kids in the school. This is the top class. This is where these kids are like the kids on track to success.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  And I went into class that first day, and when I was done with the day, I went up to my mother. I said, "I don't belong in this class." Because the stuff we're learning in this class, I already learned in Jamaica. This was like, like the beginning of last year in Jamaica. Like this is, this stuff is too easy. And my mother, she didn't know how to work the system. She finally had kids like in school in America. So she gave me a report card to take to the teacher and to the guidance counselor. So I, I took it and I said, look, I was top of my class in Jamaica. And she's like, what is this? No, you are in the best class. You're 12 years old, seventh grade.

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  You're in the best class. That's it. Now imagine that tiny Jamaica, tiny, poor. No, you name it, right? Country of Jamaica is producing basic education or good education that I'm in the best school in the hood. The best class, that is, the best class in the school. And we're woefully, these kids are woefully underprepared. And they're the smartest kids. They're not, we ended up all, by the way, skipping eighth grade. We jumped from seventh grade to ninth grade because they knew it was a waste of the time for us to be in the, in the eighth grade class. If we were going through that, imagine what the other kids were going through, the kids who were not in our class.

• 1:28:55Speaker 01

  Kids were on the slow track or the, let's call it the normal track. Okay. A whole generation of kids, underprepared for the challenges that they had to face. And they threw no fault of their own. This is a systemic problem. And unless this is addressed systematically, then you continue to have this, this challenge in preparing our kids, the vast majority of kids, not the special few, for life in the 20th century, for, you know, elite jobs, for top leadership positions. It's unacceptable. And so to me, that's really where, you know, that gap is.

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  And I don't know, I mean, it's obvious how to solve it. You, you gotta, you just gotta go in there and improve schools. Top to bottom. By the way, COVID has really exposed the inequities of this. Uh, my ex-wife is a head of a department that does quality control in school systems. And when we're talking, she's just shaking her head, saying, all of a sudden, everybody realizes how unequal it is, what kids are going through. Kids were supposed to be learning from home, but don't own a laptop. Or if they're home with two or three brothers and sisters, there's only one laptop in the house. So how are they all learning from the same laptop? When there's only one in the home?

• 1:30:18Speaker 01

  And then they're dealing, if they do have it, with poor wifi, because mom and dad can't afford that. There's just some basic inequities across the board that people are now having to deal with now that this pandemic has hit us. Their eyes are open, saying, oh, my God, how are we going to teach these kids? And for the next, we're talking about potentially for the next year and a half, these kids are going to fall behind even further. It's heartbreaking.

• 1:30:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's a terrifying and awful prospect. And like you said, I think COVID and all of the recent events have acted as a kind of a force multiplier on the pressure in the container and have shown the cracks, just how severe and how many of them there are. As you were talking, I want to mention two organizations that people might want to check out. They're not systemic solutions. In other words, they're not top to bottom fixes, but I do think they are of great value. One is donorchoose.org, uh, which allows you to help provide resources to teachers specifically who are under-resourced with kids who need

• 1:31:29Tim Ferriss?

  basic materials in many cases. They don't have books, they don't have pens. Uh, and donor choose, I'm very, very confident in, I mean, very confident in both these organizations because I've been involved in them for a long time. Uh, the second is QuestBridge, and you can find donorchoose.org at donorchoose.org. Not surprisingly, questbridge.org is another. And QuestBridge.

• 1:31:52Tim Ferriss?

  Is very good and very innovative in how they connect and source talent from underserved communities, economically disadvantaged communities and so on, and match them with scholarships to top-tier colleges and universities. Because it's not exclusively a funding problem with respect to scholarships. It's often a talent sourcing and matching problem. And they're very, very smart about how they do this. Just to give one example that I remember really caught my attention when I met Michael McCullough, who's one of the founders. These are both nonprofits and massively successful and very lean.

• 1:32:36Tim Ferriss?

