Fireside with the Underboss - How the MAFIA is like CHESS

This week Sammy discusses how the Mafia is similar to Chess. He breaks down the process of having to always be three steps ahead of your opponent. These skills can be applied to real life situations. Sit back and enjoy the latest video!

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Hey, guys, I have thischessboard ahead in front of me here because
I'm gonna be talking about chess.Is a game, a game about chess,
but it's more about life, everyaspect of life, business, and
I want to explain to you.So let me start off with the chess

(00:23):
board itself and the chess game.You chess probably as will know. You
always set up the board right tothe right, so the white box,
queen, king, bishops, horses, castles, and points. Now,

(00:44):
the queen is always on its owncolor. A white queen is on the
white box. Black queen is onthe black box. The king is right
next to it. These two guyssit on both sides of it. Their
bishops. Then there's horses, there'srooks, which are castles. Now,

(01:07):
a queen could move in any whichdirection, forward and back, sideways,
all different ways. The king couldonly move one spot at a time.
The bishop goes on its own color, and diagonally on the angle the horse
goes. It's the only piece thatcould jump over pieces, so it could

(01:30):
go one, two, three,it lands outside. So I'm not going
to get two in depth with thegame itself. But the object of the
game is this team is going tocome down and checkmate this team the king.
Now, checkmate his means that ifthere was a bishop here, that

(01:56):
bishop could kill the king. That'sa check. So the object of the
game is to check mate someone thathe's dead. He can't get out of
the way, there's nothing that couldblock him, so a check would be
checkmate. Game over the king isthat. Now there's a lot of books

(02:21):
on this game, and you cantake the books read them. There's a
lot of people who know how toplay this game. Really not a game.
They invented this game hundreds and hundredsof years ago, and they use
this because there's a lot of strategyinvolved. When someone makes a move.

(02:44):
Let's say I moved the pawn twosteps up. He could move one,
or he could move to So hemoves there right away. The other side
is thinking two and three moves ahead. Here's what it that thing? He's
going to try and kill my king. So I'm going to analyze his every

(03:07):
move, why he made that move, What is he trying to set up
that would kill my king? Nowthat strategy. You have to think two
and three moves ahead in this gameall the time, and you have to

(03:29):
think what is your opponent thinking whydid he move this piece, Why did
he do this? Why did hedo that? So you have to get
into that person's head and try tofigure out what he's thinking. This is

(03:51):
why his game goes to colleges anduniversities across the world because this teaches you
strategy. When you could understand thisgame and you start thinking two or three
moves ahead, well, if you'rethinking four moves ahead and you're a chess

(04:15):
genius, Now, how does itrelate to your personal life, business and
everything that's involved. When you gointo business, things happen. Conversations go
on and people talk about what they'regonna do, what they're going to charge

(04:38):
you, or percentage they're going togive you all of these things. Now,
I'll give you an example. There'sa company. This company now is
looking at there in New York.They're looking at land in Montana. So

(05:00):
some of the employees or people whowork with them are saying, why are
they looking at land in Montana.They're trying to figure out what the guy
is thinking. State is he thinkingabout moving this company to Montana? That
would hurt their business or help theirbusiness? So they want to think,

(05:24):
what is he thinking. This gameteaches you that strategies what are people thinking
when people say something to you andtalk to you. It involves this game
because words always mean something. Whensomebody says something, the tone of their

(05:48):
voice, things that they say,it means something to you. So right
away you want to get into thisguy's head. Is he mad? Is
he said? Or a husband anda wife they communicate a lot of times
they can't communicate, but this gamehelps them communicate. It makes them understand

(06:13):
what the other person is thinking,what makes them happy or sad or mad.
Because you the words that you're payingattention to, you're thinking about them.
Maybe their expression said something to you. So now you're analyzing this person,
whether it's your husband or your wifeor your kids, what school they're

(06:39):
going to go to, how they'rethinking, what they're thinking about. Maybe
you shouldn't put them in certain collegesor certain schools. This is the most
unbelievable game. I don't know ifthey made it that way. I know
it's a game of strategy, andI know college is in universities took this

(07:00):
over a long time ago. Nowin the Mafia, I used this game.
I got to notice game and understandthe game, and when I was
talking to people in other families orsit down a meeting, I always strategize
what is he thinking when he comesto this meeting, what is he like?

(07:28):
How could I satisfy him and satisfymyself at the same time. So
this game gave me the ability tolook at someone and analyze what he's thinking.
Now, in the mafia, thisis extremely important because when you talk
about killing the king, they mightbe thinking about killing you. So strategizing

(07:56):
on their thinking, what they're thinkingabout why they think these things is extremely
important. And I think just hashelped me in life, whether it was
in the mafia and in business,in relationships with women, my wife,

(08:18):
my children, what people say tome is very important. Their words are
important. Podcast Alano once said,when you take a going out and you
pointed at someone and pull the trigger, you can't stop that bullet. It

(08:39):
goes to its target and does damage. You can't stop the bullet once you
pull the trigger. Words have thesame effect. When someone says something to
you, you can't grab that wordback in mid air. You can't stop
it. Like the bullet goes rightto the person and it may do damage,

(09:05):
not damage where they will die,but psychological damage. When you learn
this game, you learn to sitback and watch your moves, the game
of chess of life. You watchyour words, what you're saying. It's
going to mean something to someone.It's going to mean something in the relationship

(09:30):
that you have. It's a tremendousgame, and it's a game of strategy,
thinking, analyzing, watching your moves. Someone makes a move, you
don't just make a move boom rightaway. You analyze what they're thinking.

