Admitting mistakes

Last weekend I watched the latest debate between the Democratic presidential candidates — Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Bill Richardson. I deliberately avoided paying attention to politics during 2007, but now 2008 is here, the year of the presidential election in the U.S., so I felt as if I ought to start paying attention.

This isn’t a political blog, but there was one moment near the end of the debate that I found very interesting and which relates to chess in a vague way. The moderator asked the candidates if they had said anything in their previous 900 debates (he was joking) that they wished they could take back. I thought that this was a clever question, because it took the candidates away from their prepared answers and forced them to be a little bit introspective. But also, it’s important. One of the flaws of our current president is that he never, ever, ever admits a mistake. The words, “I was wrong,” are not in his vocabulary.

So, which of the Democratic candidates would pass the test? Unfortunately, the two front-runners, Obama and Clinton, ducked the question. They didn’t admit any mistakes. But the other two did. Edwards gave kind of a joking answer — one time he had made a negative comment about the way Hillary Clinton was dressed. He apologized and said, “You look great tonight.” The best answer, by far, was Richardson’s. He remembered that he was asked one time, “Who was your favorite Supreme Court justice?” He wasn’t prepared for that, and he answered Byron (“Whizzer”) White, because White was nominated by John F. Kennedy and Richardson is a fan of Kennedy. It turned out that White was a bad choice, because he opposed the Civil Rights Act in 1964. So Richardson admitted that was a mistake.

Based on those answers, Bill Richardson went way up in my opinion. However, he is considered a longshot candidate, and the voters of New Hampshire did not pay much attention to him. (He got 5% of the vote yesterday, to 39% for Clinton and 37% for Obama.) So perhaps, in politics, it continues to be a mistake to admit mistakes. If so, I think it’s very unfortunate. A leader does not have to be infallible; a leader should be able to listen to new advice or new information and be flexible enough to change. Nevertheless, voters apparently want their leaders to be infallible.

What is the relevance to chess? Well, in chess you have to be able to admit mistakes. I’ve given a couple of ChessLectures that are directly relevant to this. First, check out my lecture on “How to Save Lost Games (Sometimes),” where the first step in “coming back” from a lost position was to admit that I had misplaced one of my pieces (a knight on the rim). So I just un-did a move that I had played a couple moves earlier. Second, watch my joint video with Josh Friedel, “Dueling Masters: Crouching Ruy, Hidden Bird.” At one point during our game, Josh made a mistake that gave me some unexpected threats. However, he had such good control over the position that he could have simply taken back his move, un-making it on the next turn, and he would have retained an advantage. Instead, he was too proud to admit his mistake, and as a result I got a position that I should have drawn. (Later I made some mistakes myself, and he eventually won anyway.)

It’s very hard in chess, as in life, to say “I was wrong,” and play a move that announces right out loud that you’re giving up on your previous idea. We always want to look, both to our opponents and to ourselves, as if we know what we’re doing. There are many mistakes in chess that are not take-back-able. But every now and then, the ability to say “I was wrong” may in fact enable you to draw a game that you might have lost, or to keep an advantage that you would have given away if you had continued down the wrong path.

Carina wrote recently about how you can get away with delusions in real life but you can’t in chess. Politicians may be able to delude themselves into thinking they are never wrong. But we chessplayers cannot afford to! 

Update January 10: The newspapers reported today that Bill Richardson has withdrawn from the race. Too bad. I would have seriously considered voting for him in the California primary next month. But politics is a strange, strange business, where perceptions turn into realities almost instantly. Once you’re perceived as an “also-ran,” you have almost no chance.

Thank goodness chess is different. You may have a rating 500 points below your opponent, but you still start every game with a chance to win.