  And he was explaining that many of these kids don't have the social support that one would hope for in terms of academic or life aspirations. So the idea, even if they have the intellectual horsepower and the drive and the dedication to apply to, say, a Harvard, just does not exist in terms of their inputs. And so what they've done in a number of cases is, for instance, they'll provide an iPad giveaway and they'll promote a new iPad giveaway. And the application form for the giveaway, unbeknownst to the kids who fill it out, doubles as a standardized application that can be sent to 20 different colleges.

• 1:33:21Tim Ferriss?

  And then several months later, these kids get a letter in the mail saying, "Sorry, I didn't win the iPad, but by the way, you have a free ride to Amherst," or whichever school it might be.

• 1:33:31Speaker 01

  That is slick. I like that.

• 1:33:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. It's really amazing. So I don't want to hog the microphone here, but those are two. I know much less about criminal justice reform. I have friends who focus on that. I know much less about police, both training and self-policing and all the facets of that. But on the education side, those are two that are really worth taking a look at for folks. And even if they're treated as a stopgap measure, they actually do deliver results. Maurice, you strike me as someone who thinks very deeply. I mean, you do think very deeply. You ask a lot of questions of yourself. You interrogate reality or your perception of reality.

• 1:34:12Tim Ferriss?

  Could you speak to, I have two books here that you've mentioned and mentioned in Tribe of Mentors, where you appeared as a profile, which I very much appreciate you doing. And there are two books I'd love for you to speak to as having an impact on you. Passages, and I think it's Gail Sheehy, is that how you pronounce the last name?

• 1:34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:32Tim Ferriss?

  S H E E H Y. And Mastery by George Leonard. Could you speak to those two?

• 1:34:39Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Passages, I read that book as a teenager, late teenager, 18 or 19. I had just gone through a pretty rough period of changing, actually, I can't even call it changing, literally dropping friends in my life because I felt like those friends weren't about what I wanted to do. And I felt I needed to go in a different direction. And so it was a lonely period for me, a transition between great friends and the next set of friends that I would have. And this book, Passages, was about the passages of a man's life.

• 1:35:18Speaker 01

  And so essentially, Gail Sheehy, she just went from your, from a man from his teenage years, from his twenties, all the way to old age, every decade, giving the broad strokes of what would happen to you as a man during those decades. Of course, you can't be specific. Everybody's going to have their own experiences, but by and large, you're going to go out and get work. And you're going to go out of school, you're going to go get work, you're going to try to establish yourself somewhere along the line. You're going to get a significant other. Especially, you're going to have children, you're going to go through that father period. Someplace, you're going to have a little age crisis somewhere along the way.

• 1:35:58Speaker 01

  Your identity is going to shift a few times as you challenge yourself. And then at some point, you're going to become settled in who you are. You're going to come to a different level of acceptance. It settles who you are and start to accept the world for what it is and where, and your place in it. And then there's a certain kind of peace and comfort that comes with becoming older and recognizing life, a kind of wisdom that you get. I was fascinated by this. It was almost like she was analyzing life like a chess player, like seeing them, analyzing it all the way down, down to the end game. And I wanted, from that book, I wanted to have the wisdom of the seventy year old and the eighty year old.

• 1:36:43Speaker 01

  As an eighteen year old, I was like, wait a minute, if that's what I'm, that's the end game, I want to have it now. I want to learn that now. So I've always respected older people from, from that. It made me really respect older people because they were at a different point along the passage. And I wanted to listen to the older guys talk. You know, like, what's up? What's, what's this like? What's that like? It, it just made me even more thoughtful, you know, more wise about the journey. It doesn't necessarily solve the problems. It's not like when I was twenty five, I had it all down pat, no way. You have to go through it yourself.

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  But, but it just helps so much to think about it in the long term and not just what's happening to you right at this moment. You know, this too will change. The other book, Mastery by George Leonard, George Leonard was an Aikido practitioner. And he brought the principles of Aikido into life in that small book and talked about mastery, the different, different obstacles to mastery, you know, folks who just want to get it done quickly, people who just want to hear the secrets, people who give up for various reasons, where are the obstacles, where are the traps you might fall into?

