My Big Brother, David

My Big Brother, David


Regrettably, this entry is written in the past tense as my elder brother, David, died in 2005. For some reason, he seems to be "in the air" quite a bit of late (hence this post about him). For example, I just had an email from an old friend of his who has invited me for a chess game (or three - I'm not not sure yet).

Let me introduce David Bernard to you - by way of a photo and a few words I wrote about him at the time of his passing. If you have been following this blog at all, you will already have seen him in the header, he's the beer drinker on the right (not the coffee drinker on the left!). Here then is the obit and the photo.

"David was my big brother, my only sibling. I could not catch him up in age -
no matter how I tried, he was always six years older than me! We grew up in
the austerity of the immediate post war years, but in the privileged
position of being the sons of the family doctor - at that time an important
figure.

David always had his own unique style. Superficially he epitomised the
classic "Eccentric Englishman" of course. He looked at the world in a
special way, in an intelligent way. As a youngster, his bedroom was an
Aladdin's cave of half completed experiments in all of the sciences.
Mysterious things would be growing in jam jars and electrical devices of
unknown function would be in the process of creation.

He made extensive studies of wild flowers and mushrooms. I could never
understand how anyone could be interested in such things, but I had a great
respect for the way he would gain mastery over the latest subject of his
interest. Cryptic crosswords, for example, were an open book to him. He had
an extensive knowledge of astronomy. Yet he displayed none of the arrogance
of an academic, only the self-deprecating sense of humour of a true
philosopher.

At one time he specialised in making rockets out of washing up liquid
bottles. These were fairly sophisticated machines, powered by igniting a
mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. They rose to considerable heights. I tried
to emulate him by making my own rockets - but mine were just fireworks
inside a metal pipe, sealed at one end. Later on it was even harder to
compete with him as he climbed the academic ladder, eventually studying the
complex processes involved in the evolution of stars and nebulae.

His later career was based on his skill at computing. His approach was
unorthodox, yet indispensable to his colleagues. Essentially he was a "Mr
Fixit" for problems that others found intractable, even impossible. Yet he
seemed to take much more pride in the extra embellishments to his programs,
such as an initial screen containing animated goldfish. One of the best
presents that I bought him was a child's plastic toy - being a plastic pig
which had battery-operated flapping wings - the proverbial "flying pig". It
was advertised as being suitable for a three year old, a description which
pleased us both immensely. Clearly he had no concern about how he was viewed
by others. He was very much "his own man".

I will miss you, my brother and not just for the countless games of chess
that we enjoyed so much!"

Well, here we are in 2011 and I am presently playing against some of his friends. David liked to refer to one of them as the "Hawk" - he has a chess site called 'ChessFriendsWorld'.

New members are always welcome, we play chess in a relaxed and friendly fashion, via email (no time limit) - so I hope you will give us a "look see" and maybe join a tournament at some stage (it's free and there's no registration).

David wrote a useful chess program (now free) for recording moves and variations so please contact "Hawk" at the site if you would like to try it out.

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As a chessplayer, you have the attributes of a Wall Street trader

Boaz Weinstein’s opening move on Wall Street came as a result of chess. A bold statement  which is worth thinking about!

"Chess helps in trading, Mr. Weinstein said. To become a good chess player, he learned to focus on how he made decisions because he could not calculate the results of all his possible moves. Learning to deal with that uncertainty or risk has been useful. When you make an investment, “you can have an 80 percent chance of being right. And then the 20 percent comes up. But really it is the process that you used to make the decision", he said.”

These extracts are taken from the DealBook section in the New York Times as reported on 29 September 2011.

Let's face it, chessplayers are often viewed as "supergeeks" who have only the most tenuous grip on reality. But let's sift through the article a little more to find out why a chess player (such as yourself, for example) may indeed possess attributes which may lead to success in the business world. Thus:

“So many people in the investment world have bull-market mentalities. They do well when things are going well - Mr. Norwood said. In chess, he said, you are constantly facing setbacks, and the people who become great players learn to overcome them."

Here is the only part of the article's thesis that I take exception to. Why do we have to exclude the majority of the chess-playing fraternity from the argument? You don't have to be a "great player" to have have the attributes as described. It takes a certain amount of courage to even begin a chess game - with all the attendant potential humiliation of losing, the necessity of concentrating in a way that is quite beyond the majority of the population and so on.

So what other analogies are there between chess and investing? Here's what Mr. Hirsch, the founder of Seneca Capital, says:

"memory, pattern recognition and the order in which you play moves are important in chess, and the same is true in investing".

Apparently, Boaz Weinstein, who I mentioned at the beginning, often considers "chess players when hiring" - so maybe you could yet retire "a multimillionaire at the age of 40" as did one David Norwood, a well-known Grandmaster.

"Go for it", say I!

You may be interested in one of the comments made on the article by 'Michael' from Montreal, thus:

"If we deconstruct chess we find that all chess can be defined as a "chain" of moves. From the beginning to end this chain of moves is defined by the present state of the board. Aka past moves have no impact on the next move. Of course one might question the logic of this. "Don't chess players plan their attacks?" the answer is that yes they do. But no matter what your last move was your current move is entirely dependent on the present location of all the pieces.

This is the definition of what is called a Markov chain, a probability model which depends only on the current state of your sample. Markov chains are the one most useful probability models in the world and can be used to model anything from weather systems to financial markets.

Chess by itself cannot give a person the tools to deal with financial markets (as noted in the article) but it does give people a certain intuition and imagination which can help people grasp the complex prediction models that are oftentimes extensions of or based on Markov chains".

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