Understanding, 05/18/07
I help coach my son's chess team and spend a lot of time thinking about just how to teach something so complex to children who are six, seven and eight years old.
This week one of the coaches and I were talking. He is an 'expert' player, an order of magnitude better than the average player and an order of magnitude worse than a grandmaster.
He was recounting a story of talking with a grandmaster friend of his who said, "Stuart, it's amazing what you've accomplished given your limited understanding of the game."
It wasn't meant as a put-down or back-handed compliment. It was a simple statement of fact. Stuart had worked hard and was exceeding his abilities given his understanding; he needed to stop working on individual strategies and tactics and concentrate his efforts on understanding the game.
And that is the key: at some point the next thing to work on isn't a new trading system or a new pattern or a new market - the next thing to work on is a better and deeper understanding of the game.