Why do young GM's give up the game?

Was reading an article about one of the dozens of GM's that I had never heard of (Mark Bluvshtein, he may be famous in Canada, I don't know) which states that he has given up the game in October 2011 to pursue unspecified personal goals. He appears to be 24 years old with a 2590 FIDE rating which is not like 2590 in 1980 but still he's obviously a tremendous player with what you would have thought is still time to improve.

For those of us who can only dream of a 2500+ rating it appears a strange career move for one so young and it begs one or two questions.

1. Is there really no way for a 2590 GM to make any money in professional chess?

2. Can you be burnt out at 24 years old at anything?

3. He was as high as 2610 before he 'retired' - that would only have made him around 250th in the world rankings however. Is it possible that after years of struggle to reach such a fine rating he looked up and saw that a herculean effort would be needed just to get to 2650 or so and just realised it wasn't going to be worth the effort? Top players make sure to only play amongst themselves to minimise the loss of rating points so its tough to break into that super league.

Out of the 1500 or so GM's around the world it seems like hundreds are just not active or barely play - my country the UK is a shocking example, Theoretically there are 30 active GM's,but 12 don't actually play anymore and that isn't counting guys like Nunn, Stean, Norwood, King Watson and Keene who have been inactive or only play unrated games.

Is it the sheer mass of barely known players between 2600-2675 who are obviously capable of taking out anybody outside the top 30 or so that intimidates GM's in their twenties into deciding it isn't worth trying to break into the 2700 club?

If you consider maybe only the top 50 players can make a somewhat decent living out of chess, it makes sense as the #250 in the world to look at other options...

Absolutely, but I wonder at what point Bluvshtein realised that he wasn;t going to make top 50? Looking closer I see he became a GM at 16, so I guess after eight years of struggle to break 2600 he may have decided he had gone as far as he could..I wish i had noticed that before :(

@uhohspaghettio

I still think the huge (and getting bigger) pool of really good players is something to do with it. The available prizemoney isn't getting bigger but the chances to actually win any of it keep getting more and more remote for the less than Super GM's.

The reason Britsh players like Stean, Watson, Motwani, Rowson, Norwood and others gave up early is because they found the idea of a regular salary in work like accountancy or Teaching more alluring than the precarious financial state of a mid level grandmaster. Luke McShane could possibly be a World Championship contender if he devoted all of his time to Chess but he makes a ton of money as a bond trader while still maintaining a 2700+ rating so I guess he almost has the best of both worlds.

Quite an interesting topic. Back when the Chess Federation of Canada ( CFC ) still published a paper version of their magazine I used to follow the Chess scene in Canada. Needless to say the Chess community in Canada was quite proud to have Mark Bluvshtein gain the GM title at a young age, he also used to write some articles for CFC's magazine. Another young Canadian GM who has left Chess is Pascal Charbonneau who received his title in 2006 ( one fringe benefit Pascal has from his time in Chess is his being married to IM Irina Krush ). As has been mentioned here earlier, the getting from " Beginner GM " to " Super GM " is not a easy task. The problem of making a decent living in the World Of Chess is not all that simple either. Also I would imagine that all of the travelling that is required can be tiring after a while. As a wise person once said: " Not all that Glitters is Gold ".   

Not should go before gold.

And it all started with a Big Bang! Bang!!!

could someone find out if kasparov is rusian or ukranian?

I heard that he is a vegetarian

There are 1800s who are chess coaches, so I'm sure the 2600 player could work something out as far as money goes.

Look a little deeper at what you learn in chess.  While the game can be fun, it isnt really applicable to modern society.  It is largely tactical, and relationships among pieces arent one of always working together.  

Also, at higher levels, because the setup of normal chess is always the same, then the person who has more openings memorized and understanding of opening theory, not necessarily the smarter player has a strong advantage.  Once you realize this, chess becomes a chore and really quite boring.

More applicable to modern society is Go, or wei-chi, than chess.  I come here to play chess 960, and maybe once in a while regular chess, but I consider regular chess to be very very boring.

J.R.R. Tolkien

Maybe his unspecified personal goals were more important to him than chess.What's the BFD anyway?

How sad. To each his own of course. But there must be something interesting in it for  it to be played for hundreds of years?

Hmmm. Why do young GM gave up the game? Maybe because life is too short to waste youth sitting down for hours, touching the tip of the bishops thinking of it for something else or something like that, when they can audition for "Miss Saigon" "Gigolos" or "The Bachelor". I really dont know just thnking aloud.

I agree kabayan.

Jyllx: I would think of a professional chess player like a painter; maximizing your ability and trying to play great games probably requires the same meticulousness as you would need to create the perfect painting, with every single stroke, and color, carefully considered. Or in a similar way it could be like being a professional musician, trying to create the best music you can.

Unfortunately for chess, the end result is hard to appreciate for non-players, unlike a painting or piece of music, but that's just incidental; easy to understand or not, a great game of chess is a similarly artistic accomplishment.

At the same time, it has that competition factor of sports. I will not go into whether or not it is itself a sport (probably not the most precise way to describe chess), but I am saying the competitive nature of chess is similar to that of sports, even if it isn't actually a sport.

another thing is the prices of suits they wore during tournaments. With matching ties and shoes then ending up at the bottom of the standings of the tourney.hotel accomodations,food, porn something like that. Then maybe getting scammed in a particular city. huhuhu so bad...tsktsk

The BFD is the amount of time and effort involved in reaching the GM level, which implies a certain amount of devotion or even obsession with the game and then for 'something' to click a light on in the persons head to make them want to give up. I think its indicative of the hopeless financial state of professional chess...

W/ all the window dressing chess has it's still just a game. People enjoy many things....sometimes u need to move on.