Yes, in this time of recession and crisis, I have realized the often-used adage "crisis is opportunity" and took the opportunity to accomplish my old ambitions by attaining a title of FIDE master in Chess. And this is the result of my victory in the strong chess tournament held in Zagreb last month and of my successful leadership of the local chess team "HRT Zagreb" named after the Croatian National Television. The picture above is taken at the closing ceremony of the tournament, while I was receiving cup and money prize. This easily describes a smile on my face :-)For those of you more interested in chess, you can find final ranking in the torunament I won on this page and final standings of the team competition I won with my team on on this page. Also, description of chess titles could be found on this page.
It's not easy to achieve this level in chess, or to be first in the torunament, that's reason I'm bragging about it. Chess requires from you to put a lof of effort in playing and studying of the game to achieve a success, but after all it's still a game and no one guarantees that you will outplay your opponent and won a game, no matter how knowledgeable you are. You need a lot of knowledge, but also a lof of skill and the iron determination to achieve a success in it. Those characteristics compelled many people to draw parallels between chess and life, or between chess and business. Good examples could be famous world champion Garry Kasparov who wrote a book "How Life Imitates Chess", and good Grandmaster Lars Bo Hansen who wrote a book "Foundations of Chess Strategy".
I encourage the people who don't play chess to read Kasparov's book, it has many interesting points and you don't need to know how to play chess to read it. And those with chess and business background, like me, could find interesting ideas on the subject in Hansen's book.
