YouSaid · the spoken record

Maurice Ashley

lines on the record: 119
first: 2020-07-29
most recent: 2020-07-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Or series of moves. And you sit there. 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. I mean, you feel like a genius after that. What a great feeling. I could play like him.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is, and it's the best thing 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 360, puts it between his legs, switches his left hand, and dunk it, right? Flush. All you can do is go, wow, but you're not doing that. 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 whiter, the black pieces. And it says, okay, you get to be Gary Kasparo or Magnus Carlson or Paul Morphy or Alexand. You get to be that person. Right now, what's the brilliant move to win?”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“LIS LI Chess dot org And I mean, those sites have really done it right in such a way as to give you everything you could possibly want so you can learn chess better. And it's another site, Chess 24.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 level of interest. I mean, it's amazing how chess has teleported itself online in this way seamlessly, seamlessly. If I had these kind of resources when I was in Brownsville, oh my goodness, out of danger. I might have turned into a player.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 videos, instructional videos, whether it's being able to watch tournaments, whether it's playing anyone 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 to how much time you have. That's one website, leechess.org is another great website.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The teacher brings that energy. The teacher brings the passion. And I think 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 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 it.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The love of the thing itself is critical. The love of the thing itself. 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 bringing in basketball. I'd be bringing in martial arts. I'd be bringing in trash talking. You saw a good move and I'd be like, that was juice. That was juice. And then they started quoting me, oh, that was a juice move right there.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's been incredible because people are inside and they want something fun to do it, not just fun, but meaningful, right? Something they think kids are going to have, not just a good time, but not waste their time. They're going to 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 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 going to be fascinated. You got the chess pieces, the king and queen and brooks and knights and bishops and pawns. They got these shapes. You got the board. And kids just want to touch and feel and move. And what do these pieces do?”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because 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 never before. Ikaru Nakamura went from He's a top player, went from like 10,000 followers on Twitch to almost half a million. I mean.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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, 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. 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.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The odds weren't high that I was going to become a world champion. Let's put it that way. The odds were 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.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, so 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 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.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's all I wanted. That's all I wanted. So when I got there, there was that feeling of elation, joy, satisfaction, relief, 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 was such a hard climb up 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 got a nice view. That's great. How long can you stay on the mountain? You just, you know, that's not the human mind doesn't work that way. It's not like you're just going to sit there and have no product.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 you're 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.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was depressing. It's depressing. It was depressing. It's extraordinary. At first, at first, you know, there was the whirlwind of becoming a grandmaster.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everything is okay. This attack's not going to work. It 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.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 going to come with tremendous force. And when I was able to physicalize that, 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, nope, I'm fine.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. Chess, it's 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 got to study IKEA. I got to 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. I just learned to recognize primarily Aikido as defensive. Aikido recognizes the flaws in attacks.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the greatest books I've ever read is called Laikido and the Dynamic Sphere. It's by Orati and I want to say Weston, but I think I got that wrong, Westbrook. Anyway, Taikido in the dynamic sphere. And I remember when I first stumbled on this book, and the book is about Aikido. But as I was reading it, I felt like I was reading about chess.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And 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 35, 60 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. 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 centering me and getting me to recognize.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 going to play. So that works for a while. And then you do that against a good player and then you lose. You make a mistake. And boom, you lose again. 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.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 game, which I find that's like, I know we're like doing a lot, but that seems like over the top.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's all that support system. The top layers have more than one person on their team. They have a team, a real team. So you just get that together so that you can be prepared like a fine-tuned assassin ready to play.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. And you can't do that half-heartedly. You got to be ready. That's digging. That's not taking. That's research at the highest level. And you got to 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. 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 an advisor role and you pay him that money or pay her that money because they're going to 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 should try studying that. Try 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.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Able to record all the games. It's one of the great things about chess we have games from hundreds of years, we have games from centuries ago, right? Easily games from the 1500, the Italian players, the talent 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 game. So that is important because you're talking about initially hundreds of thousands of games. Now the databases are 7 million to 8 million strong, meaning number of games. So I could research the best players if I'm going to play world champion. I research, boom, Magnus Carlson's name comes up and I see all his games. But not only that, I'm able to very easily.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, first things first, all the chessbooks 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 archived. And in such a way that you could research individual players. So that meant that if I had to play Tim Ferris, 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 weeks time.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Except the bar, at least you can study for. And 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 have to climb. So no grandmaster wants to be the one that somebody else stepped over to become a grandmaster themselves. So it's cutthroat. It's trial by fire. It's amazing. It's like the top black belt in karate, right? Your Bruce Lee's. Imagine having to fight Bruce Lee if you want to call yourself a professional fighter. The kind of stuff you have to do in chess. And so it's quite a journey.