The Habit of Victory Can Lead to Defeat

This is Steven Petrick posting.

My father taught me to play chess. He taught me what I regard as the right way: He never let me win. I suffered defeat after defeat, threw fits (I was between six and eight during this period), but always came back for more. He taught my older brother the same way. The result was that one day, I won a game. After a while of more playing, I started winning more consistently. I was probably (actually, the truth is that I simply was) by the time I was 10 or 11 the best chess player of the three of us (Mom and my younger brother had no interest).

Winning at chess in my family simply became, after a while, a habit. Playing people outside of my family was more of a challenge because they were "unknown" to me. I was, however, pretty good (not perfect, i.e., I could not always beat someone I had never played before, and there were players who could routinely beat me). But at home, on my own ground against my father or my brother, I would win.

A sort of complacency set in (habit).

One day I sat down to play my brother, and he began to play just about the worst game he ever had. I became more involved in taking his pieces and pawns than actually playing the game. He was playing badly, I always beat him anyway, so what could go wrong.

Turned out, my brother had a plan, and my "habit of victory" caused me to walk right into his plan with my eyes wide open. Mike offered me pieces and pawns on the flanks, and drew my attention away from the center to capitalize on these easy kills without really looking at what was going on. I would win after all, I always won.

Then my brother announced "checkmate."

I was stunned. My brother's pawn structure had been crushed, most, but not all, of his pieces had been eliminated, I had lost little of my own forces, but I had absolutely no way of getting out of check.

It was certainly a lesson I should have been aware of. History is full of commanders who were certain of victory, even victory over forces they had beaten several times before, only to have an unexpected change, whether a new tactic (as happened in my case), or a new technology, or change in enemy commanders, or simply an unfamiliarity with a significant terrain feature, cause catastrophic defeat.

The habit of victory is useful to an Army. Wellington's troops in the peninsula campaign won at least one battle simply because the habit of victory carried them past the point where they were defeated.

No commander, however, should ever succumb to the habit of victory. Each and every battle should be judged on its own merits. Just because you have beaten the enemy before, whether the same enemy or a different enemy, does not mean they have not come up with a new wrinkle to pull on you today.

Not even numbers ensures victory (as the Romans learned at Cannae).

You should not fear disaster and worse take council of your fears (as McClellan so often did), but you must treat every battle as an event for its own sake, and make certain you do all you can to gain victory, never simply assume it will be yours because "we have always won before."

The habit of victory can lead to sloth (not fully preparing for the battle), blindness (failing to see what has changed since your last battle), paralysis (not being able to adapt to an unexpected enemy action), and disaster (Charles XII, the Great, of Sweden lost one battle to Peter the Great of Russia, and despite all his previous victories that one destroyed his Army and nullified all of his previous victories, Sweden never really recovered from it).