M2M Day 358: A surefire way to defeat Magnus Carlsen at a game of chess
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For October, my goal is to defeat world champion Magnus Carlsen at a game of chess.
Today, I had a good idea. In fact, after some brainstorming with a friend, I figured out a surefire way to complete this month’s challenge.
It’s important to mention that this idea was heavily inspired by Nathan Fielder of Comedy Central’s Nathan for You, which is currently the only TV show I’m watching. While the humor of the show probably isn’t for everyone, I find the show brilliant and immensely satisfying.
Anyway, here’s the idea:
As I defined this month’s challenge, I need to defeat world champion Magnus Carlsen at a game of chess.
It turns out that, based on this definition of success, there actually is one minor loophole: I didn’t specify that Magnus Carlsen needs to be the World Chess Champion. Rather, I just specified that he need to be a world champion.
In other words, I don’t need to defeat the Magnus Carlsen at a game of chess. I just need to defeat a Magnus Carlsen at a game of chess, as long as this Magnus Carlsen is the world champion at anything.
Firstly, after a quick search on Facebook, I found dozens of other Magnus Carlsens who would be perfect candidates for my chess match. I guess Magnus Carlsen is a reasonably popular nordic name.
Even if I couldn’t convince any of these other Magnus Carlsens to participate, I can alway find someone who’d be willing to change their name if properly compensated. (In Nathan’s show, in one of the episodes, he pays a guy from Craigslist $1,001 to change his name).
Once I have a willing Magnus Carlsen, I’ll need to ensure that he is the world champion at something.
This is an incredibly flexible constraint…
I could even ask Magnus Carlsen #2 to invent a new board game that only he knows the rules for, guaranteeing that he is the world champion. Of course, I would stage a world championship event just to be sure.
Then, assuming Magnus Carlsen #2 isn’t a very good chess player, we’d play a game of chess and I’d easily defeat him, thereby allowing me to officially defeat world champion Magnus Carlsen at a game of chess.
Clearly, the point of my M2M project isn’t to bend semantics, but I did find this idea amusing. And, not only that, but it is technically legitimately.
Anyway, the purpose of sharing this, other than perhaps amusing one other person, is to say that there are always many creative ways to reach you goals. Sometimes, you just need to think a little differently.
Read the next post. Read the previous post.