(09:50):
You analyze the situation. You analyzewhat move you're going to make to try
and win this game. To makea rush move so you don't make these
rushes rush decisions in your life.You analyze, listen to the words,

(10:11):
listen to the conversations, and playthis game. It's the game of chess,
but it's the game of life.Relationships. Business use this game.
That's why they teach this in collegesand universities. They want to make these

(10:35):
kids think, use their brain.Once you play this game enough, you'll
understand the benefits of strategy thinking.All of that stuff Now, I always
wondered growing up. I learned thatas a kid. My older brother in

(10:56):
law showed me the game. Iplayed it for a while. I played
it when I was in prison,and it helped me strategize everything in my
life. I think I owe itto this game. It's not a game.
A game is monopoly, check isyou could do a lot of things.

(11:22):
When I had trouble, went JohnGotti in prison and I said this
many times, and I think alot of people know the story. The
FBI knows the story. He waslooking at, dumped the case in my
lap. I would do the timefor him to go free. The problem
is I saw what he was doing, almost like a chess game. Peter

(11:50):
Moss, who wrote my book TheUnderbuss, wrote a story and said something
once. He said, John Gottiwas playing Checkers while Sammy was playing chess.
There's no match. Checkers is agame. This is not a game.

(12:11):
What I was playing was not agame. It was strategy moves,
seeing what he was doing, exactlywhat he was doing, why he was
going to do it. Not onlydid I see it, I started to
analyze he was going to come tokill me. I was the king.

(12:37):
So now I was analyzing this game. I saw his moves that were allowed
and clear. So my game nowbecame how do I kill him? How
do I check made him? Whenhe finally told me that I would be
going to prison, I would takethe weight all this crap. I don't

(13:01):
really want to get too deep intoit, but I said, is that
what you want to do? Ialready knew he wanted to do that.
He said yes. I said,okay, let's do it. On my

(13:22):
way out, I said, checkmate. My checkmate was adios, motherfucker.
I'm switching sides and I'm going withthe government. You stay here and you'll
see what that word checkmate means.So I was playing chess while John was

(13:43):
playing checkers. I think Peter Mosswas right. He got checkmated. And
I owe it to this game toanalyze things, analyze if I think this
could save a lot of marriages.People understand one another better, and hopefully

(14:13):
it could save marriages. Maybe it'llbreak them up sooner, maybe you'll see
you won't make that mistake and bemarried. You could analyze what a person
is way before you say I do, and understand what's going to happen.
So it's not going to sound likea marriage counselor. But I'm talking about

(14:33):
this game. It's a great,great game. It's a mind game.
It's not a game, it's developingyour mind. Tune an extreme on analyzing
so many things. I have aneighth grade education. I didn't go to
college universities, but I did playchess. I did play chess, and

(15:01):
I played chess with a lot ofguys who graduated a lot of big colleges
and universities. And one time Iwanted to play my wife's uncle. It
was a banking executive and at aholiday we went there and I saw a
chessboard and I said, oh,you played chess. Oh yeah, So

(15:22):
I said, maybe we could playagain. It was a joke. I
was going to play Uncle Joe ona chess board. Sky's brilliant, all
kinds of colleges, all kinds ofdegrees. He's the head banking executive.
So I said I'd probably lose,but I let's just play it, just
kidding around. I beat him twogames. He wanted to commit suicide.

(15:46):
I think he was embarrassed. Theywill all stop laughing while I was laughing,
especially when I said checkmate. Soit is a great game. If
you ever want to play it,play it. Somebody got in touch with
me just recently, it said,Sammy, I know you played chess.

(16:07):
I could develop a chess game that'son computers or whatever and have the different
families and you as the dawn andthe other side of the two families of
fighting. I said, I never, I never thought of that. It
sounds very very interesting. I don'tknow, but I would love to talk

(16:29):
to you about it. And I'mactually thinking about it because when you play
this game, you get stuck onthis game playing and if they said,
well, I'm tired, I don'teven want to play anymore, but you're
going to realize that this how manybenefits this game gives you. This is
a degree. I wish that incolleges and universities. They said, he

(16:52):
graduated with honors English math history andhe has two three years of a degree
of playing chess. Now, ifthey ever did that, that's the guy
I want to hire. I wantthis guy to work for me, and

(17:14):
I know he's going to be great. So that's my chess story, and
it's a story of life. Andall you guys who do play chess out
there, and women who play chessout there, I know you're gonna love
this because you know it. Youknow exactly what I'm talking about, and
so at this point, I thinkI'm going to give my normal kodbye.

(17:40):
It's a lot of you Spanish speakingpeople Adios. Motherfucker's