• 1:38:02Speaker 01

  But the biggest lesson of that book was that the journey was more important than the destination, right? And that you would plateau, that you would have to love the plateau. Sometimes on the path to mastery, you're just gonna get stuck. You're not getting any better. You're working your ass off and you're not getting any better. What's going on? Well, it's not a linear trajectory. This is not how it works. Yours grow every single day. Sometimes you have to go, your, your studies and your work causes you to actually lose ability, lose specific efficacy because you're trying out new techniques. It's like Tiger Woods when he decided to reconstruct his swing despite the fact that he was the best player on the planet.

• 1:38:47Speaker 01

  But he wanted to reconstruct the swing and maybe lose more tournaments. But at the end of that reconstruction of the swing, when all of it became natural, suddenly he was Superman. Like, what happened here? How do, how do you, how do you do that? There was no complacency where he was. And that is because you have to enjoy that process and love the plateau. You may not be getting better, which as long as you're doing the work, everything's fine. Uh, that, those, those two books really had impact. I have to say, think about me, that I, I feel a lot in my life, like I'm, I'm like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix.

• 1:39:30Speaker 01

  When, you know, like when you, you get, you get the program.

• 1:39:35Tim Ferriss?

  I'm laughing because so many people describe you as Morpheus. So I like that you identify with Neo.

• 1:39:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, you, you get the program put in and all of a sudden I know Kung Fu. Right? That line, like to me, when I read a book, when I read a book, that's how it is. I start reading a book and then I'm like, oh, damn, that makes a lot of sense. Gotta make some changes. I'm very impressionable that way. But you taught me something deep. I mean, your book for our work week, I mean, that was a riot. I mean, you wrecked my life for a while. Frank, you literally wrecked my life for a while because, because I was looking at my life like, you know what? This man is right and this life I'm living is unacceptable. I can't do this anymore. This has to change. Everything about it has to change. And, you know, when you got a wife and kids.

• 1:40:27Speaker 01

  The missus is not hearing that right. What? What? What do you mean four hour work week? What are you talking about? You don't want to do what you're doing anymore? How are you going to get paid? You know, you could get into some serious arguments and I did. Trying to just upend your existence because you just read a book by some guy who say, you know, you only have to work four hours a week. But anyway, I really feel that it's important to be flexible,

• 1:40:55Speaker 01

  to embrace uncertainty.

• 1:40:58Speaker 01

  There's always been hallmarks for me. I don't really know. I don't really know. I'm just observing. This is what I'm thinking at the moment. It may change as I get more facts. I don't really know. I don't want you to know what I'm going to say before I say it. You know, because I'm so predictable. I don't want to live in that strict level. I want to be the person who say, really? What made you change so much? Why are you living this life? And now I'm actually living that life, by the way. I got to that point.

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  Where I'm doing exactly what I want to do. I have unlimited time. I choose the gigs I do. I'm traveling the world. I mean, last year I gave up my apartment. I've been 15 months on vagabond. I've traveled all over, man. So I've been everywhere. I've been few countries in Africa. I've been all over Europe. I'm just living totally out of my suitcases. It's so liberating and wonderful.

• 1:41:47Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it matches the embracing uncertainty, right? I mean, you're moving with the winds and the tides and also your passions, it would seem. That's at least.

• 1:41:57Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And it's also, and it's also a nod to minimalism. Because when you're living out of suitcases, they want it to be 50 pounds. Like, this is not 50 pounds. Take whatever's in here and put it in your other, your small bag. It's like, I need everything that I have with me, man. What do you mean?

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  Tim Ferriss says I can, I'm supposed to have this. Well, I'm kidding.

• 1:42:23Speaker 01

  You know, you've got to, you've got to deal with what you've got. And so my stuff is in storage. There's going to come a point where I, I figure out a place I want to be, I put my headquarters, if you will, a jumping off point, place my kids can come visit and put their feet up. But for now, it's just absolutely liberating to just floating and going with the winds. Although I got to tell you that damn COVID breeze is no fun. That is putting a damper on the travel like nobody's business. And so I, I've got to respect that for now, at least until we resolve this one.

• 1:42:58Tim Ferriss?

  Does clip the wings a little bit. Might mean more time on the feet.

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:43:04Tim Ferriss?

  On the tires. Well, Maurice, I always enjoy spending time with you. And this has been a long time coming. I'm embarrassed that it took me this long. But I really appreciate you and the perspectives that you bring to bear. And also, you mentioned it almost in passing, but I think it's a hallmark of a partner that moves in lockstep with the curiosity that drives so much of what you love and also so much of what you're good at. And that is the willingness to say, I don't know. That is, it's, I don't know if you realize, and you probably do, how uncommon that is. People

• 1:43:47Tim Ferriss?

  like to know that what I've observed in many of the people I respect most is, you know, the more they learn, the more they realize they don't know. And I'm continually impressed by your willingness to say, I don't know. And not to use that as a sort of metaphorical armchair of complacency, but as a jumping off point. Right? That's a, those are like the starting blocks. And it's something that I admire a lot in you. And no doubt, that's something that you've transmitted to your students and hopefully to a lot of people who are listening. So I really appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation. And I have one more question for

• 1:44:28Tim Ferriss?

  you that I must ask, and that is, where does dancing and salsa fit into all of this?

• 1:44:35Speaker 01

  You gotta have fun, man. What do you mean? You've gotta enjoy life. By the way, before I answer that question, there is a book called The Half-Life of Facts. The Half-Life of Facts by Samuel Arvesman.

• 1:44:52Speaker 01

  It's entitled, "Why Everything We Know Has An Expiration Date." Oh, I like that. It's such a great book for what you just talked about. Because what you think you know has become history 10 years ago. Right? You know, we knew Pluto was a planet. We just, I still know Pluto is a planet, right? It's nine, not eight. Kids today already know, they've already incorporated into the system. They'll never make the mistake to call it a planet. Facts are changing under our feet. And we don't see it until it experiences its half-life. And then suddenly, the tallest building in the world that, you know, I knew was one thing is no longer that tallest building in the world anymore.

• 1:45:35Speaker 01

  Or science moves on from what it thought was one theory and another theory. There's a certain predictability, in fact, to this, the life of so-called facts. And what it does, when you think of that concept, is that it humbles you. It humbles you into realizing that the knowledge base that you think you're accumulating, I mean, any specialist in fields know this is constantly happening, right? Doctors are constantly upgrading what they know. Because I don't want the guy who only read the handbook from 1980, right? I want the guy who's looking at the 2020, 2021 stuff. So, we are always behind the times. We are always. That's just the way it works.

• 1:46:21Speaker 01

  So, for me, the thing I want is process. I want to be open. I want to be flexible, right? I want to keep an uncertain mind. I want to be as least prejudicial as I can be. So that when that new, interesting data comes in, I'm ready to throw everything out that I thought and embrace this new idea.

• 1:46:47Speaker 01

  That's, that's my hallmark, my intellectual approach to everything.

• 1:46:55Speaker 01

  At least it's what I want for myself. It ain't easy, right? Obviously, because you you want something certain, somewhere, you know, stuff in your brain. But I think what I want to know more than anything is how to process information. Right? That's that's what I want. I want to have how to process new information as it comes in, to be able to judge properly, to not be biased one way or the other. I don't want to be predictable. I I just don't want you to know exactly what I'm going to say before I say it, because that's what you knew I said 20 years ago. I I can be different. I can be completely changed. That's cool. It means I'm growing and we're all growing. I don't want to be the same person I was at 30, thinking I knew it all, and I'm the same person at 50.

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  No way. I've grown way beyond that. And one of the ways I've grown, of course, is with salsa dancing and bachata. Uh, I love to dance. I've danced just music itself, you know, for a long time, but but in the last six or seven years, saw a friend of mine doing salsa and he convinced me to start it and I fell in love with it. Latin music, which added to then being Latin culture. I'm totally immersed in studying Spanish right now. I studied Spanish back in in middle school in the worst way you can study. You know how we study languages and we forget that stuff. Now I'm immersed myself. I'm personally invested like I'm studying chess is how much I'm studying Spanish. I'm watching uh, Mexican telenovelas.

• 1:48:24Speaker 01

  I'm taping them. So I, wait a minute, what I close caption. Okay, what was that word? All right, let's go. Oh. Meantime, I'm watching the story. I mean, I'm hooked, man. I'm so hooked. And it's it's very funny to to see, but like to me, that's how you stay fresh. That's how you stay fresh. And I've studied French as well. My father lives in France, so I visit him and been to Paris many times for chess. So so for me, travel, learning languages and exploring the world is my greatest joy. Really, that's my greatest joy in life. And part of it is dancing and is nothing like having something like salsa and bachata, which is which is a

• 1:49:07Speaker 01

  different form of of Latin dance, which is my favorite one over salsa, in fact. But there's nothing like having that wherever you go, because it's just like chess. I can always find a game, find a club where people play chess in any country I go to. I can always find a salsa club. Always.

• 1:49:23Tim Ferriss?

  Always.

• 1:49:24Speaker 01

  So wherever I am, I'm making friends and I love it.

• 1:49:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Que chingón, que chingón. You're gonna get all sorts of interesting slang in the Mexican telenovelas. And there's also a, there's a Spanish podcast made by Duolingo that you might want to check out. It's also really, really helpful. I ended up with a somewhat hilarious Mongrel version of Spanish from Spanglentime in Argentina, which has a very, very particular accent to it and grammar to it. But I love it. I love it. I would imagine at some point you're gonna find your way to Cuba.

• 1:50:07Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:50:08Tim Ferriss?

  I've not yet been, but if, I can't help you with the salsa, but if I can help in any way with the Spanish, please let me know. And this is just great. Maurice, I hope we get to hang again in person at some point soon. And people can find you. I hope they find you. Check you out, mauriceashley.com. They can find you on Twitter, at Maurice Ashley. And I'll include links to all this at tim.blog/podcast. Actually, you will have your own URL, which is for the show notes of this episode, tim.blog/maurice. And then on Facebook, it's Grandmaster Maurice A. Instagram, Maurice Ashley Chess. Of course, I'll link to all of this. And I will also link to the, the video clip

• 1:50:51Tim Ferriss?

  from the TV show where you are just in Jedi fashion, going toe to toe with this trash talker in your city in the park, which is just an incredible video. Everybody should watch it. It's, it's one of my favorite pieces of television. And then I'm biased, of course, because it was on the show, but it's just fantastic. So that'll also be.

• 1:51:12Speaker 01

  I gotta tell you, it's funny because the only reason I was in that park was because you were playing one of those hustlers yourself. And I remember when your producer said, Tim's going to study chess for two weeks and then go try to play one of those hustlers. And I was like, really? Good luck with that. He's in trouble. And you had some trouble. You had your hands full.

• 1:51:37Tim Ferriss?

  I had my hands full. Yeah. Yeah, I had my hands. Well, there, there. That was not all these episodes turned turned out with me on top of a float going down a parade and after my victory lap. And also, that episode included a disproportionate amount of ass whipping and receiving ass whippings. Because not only was there the chess piece, which was just like jumping into the deep end without checking the depth headfirst, there was the jujitsu piece at, you know, Josh and Marcelo Garcia's school. And I just got manhandled. I got completely demolished. So

• 1:52:16Tim Ferriss?

  if anyone wants to see all sorts of of pain and injury, mental and physical, then that's a good episode. Maurice, is there anything else you would like to like to say before we wrap up?

• 1:52:28Speaker 01

  Only that I appreciate you, man. I appreciate what you're doing. Watching you over the years, seeing how you've remained intellectually curious. And the way you open, open up, you know, your, your home, if you will, online, that is, with your hospitality to people, people to express these great ideas that they have. You, you are a connector and a revealer. And you do it through your intellectual curiosity. I think that's just a wonderful thing. So keep up the great work. And I'm grateful because you have influenced me so much. Like I said, you wrecked my life. But that's a good thing. I appreciate that. That's what I want from

• 1:53:10Speaker 01

  people I call my friends. I wreck, you know, I need a nice life wrecking. You know, that's, that's a good thing. Like, just up and all the BS, just come on, get that out of the way, and get to the real stuff. That's what you want from somebody. So keep wrecking people's lives, man. Just keep doing it. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. I'm proud of you for it.

• 1:53:35Tim Ferriss?

  Just, just reconstructing the swing. Just reconstructing the swing. That's all it is.

• 1:53:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly. Well, I appreciate you as well and really have enjoyed this conversation. And I know people listening will as well. I'll link to everything at tim.blog/maurice. And I can't wait to hang in person soon. We can go dancing, maybe even speak some Spanish, depending on where we might find ourselves. And to everybody listening, as I mentioned, you can find the show notes for everything that we discussed at tim.blog/maurice. And I wanted to read a quote before we go, which I was thinking of as you were speaking not too long ago, Maurice. And this is a quote that I used to open all of my public talks with

• 1:54:23Tim Ferriss?

  for about a decade. And it is a quote from Mark Twain, and it applies right now and always on so many levels. And the quote is, "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect." I think that applies certainly right now and is highly, highly relevant. So pause and reflect, question your assumptions, look at not just your own needs, but you know, society's needs moving forward, because ultimately it's all intertwined. And until next time, thanks to everybody for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one,

• 1:55:03Tim Ferriss?

  this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I have read. And that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out.

• 1:55:48Tim Ferriss?

  Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode of the Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, if I could only take one supplement, what would it be? The answer is inevitably Athletic Greens. I view it as, and a lot of you now view it as all in one nutritional insurance. I recommended it way back in 2010 in The Four Hour Body and I did not get paid to do so. I've been using it since before that and I use it in a lot of different ways. I travel with it to avoid getting sick or to help mitigate the likelihood of getting sick. I take it in the morning to ensure optimal performance and overall it covers my bases

• 1:56:33Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:57:17Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:57:58Tim Ferriss?

  And the onboarding process for ExpressVPN, meaning the signup flow, the use of the product, is one of the best I've ever seen in my life. All you need to do is download the ExpressVPN app on your computer or smartphone and then use the internet just as you normally would. You click one button in the ExpressVPN app to secure 100% of your network data. It's kind of ridiculously simple. And as many of you know, I only recommend brands that I have researched and vetted thoroughly. For me, of the many VPN solutions out there, ExpressVPN is one of the best on the market and I use it personally. Here are a few reasons why. First, privacy. ExpressVPN does not log your data.

• 1:58:38Tim Ferriss?

  Lots of cheap or free VPNs make money by selling your data, believe it or not, to ad companies and so on. ExpressVPN developed a technology called Trusted Server to prevent their servers from logging your information. Second, speed. Many VPNs slow your connection down or make your device seem sluggish just to a crawl. I've been using ExpressVPN for a while now, as I mentioned, and my internet speeds are blazingly fast. I don't even notice it. Honestly, I forget that it's even on. So that includes when I connect to servers thousands of miles away or during travel, I can still stream HD-quality videos with zero lag. The last thing that really sets ExpressVPN apart is how easy it is to use.

• 1:59:23Tim Ferriss?

  As I mentioned earlier, unlike other VPNs, you don't have to input or program anything. You just start up the app, click one button, and that's it. Super, super simple. And by the way, it's not just me saying all this about ExpressVPN. You've got TechRadar, The Verge, CNET, and many other publications rating ExpressVPN as the number one VPN in Zivert. So consider protecting yourself with the VPN that I use and trust. Use my link, expressvpn.com/tim today and get an extra three months free on a one-year package. That's expressvpn.com/tim. Visit expressvpn.com/tim to learn more.