I honestly didn't know that Alekhine died by assassination.
I think it's a conspiracy theory. He traveled a lot, so he was always a foreigner in his life. When you have talent, you can still afford to drink a bottle of wine before entering a tournament.
1. Paul Morphy - Regarded as the first unofficial world champion, within 2 years of playing international chess, he went nuts. Chess rearranged his neurons and he was never the same again. He spent the last 10 years of his life wandering aimlessy talking to himself. He died a beggar.
He had been a great chess player since he was a lot younger, then he quit chess forever, pursuing a life in law instead. It didn't work out very well, but he didn't die a beggar or talk to himself, those are all lies. Also
2. Willhelm Steinitz - This was the first official world champion but he died in an insane asylum, broken and flea infested. Chess manipulated his brain and destroyed his emotional quotient. He was eventually left to the dogs.
He didn't die in a lunatic asylum at all I'm 99.9% sure that's just another disgraceful lie. He was put in a lunatic asylum for a time like a lot of people to keep a watch on him. He played chess with some of the other inmates and was in good spirits, claiming later that he oughtn't have been there at all, and there is no reason to suspect any differently since he conducted his life very well and wrote several great books on chess.
3. Jose Capablanca - This guy never did a day's work in his life. Everything came to him easy in life. He was such a genious at chess that he did no training, he read no book. All this developed in him the biggest egos the chess world has ever seen. All he did was eat gourmet meals, flirt with the best looking ladies and play poker smoking home made cigar. Eventually he died when he was analyzing a game in a chess club in New York when an artery in his brain burst due to high blood pressure. He was wearing a $1500 suit when this happened.
I don't know why people like to say this lie - Capablanca studied chess tremendously when he was younger. He also prepared extensively for his world championship games. The idea that anyone could become world champion without studying chess is simply a fantasy, stop repeating it. Also he wrote at least two books - one of which is about teaching fundamentals of chess to young people (ie. he cared about people improving). Books aren't easy, they take a lot of time to write, so he did do a day's work in his life. He was also inspiring in showing that chess wasn't just all about who studies the longest, what a lame game it would be if that were the case. He lived a good life doing what he liked to do while still having the time to play a good game of chess.
4. Alexander Alekhine - This guy spent 12 hours a day playing and analyzing chess for over 40 years. After beating Capablanca in the world championship match, he took his life for granted and became a drunkard, he used to arrive for a game stinking of alchohol. Once, he even peed in his pants during a game because he was too drunk to stumble to the toilet. He was assasinated in Portugal, his dead body was found hunched over a chess board.
More lies - Alekhine had a very lively life full of politics and social events and he said himself chess only played a small part, he had a good marriage - some people tried to tar his reputation later by saying he was racist or something, but there has never been a shred of evidence of that. A very friendly man, there's a video on youtube of him smiling with Euwe at the chessboard and you can tell he's quite charismatic. He may have been the first to treat chess as a professional, to professional standards, at least the first world class player to (lots of chess addicts at the lower levels unfortunately). A packed life.
5. Mikhail Tal - He was a genius over the board at spotting tactical combinations, his games are shocking. But, he was also a chain smoker and a drug addict, he executed masterpieces over the board under the influence of narcotics, he saw his own things on the board. He died prematurely at the age of 50, he looked like an 80 year old man. He died of kidney failure due to his lifetime indulgence in vodka, drugs and ciggarates.
Nasty to judge people based on their vices in life - we all consume too much of what we shouldn't, drug addicts are dime a dozen in society but we don't see them. Such habits were so incredibly common in the Soviet Union, the fact that Tal stood out by doing them says much more about chess - as in it's a way of steering away from them. If you look at Spassky (still going), Averbakh (lived until 100 years old), Karpov doing amazing in his new roles - chess seems wonderful for having a long and healthy life. The life expectency of the soviets for men was something ridiculous like 65 or so and that has continued in the same countries today - and yet all these chess guys living until their 80s, 90s.
6. Bobby Fisher - This person needs no introduction, he was arguably the greatest player of his time. But for the last 30 years of his life, he was the chess world's mad uncle, an embarrassment that cannot be expressed in words. He eventually died of kidney failure, he refused all his medicines
That may be so, but the thing about mad uncles in that a lot of the time they're actually completely right.
Chess grows your ego just to destroy it and regrow it every single time.
*elo
No, I meant ego
Blah blah blah chess will kill you blah blah blah oh no gukesh died help
Chess is a great way to keep your mind active. In my opinion, the downsides depend on the person. If you decide to give up social interactions and your health all for chess, that's who you are. In summary, chess is good, but if you let it control you, good things will not come.
Chess grows your ego just to destroy it and regrow it every single time.
*elo
No, I meant ego
it's called a joke.
Blah blah blah chess will kill you blah blah blah oh no gukesh died help
bruh
just play chess normally don't take it too seriously
Chess grows your ego just to destroy it and regrow it every single time.
*elo
No, I meant ego
it's called a joke.
I don't think a lot o-Whatever.
Stupid post. Sure, maybe a few grandmasters went crazy. Thousands of doctors go crazy every day, thousands of lawyers, thousands of teachers, thousands of people around the world. Do all those things make you go crazy, too?
It was probably the lead in the water that made Morphy go crazy more than the chess. Or maybe the fact his father pressured him to abandon his true love and be a lawyer instead.
Saying chess makes you go crazy therefore you shouldn't play it / invest time in it ... that can be said about anything. Go make a post about the amount of medical school students offing themselves or going mental... nobody cares.
Such a long post and for what? To make an excuse for your mediocre chess play? lmao
W Boris