Strategies, Tactics and Maneuvers in Chess

By Cenen Herrera

We often encounter the constructs strategy, tactic and maneuver in business, school, church, and even in our personal world.  How do these concepts influence our goals, our limited resources, our income engine, and our sphere of influence to win in what many will call the game of chess or is it really the game of life? After working for about forty years, i.e., almost non-stop from Asia to North America, I could not imagine how things could have turned differently had I not known how to play the game of chess.  Mother bought the first chess-set in the family when I was six.

In chess, just like in real life, one has to construct a winning mission statement identifying clearly the legacy values one wants to accomplish and pass on to the next generation. Most chess players will aim to win the game in order to advance.  Others would try to win the game or salvage a draw to improve his or her ranking say in a tournament.  Still others would aim to fight a good chess player to gain insights and learn how an expert plays the game.  Whatever purpose one might have in playing chess, the overarching objective appears to be how to win the game.  In other words, once we have defined our mission statement, which normally happens after high-school graduation, i.e., for some it could happen after elementary or middle school graduation or still for some after graduating in college, the next steps would involve strategies, tactics and maneuvers to help us accomplish our mission or goal.

Foresight is the most important strategy in chess.  It means how far in advance could you project your situation given a series of moves that you are about to take.  It is said that a grandmaster could foresee in advance about 20 to 25 moves ahead.  The alternatives could appear to be endless, but adopting sound tactics such as trying to gain a material advantage or sacrificing a piece to gain a positional advantage, could very well spell victory in the long run. The actual maneuvering happens when one actually exchanges with his or her opponent.  Be careful when you actual execute the maneuvering, i.e., material exchanges.  It is in actual maneuvering that sometimes you end up losing the game because after the material exchange, you find yourself down by a piece or down by quality. Some of the best maneuvering tactics in chess could involve the following: (i) try to gain an early positional advantage by focusing your pieces at the center of the board; (ii) avoid having double pawns, (iii) the bishop could be better than a knight in an endgame; (iv) in general, a bishop pair in an endgame is better than a knight pair; and (v) always remember that the best defense is a good offense.

Preparation is the most crucial part of the game, whether it is chess or the game of life.  When I was in my teens, I remember asking why I have to study every day.  When I finished college, I taught it was the end of my studies, yet I saw many people enrolling in higher-education to take up say an MBA, and still others will continue to study after their MBA, and complete their Ph.D., and finally I observed that most professional players embrace Life-Long Learning (Triple L).  Indeed, professionalism is all about discipline, and to achieve the highest level of discipline (one prominent author calls it Level 5 Discipline), one must embrace Triple L.  In a knowledge-based world, professionalism has become synonymous to Triple L.