the fun of chess

does anyone out there think grand masters still enjoy the game as much as players like me who are much less talented and have to think about almost every move or do you think that much of the fun is lost when you are just responding to known positions 

Anand was recently quoted as saying that it was nice to play without any opening preparation before the Mainz 360 tournament. This shows that studying endless lines of opening theory is regarded as work, but to reach such a level of chess mastery one must love the game.

Korchnoi is another example. How many of us would prefer lounging around the pool on a nice summer day when in our 70's? Apparently not Korchnoi.  Based on this I am of the opinion that one must enjoy what they do to be able to not only reach the top, but to stay there.

Does that include going to work?

I can only try to answer this by relating to my experiences learning guitar and then playing it for a living. When I first started playing it was frustrating but enjoyable because I picked it up quickly. Then I started playing in a band, the band did really well, and the pressure was on. Excluding the time I took off for cancer treatment, I have a very ordered schedule to my guitar playing. I have to put a good two to four hours a day into playing. I have to do warm up exercises, work on songs from our set, work on new songs, and record new material in my studio. Once you've been playing for over two decades some of the magic you enjoyed when you first started is gone. It's not that you don't love playing, you just progress to the next level.

Then money  steps in and puts the pressure on. The better the show, the better you need to sound. This means going over the same songs, again and again and again. You have to fine tune your sound and style. You also have to experiment with other styles as well.

Today I get my kicks out of learning stuff like jazz and classical guitar. I just learned all the guitar parts from Led Zepplin's second album.

 GM's have mastered a huge part of the game so I would suspect that the experiment with different variations of opening and end games. Not being a great chess player I can only make assumptions as to what they think is fun.

I get together with some top guitar players here in California and we play some really silly music just to have fun. Maybe there's a secret club of GMs that play some silly games of chess. Probably not (only in my dement dreams) 

Hello, I am from the future!