Waiting Games
Friends know that I used to play chess competitively. You want to know what the most stressful part of chess was? It was waiting. Probably not the waiting a non-player associated chess with. There is never a dull moment in competitive and tournament chess, especially when you have $100,000 on the line. There are lots of things to wait for. You wait to see who will make the first mistake. You wait for your opponent to fall for your trap. You wait for your enemies time to run out so you can claim a victory. You wait for your opponents next move after calculating seven moves deep in seven different variations for his most likely seven moves (343 different positions total), only to be surprised by a novel move, trashing the time you spent crunching moves in your mind. It's a lot. It is this waiting period that really wears a player out. Well, wore me out at least. It's a power play. In life as it is in chess. It's a demonstration of power that we can make people wait on u...