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Joshua Waitzkin?
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Article's really interesting. Didn't know he was considered that good as a youth. Funny thing is I think Fischer's older sister was named Julia too and taught Fischer how to play chess
He was finally forced to admit to himself, he had reached the peak of his talent, so he took up another hobby. Simple as that.
The Chess Life interview with Sarwer is pretty interesting, too.
http://main.uschess.org/content/view/10007/571/
He's had a really interesting and rough life. Happy for his success. The parts of the interview dealing with poker kind of lost me, though cause I don't play that game
paulgottlieb wrote:
The book "Searching for Bobby Fischer," is a book about families and raising an exceptopnal child. Nowhere in the book, or in their lives, did any of the Waitzens claim that Josh was The Next Big Thing. As far as I can tell, he was an ordinary boy, with considerable chess talent, who became a very strong player, but not a super GM. At some point, he decided that professional chess was neither promising or attractive and went on to do other things with his life.
He suffers the usual fate of being relentlessly criticized by a bunch of far inferior chess players, any of whom would kill for a tiny part of his talent. The fact is that if he held a simul for his twenty loudest critics here on Chess.Com, he would score around 85-90%
Perhaps 100%.
Conflagration_Planet wrote:
paulgottlieb wrote:
The book "Searching for Bobby Fischer," is a book about families and raising an exceptopnal child. Nowhere in the book, or in their lives, did any of the Waitzens claim that Josh was The Next Big Thing. As far as I can tell, he was an ordinary boy, with considerable chess talent, who became a very strong player, but not a super GM. At some point, he decided that professional chess was neither promising or attractive and went on to do other things with his life.
He suffers the usual fate of being relentlessly criticized by a bunch of far inferior chess players, any of whom would kill for a tiny part of his talent. The fact is that if he held a simul for his twenty loudest critics here on Chess.Com, he would score around 85-90%
Perhaps 100%.
perhaps 0 and all are real life super gms
Mar 8, 2013
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#29
Also Josh Waitzkin is quite young and could still come out of retirement ( as Yasser Seirawan did a couple of years ago ). If Waitzkin did come back to Chess and perhaps even manage to win a GM title would that get all of the naysayers to Shutup at last ???
TetsuoShima wrote:
Conflagration_Planet wrote:
paulgottlieb wrote:
The book "Searching for Bobby Fischer," is a book about families and raising an exceptional child. Nowhere in the book, or in their lives, did any of the Waitzens claim that Josh was The Next Big Thing. As far as I can tell, he was an ordinary boy, with considerable chess talent, who became a very strong player, but not a super GM. At some point, he decided that professional chess was neither promising or attractive and went on to do other things with his life.
He suffers the usual fate of being relentlessly criticized by a bunch of far inferior chess players, any of whom would kill for a tiny part of his talent. The fact is that if he held a simul for his twenty loudest critics here on Chess.Com, he would score around 85-90%
Perhaps 100%.
perhaps 0 and all are real life super gems
I do think it's kind of silly that people tend to bring up the fact that the subject of some people's criticism is more talented the the ones doing the criticizing, since that's neither here nor there. Just the other day, I commented that I thought somebody was a bad actor. Of course somebody had to pipe up and say "He's probably got more acting talent than you do!" So what? I'm not the one up there, being paid to do the acting, so whether they have more talent than I do is neither here nor there, as I said above. So the fact that Josh could slaughter us at chess is once again, beside the point.
cabadenwurt wrote:
Also Josh Waitzkin is still quite young and could still come out of retirement ( as Yasser Seirawan did a couple of years ago ). If Waitzkin did come back and even perhaps go on to win a GM title would that get all of the naysayers to Shutup at last ???
What if he doesn't? Will that get all the yea sayers to shutup at last???
Josh has become one with the tao and no longer exists in your limited three dimensional universe. We should all envy and emulate him.
Mar 8, 2013
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#33
Good Grief Conflagration_Planet, what major crime did he commit besides leaving Chess ? I hear these rumours that there are other things to do in this life beyond Chess. 
cabadenwurt wrote:
Good Grief Conflagration_Planet, what major crime did he commit besides leaving Chess ? I hear these rumours that there are other things to do in this life beyond Chess.
I don't recall saying he didcommit a major crime.
Mar 8, 2013
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#35
Sorry I did not mean that as it sounded. However as you know there have been threads here about Josh Waitzkin before and the way that some people carry on one would think that Waitzkin is some type of mass-murderer.
Mar 8, 2013
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#36
Or to put it another way Waitzkin was the best Under-18 player in the USA at one time and he also became an IM. He has gone beyond what 99.99 % of the Chess players on this planet could do, so I do not understand why people hate him ?
cabadenwurt wrote:
Or to put it another way Waitzkin was the best Under-18 player in the USA at one time and he also became an IM. He has gone beyond what 99.99 % of the Chess players on this planet could do, so I do not understand why people hate him ?
I've pointed out that it's silly how some people seem to worship him like he is some kind of chess god who could have broken 3000, and won the world championship 20 times over, if he had just stuck with it. I merely ask, if it's true about him, why not all the other IMs at his level? I figure it was just because of all the hype surrounding him.
Mar 8, 2013
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#38
Good points to be sure. Tho he was a IM Waitzkin did not get to the GM level and those who have gone to the GM level are ahead of him in Chess ( that is true ). And if he does not return to Chess we will of course never know how far he could have gone. People also sometimes ask if Paul Morphy had stayed in Chess would he have become the 1st official World Champion ?
cabadenwurt wrote:
Good points to be sure. Tho he was a IM Waitzkin did not get to the GM level and those who have gone to the GM level are ahead of him in Chess ( that is true ). And if he does not return to Chess we will of course never know how far he could have gone. People also sometimes ask if Paul Morphy had stayed in Chess would he have become the 1st official World Champion ?
I read his book "Attacking Chess" (1995) that he wrote soon after becoming an IM, and it was obvious he had high hopes of getting to GM level. He studied, and played for some years after the book was written. If he had had the talent to get to GM level, he would have. He eventually realized he didn't have the talent to get to GM level, so he "lost the love" as he put it.
Conflagration_Planet wrote:
I read his book "Attacking Chess" (1995) that he wrote soon after becoming an IM, and it was obvious he had high hopes of getting to GM level. He studied, and played for some years after the book was written. If he had had the talent to get to GM level, he would have. He eventually realized he didn't have the talent to get to GM level, so he "lost the love" as he put it.
He last played seriously at about age 24 and his high FIDE was 2480.
Considering that GM level is 2500, and his relative youth, don't you think it's unfair to say that he didn't have the talent to get to GM level?
What is Jeff Sarwer's story? I know what it is in the book, but do you know what happened to him after the book? Think he was the guy who drew against Josh in the championship if my memory's right
He's one you wonder just how good he could have been if he had been able to go down the right road.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Sarwer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-Wgv3rn6A8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycMAZeGFNW4