The board-game preparation section recommends a personal notebook of games, including losses and draws, comparison with strong players and careful preparation. It also favors understanding over memorizing more material than one can digest.
Build a compact entry
Our journal format is deliberately small: situation, planned action, reasons, outcome and revision. The purpose is to preserve enough information to detect a recurring error, not to write a flattering narrative after every success.
Worked example
A fictional entry records: “I expected X because Y; I observed Z; the definition of Y was inconsistent; next time I will fix that definition first.”
Case connection
A recorded contest can be reviewed move by move. Use that structure to keep reasons and outcomes together in your own journal.
Deep Blue meets Kasparov
Source-grounded facts
IBM’s Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match.
Context
IBM set out to build a chess computer capable of beating the reigning world champion. The contest gave both sides a clearly defined board, legal moves and tournament time controls.
Outcome
Deep Blue won the match 3.5–2.5. This demonstrated a specific competitive capability under chess rules, rather than proving superiority at every activity requiring judgment.
- In 1996, Deep Blue won the first game, but Kasparov recovered to win the six-game match 4–2.
- The team improved the computer’s evaluation function and endgame databases before the rematch.
- In May 1997, each side won one early game and the next three were drawn. Deep Blue then won the sixth.
Case analysis
A game record preserves a sequence rather than just its final score. Your own notebook should do the same: record the situation, planned action and reason before the result, then add the outcome and revision afterward. Comparing entries under one format makes recurring errors visible. It also makes successful decisions easier to distinguish from favourable accidents.
Try it
Write one game-book entry for a recent nonfinancial decision using the five fields.