Einsteins opinion on chess, what do you think?

Albert Einstein was friends with world champion Emanuel Lasker , and Einstein said that 

‘For me, this personality… had a tragic note. The enormous mental resilience, without which no chess player can exist, was so much taken up by chess that he could never free his mind of this game, even when he was occupied by philosophical and humanitarian questions.’  
Also meaning he thought is was a waste of time, what do you think? Is it a waste of time or is it more than that? If so why?

Everything is a waste of time if you think about it hard enough

Why do you think that? If you enjoy it and it helps you survive it wouldn’t be

What is all this Einstein nonsense?

What is Einstein's expertise? Physics.

He's not an expert in culture

So he can shut the hell up, if he said so.

Many of Einstein's quotes are apocryphal, but this one seems to be legit ... and an incorrect opinion.

It looks like Einstein thought that Chess was a waste of time. OTOH, he may have expressed this opinion when both he and Lasker were younger, at a time when Lasker may have been more preoccupied with Chess, and before Lasker had obtained his results in mathematics. As it turned out, Lasker did not only focus on Chess, but also on mathematics and philosophy.

Lasker was probably the least Chess-obsessed World Champion that the game ever had or will ever have. This can be seen from his own words. In his Manual of Chess (1947 edition, page 337), Lasker offers the following advice:

"Chess must not be memorized, simply because it is not important enough. If you load your memory, you should know why. Memory is too valuable to be stocked with trifles. Of my fifty-seven years I have applied at least thirty to forgetting most of what I had learned or read, and since I succeeded in this I have acquired a certain ease and cheer which I should never again like to be without. If need be, I can increase my skill in Chess, if need be I can do that of which I have no idea at present. I have stored little in my memory, but I can apply that little, and it is of good use in many and varied emergencies. I keep it in order, but resist every attempt to increase its dead weight."

And he continues:

"You should keep in mind no names, nor numbers, nor isolated incidents, not even results, but only
methods. The method is plastic. It is applicable in every situation. The result, the isolated incident, is
rigid, because bound to wholly individual conditions. The method produces numerous results; a few of these will remain in our memory, and as long as they remain few, they are useful to illustrate and to keep alive the rules which order a thousand results."

It is pretty clear from this advice that Lasker had a pretty healthy relationship with Chess and did not obsess about it as Einstein claimed. Lasker actually said that "Chess [...] is not important enough".

So, Einstein was definitely incorrect when he stated that Lasker "could never free his mind of this game".

What does Einstein have to do with anything? as if "Einstein" is short hand for "genius" in everything.

Einstein is a physicist. If he's not talking about physics, he's talking out of his [bleep].

Things belong to things.

Chess is a martial art. And martial artists have high esteem for chess. Every marital artists compare fighting to chess.

If you're not a martial artist, or

played soccer, lacrosse, American football, war-like games, etc . . .

You don't get to have an opinion about chess, or anything. Because war-games teach us things.

Gee, calm down bruh

Dude, this thread is open for discussion and debate. You don't need to start yelling at everyone who puts their point forward. Calm down.

Richard Feyman, Nobel Prize winner in Physics, in his book:

What Do You Care What Other People Think?

Urbana, Illinois

April 9, 1981

Dear Sara,

I just spent a marvelous three days with Dick Feynman and wished you had been there to share him with us. . . . We had many conversations about science and history, just like in the old days. But now he had something new to talk about, his children. He said, "I always thought I would be a specially good father because I wouldn't try to push my kids into any particular direction. I wouldn't try to turn them into scientists or intellectuals if they didn't want it. I would be just as happy with them if they decided to be truck drivers or guitar players. In fact, I would even like it better if they went out in the world and did something real instead of being professors like me. But they always find a way to hit back at you. My boy Carl, for instance. There he is in his second year at MIT, and all he wants to do with his life is to become a goddamn philosopher!"

Yours,

Freeman [Dyson]

That is what he thinks of his profession.

White on white, fantastic.

While college football coaches rack their minds so they can win American football games so that the colleges can make money to fund classes in "Philosophy" and the "Humanities."

Free from what? Free from making money for colleges?

The same can be said about boxing. But do Einstein know about martial arts?

Renzo Gracie said if you take Jujitsu away from him, he's just an empty shell.

Cus D'Amato, legal father and trainer of Mike Tyson, to him boxing is life.

And he produced Mike Tyson, the youngest heavyweight boxing champion in history!

What does Einstein know about martial arts?

I will never be free, it will always be a part of me.

Paraphrasing "There's Always Something There to Remind Me".

Edit: I ran out of 5 comments.

Never be free . . .

What does Einstein know about martial arts and history?

Wrestling in the tomb of Baqti III.

Egyptian stuff, as in King Tut stuff.

Anybody who watches WWE will recognize all these moves.

Martial arts is with us since the dawn of time to the end of time.

American football coaching and planning makes chess looks like tic-tac-toe.

What does Einstein know about war games?

There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard. There are not more than five primary colors (blue, yellow, red, white, and black), yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen. There are not more than five cardinal tastes (sour, acrid, salt, sweet, bitter), yet combinations of them yield more flavors than can ever be tasted. In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack--the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers. The direct and the indirect lead on to each other in turn. It is like moving in a circle--you never come to an end.

Who can exhaust the possibilities of their combination?

Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

What does Einstein know about martial arts?

Chess is a martial art.

Because chess is culture

Yes, yes, calm down everyone

Looks like this is a misquote that keeps getting repeated online. Einstein actually said the following (in the preface to Hannak's book Emanuel Lasker: The Life of a Chess Master):

"Whenever we met I seemed to detect a somewhat tragic note in his personality, in spite of a fundamentally optimistic inclination always to seek some positive meaning in life. His mind which had that exceptional elasticity characteristic of chess players was imbued with chess to such an extent that he could never quite rid himself of the spirit of the game, even while dealing with philosophical and human problems. Nevertheless, I had the impression that to him chess was a means of livelihood rather than the real object of his life."

There's a lot more nuance in Einstein's paragraph than we get from the misquotation. And there's a lot more about what Einstein said about Lasker; his preface starts with "Emanuel Lasker was undoubtedly one of the most interesting people I came to know in my later life."

Chess is a martial art, a war art.

Einstein [in today's language of the "young ins"] has zero street cred [credibility] to have any opinion on chess, a war game.

Watch the movie

Queen Of Katwe

It's free on the Internet, YouTube somewhere.

I'm 100% sure it is in your local library, because there is a whole genre of these "Rocky" movies with chess. A whole genre.

A detail people miss. The finale is in Mother Russia.

Russia is exporting its culture via chess.

Every ballet school in America is founded by a Russian.

Yes, chess is culture.