these games

Dear reader, hi! 😊

Today’s blog is not about finance 😄, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

Sudoku and chess are two games that have had a profound impact on my life.

SUDOKU
Back in high school, I fell in love with sudoku. We’d compete with a few of my friends to see who could complete the sudokus the fastest. It was entertaining! Even while at university, I continued to solve sudoku puzzles. It simply provided me with an adrenaline rush, which I eagerly anticipated.

With constant exposure to sudoku puzzles, I realized that there are some life lessons we can draw from playing sudoku. The first is that there is always a solution to most problems. Sudoku puzzles necessitate the discovery of patterns and connections in order to solve the puzzle as a whole. Some puzzles will be simple to solve, while others will take a little more time. I really like the difficult ones! I like the difficult ones because I’m always aware in the back of my mind that the sudoku MUST HAVE a solution, it simply MUST HAVE. It’s always a dare for me to find a solution in these circumstances.

I can spend 30 minutes trying to solve a sudoku puzzle with no way out. In such cases, I put down the pen and take my mind off the sudoku for a few minutes so that my brain can declutter from all the craziness I was trying to solve. Most of the time, when I come to finish the puzzle, the solution is right there; however, my brain was so jumbled that it couldn’t see the answers right in front of me. This brings me to my second lesson from puzzles: sometimes in life, we just need to put our pens down, close our laptops, or even put our relationships on hold for a while to allow our bodies to rest, and put our minds in peace. After all, there is always a solution to any challenge: like sudoku puzzles, some challenges are easy to solve in 5 minutes, while others require us to use our brains, but there is always a solution. Keep going and don’t give up!

CHESS
I believe I knew the fundamentals of chess by the age of ten, including the chess pieces and how they move on the chessboard. But it wasn’t until covid struck that I became enthralled with chess! I registered at chess.com and began playing. I grew to enjoy the blitz games (3 min of chess).

Blitz games are pure adrenaline from start to finish! You make a move, I make a move, and with limited time (3 minutes! ), a player must ensure that their moves are accurate and harmful to the opponent. The first few months of playing blitz sent me on an emotional rollercoaster; I would lose because I was rushing to make an incorrect move, I would win because my opponent’s time-lapsed just in time to send me into tears, I would defeat my opponent after some luck-based counter moves, and I would lose within the first seconds because I didn’t know some opening chess strategies, uh! An emotional roller coaster. Do I still make the same mistakes I did in 2020? Yes, but there is a 1% chance of repeating the same mistakes due to EXPERIENCE, my friend! It’s been two years now! This brings me to some important life lessons I’ve learned from playing chess.

One, in order to become a wizard at anything, we must value the lessons that come with time and exposure. Time is the most valuable resource in life, in my opinion. We all begin somewhere where we know nothing about anything; jobs, games, people, education, and so on. Time turns scarcity into an abundance! Because of my exposure to various online chess players, I’ve learned to anticipate chess attacking moves that an opponent might make and thus prepare a solid defense or countermove to such attacks. But I wasn’t aware of these when I first started out. But time, exposure, and millions of games all helped me improve. We have little knowledge of what happens in the industry when we first start our careers. However, after being exposed to a variety of assignments, challenges, people, and personalities, we become refined gold, pure, tested, and gleaming gold! We rarely know our partners at first glance in relationships; however, time exposes us to the beauty of people. Education: To become astute reasoners on current issues, we must read several chapters.

Two, take chances! A chess game is full of risky moves designed to gain an advantage at critical points in the game. I learned this trait in 2020 when I used to be very cautious about the chess moves I was making at the expense of my opponents, who were making daring attacking chess moves, leaving me to do more defensive work rather than counterattack. In my opinion, anything worth pursuing in life necessitates some element of risk-taking. Caution: risk-taking should be guided by wisdom. That job assignment that seems out of reach, why not take the risk of applying for it? If you have some knowledge about it and are willing to work, risk + time + work exposure + grit will pay off. Relationships, education, sports, and everything else worth pursuing in life will require you to have some faith, take a risk, and learn as you go.

Three, you will eventually become great. One thing that would sometimes demoralize me was how frequently I would lose chess games due to avoidable mistakes. Within 3 minutes, a small mistake can completely turn a chess game on its head, either to your advantage or the opponent. However, after several games, I improved my ability to make better moves and avoid game-ending errors. This, once again, comes with time and exposure. Don’t worry about not knowing everything early in your career; you’ll get there if you keep up the grit and focus. It may even take years (consider the person you look up to; did they become gurus overnight? Probably not!). It’s time, my friend). By God’s grace, we eventually become great because we never gave up and risked everything to achieve our dreams and goals.

Four, and related to the previous point, there are mistakes that can cost you the entire game! These are the most vexing errors. I’ve played games where I was already in a losing position after the first three moves because the error I made gave the opponent so much mileage over me that it was impossible to reverse the losing position. As is true in life, some mistakes are too costly to correct. Solution: Consider your moves carefully while also keeping an eye out for the preying opponent.

Finally, enjoy what you do! Chess and sudoku are two of my favorite games. In fact, I have to complete the sudoku puzzles in the newspapers every weekend. Every day, I have to play at least 30 minutes of blitz chess. Why? Because I enjoy playing these games. They necessitate mental effort, which I appreciate. In life, enjoying what you do greatly contributes to the success that comes with hard work. Education, career, relationships, sports, etc. Love it, love them! Wholeheartedly!

I hope you found today’s blog interesting. Yes, this serves as therapy for me😄; everything I’ve written is also a work in progress for me.

Please share your thoughts; I would loooove to hear from you😊. Stay safe, until next time! Remember to appreciate the gift that is time.