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 uses 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 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 the bar in law and somebody says, you're going to have to take bar three times. You're going to have to pass it three times.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Gotta beat people. So it comes down Well, Chess has a ranking system, what we call a rating system that was invented by a Hungarian mathematician, Arpod Ilo. And he came up with a way of weighting 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 spread that out to millions of people and chess players all around the world get these ratings. Now, we have class players, so class A, B, C on down, then you finally become a title player is when you become an expert or a master, an international master, international.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I'm manifesting out there that this is what I want. It may not have been a specific person to help sponsor me and sponsor my quest, but just somehow just opens. And I always have faith that something's going to happen. You just have to keep at it, keep that window open, that spirit open for possibility to come to you and just don't lose that passion, that drive because it's not happening right away.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he felt like I was doing everything that was 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 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. 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 opened.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was sort of incidentally. The woman in charge of this foundation, her name is Courtney Welsh, 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 I was like a caged tiger, if you will. 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. I'd really had gone to the top of coaching. Like I said, my kids had won the national championships. My students, I was doing commentary. I was traveling in the world doing commentary. I done a CD Ramby then.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. So, this is a bit different from what you're describing.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was able to stop everything I was doing and just focus on chess. And about 19 months later, I got my final norm that made me a grandmaster.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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've 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, my passion to finally do what I've always wanted to do. that eventually turned into inspiration, search the quest to finally do it. And I was very fortunate because at the time I was working in an organization, the Harlem Educational Activities Fund that had a sponsor by the name of Dan Rose. He was the philanthropist actually who gave to this fund to help young kids in Harlem. And I was teaching in his chess programs and we had produced national champions and the like. And he heard about my dream and he said, listen, I also.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. Absolutely. You're fast forwarding big time though. So now I'm way out of my teens. I'm now at that time. I'm 31 years old. So we're jumping fast. I had gone through many experiences before then, but my quest to become a grandmaster was seemingly stymied because by then I had a daughter. 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 sort of fatherhood and making money. And my dream was to become a grandmaster. So by the time we get to Tiger in 970, he was at the master's and he dominated that master's. Remember, that was just coming out part. And that really struck a chord for me because when I watched him be a dominant player in a sport that largely didn't look”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As you would expect, it was not Brooklyn, I could tell you that, not Brownsville. It was different. It was definitely different. 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 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 definitely a much more formal affair. But it was as long as it was about chess, then I didn't care.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I did. I did. Once I found out that clubs were there, I wanted to find out who played there. 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 really took our game to another level.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That day. And for me, coming up as a young player, I was 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 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 Bears school and become the president, as we called it. I started dominating those guys because I wasn't just about playing inside.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 holiday you could have. But these were strong players. Now, the problem for the Black Bear School, 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 Koldig, Mark Meers, Chris Welcome. These guys were serious high-level talents. But their best wish was to destroy each other.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now you're done. Really? Okay, I'm going to stop talking. You know, I'll stop talking because I want to respect you. So I'm going to 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 going to happen. It's just going to be unending stream and you're never going to 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.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 going to go with that. So everything and anything you come into depending on who it was that you were talking to. And also, of course, you'd 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 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 just 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 the worst thing to do to a trash talker is tell him to stop talking”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's call it sexual in the conversation like graphic. And that was really would throw you off because chess pieces would morph into sort of like, you know, sex toys in the description. How did that come in your head, dude? Like, could you please just play chess? But that's where the conversation would go.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 Mouth, who would always say no matter what the situation, that's what she said. Just every single time. That's what she said. I'm whipping your ass. That's what she said. Whatever it was, that was always his line. Then you had guys who would quote Shakespeare, like Vinny Livermore, who was played by Lawrence Fishburne in Josh Waiteskin's movie about Josh Waiteskin searching for Bobby Fisher. And Vinny, he'd be quoting Shakespeare the whole time. He's like, you know, you got to know Shakespeare to quote Shakespeare. And clearly this guy knew Shakespeare. So that was another way. Or there'll be people who stayed very, very”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 the person or get inside their head the way you would as yourself. And so you have the people who will just be real, low-key sarcastic, right? It won't even necessarily be fancy. They might say something like, really? That's what you're going to play? I mean,”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hit him again. Hit him again. I mean, guys had tactics, when I say tactics, I mean moves that were like pyrotechnics. You'd think, where did that come from? You thought you had the position under control and somebody would drop a move and it would just explode on the board. It's like, what? That's playable. So you just had to be absolutely fierce and focused and maintain that discipline all the way through because these guys were true ninjas on the board.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pieces 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 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 all.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. Now you have even faster than blitz. You have bullet, which is one minute per side, which is really like Edward Scissorhand speed.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. I was the youngest one. I was a big trash talker. They were very upset when I talk so much trash. He's like, you got to 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.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT