Carl Ja­cobs

What do busi­ness in­vest­ment and man­ag­ing mon­ey have in com­mon with the dy­nam­ics of chess?If you ask for­mer world cham­pi­on Gar­ry Kas­parov this ques­tion, most like­ly he will tell you that busi­ness de­ci­sions ac­tu­al­ly im­i­tate chess, in keep­ing with the ideas he ex­pound­ed in his very read­able book, How Life Im­i­tates Chess.In this vol­ume, Kas­parov of­fers the read­er a live­ly primer on how to achieve suc­cess by mas­ter­ing the tools of the world's old­est game: how to eval­u­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties, an­tic­i­pate the fu­ture, and de­vise win­ning strate­gies. Us­ing ex­am­ples from cur­rent events, sports, mil­i­tary and po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry, busi­ness and lit­er­a­ture, the ex-world cham­pi­on demon­strates the im­por­tance of "con­stant self ques­tion­ing, recog­nis­ing pat­terns, min­i­miz­ing dis­trac­tions, un­der­stand­ing the phas­es of the game and be­com­ing ruth­less­ly ef­fi­cient while at the same time let­ting our imag­i­na­tions flour­ish."But, whichev­er way you want to look at it, the affini­ties be­tween do­ing busi­ness and play­ing chess are eas­i­ly rec­og­niz­able for those for­tu­nate enough to be fa­mil­iar with ac­tion in both are­nas. The an­swer to the ques­tion, then, came eas­i­ly to Amol Go­lik­eri, Cor­po­rate Man­ag­er of First Cit­i­zens As­set Man­age­ment Lim­it­ed, the com­pa­ny spon­sor­ing the Caribbean Chess Car­ni­val now in progress at Queen's Roy­al Col­lege.In ad­dress­ing the open­ing func­tion of the tour­na­ment on Tues­day, Go­lik­eri ex­plained: "In­vest­ments are about plan­ning and strate­gies, tak­ing cal­cu­lat­ed risks so that you can achieve your goals. You have to an­tic­i­pate and some­times you have to ad­just your strate­gies to suit chang­ing mar­ket con­di­tions...so too in the game of chess."

The busi­ness ex­ec­u­tive not­ed that a good chess play­er had to have a plan of ac­tion, a strat­e­gy. "De­ci­sions are not made ran­dom­ly and on a whim or fan­cy," he added. "You have to an­tic­i­pate your op­po­nent's moves and some­times you have to mod­i­fy your plan in re­sponse to your op­po­nent's counter moves."It re­quires pa­tience and keep­ing your long term goal in mind....if you want to achieve your ob­jec­tive of 'check­mate.' There are risks and re­wards which you have to con­stant­ly weigh up with every move."Just like in play­ing chess, as­set man­age­ment fol­lows the prin­ci­ples of strate­gic plan­ning, he ob­served. "We too must care­ful­ly analyse and as­sess the sit­u­a­tion be­fore mak­ing our moves."The best strat­e­gy in the world, be it in a game of chess or in a fi­nan­cial plan, will be of lit­tle use un­less it is put in­to prac­tice, he con­clud­ed.Go­lik­eri said First Cit­i­zens As­set Man­age­ment lim­it­ed was proud to spon­sor the Caribbean Chess Car­ni­val. The com­pa­ny, he added, was com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the T&T Chess Foun­da­tion's ju­nior in­ter­na­tion­al event, an op­por­tu­ni­ty to give back to the com­mu­ni­ty by con­tribut­ing to the de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try's youth.The Chess Car­ni­val has at­tract­ed a to­tal of 81 play­ers in­clud­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Suri­name and Bar­ba­dos. Among the the top T&T ju­niors vieing for ho­n­ours are FM Keron Cabralis, Vish­nu Singh, Chris­t­ian Am­mon and Justin Labastide. The sev­en-round Swiss com­pris­es play in four age groups, Un­der-10, Un­der-14, Un­der-20 and Novices.Kur­tis Chong, promi­nent T&T play­er and coach, who mi­grat­ed to Cana­da three years ago, is back to as­sist with the tour­na­ment. Chong, al­so a di­rec­tor of the T&TCF, wel­comed the play­ers to the "beau­ti­ful­ly re­stored" QRC hall and ex­pressed the Foun­da­tion's ap­pre­ci­a­tion for FCAM's spon­sor­ship.He re­mind­ed the gath­er­ing of young­sters that they should al­ways be able to dis­agree with oth­ers in an am­i­ca­ble way and that chess "is a won­der­ful op­por­tu­ni­ty for de­vel­op­ing that kind of pos­i­tive at­ti­tude."The four-day tour­na­ment ends to­mor­row.