Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov – Trust Your Gut

Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov talks about trusting your own intuition and instincts in order to navigate life’s vast ocean of possibilities.

Transcript:

“We should learn how to trust our gut; intuition. In most of the stories I looked at and in most of the quotes I collected, I didn’t see people picking up intuition as a crucial element of the success. While in my profession in chess, intuition is virtually everything, because chess, some people don’t recognize it, is a mathematically infinite game. The number of moves in the game of chess, all the moves, contains 120 zeros, which is more than [the] number of seconds since the moment Big Bang created the universe.

“How can you find your way in this ocean of possibilities? And of course how [can] a man fight a machine that could calculate tens and tens of millions of positions per second? Intuition, because it is all about [the] decision-making process. We never employ calculation as the main tool. It’s one percent of calculation or less, and 99 percent of our understanding, of our ability to find intuitive ways to comparing compatible[s], material versus quality, time versus material; intuition pays a key role.

“We have to trust our intuition; our instinct. Because in life also, we have many opportunities where we cannot foresee all of the consequences. There is only one choice. To trust your gut.”