The biggest driver toward chess excellence is ego. The biggest shortcoming is lack of talent.
Money? If you start out looking for big money in chess, you'd be better off getting into the burger business.
The biggest driver toward chess excellence is ego. The biggest shortcoming is lack of talent.
Money? If you start out looking for big money in chess, you'd be better off getting into the burger business.
What surprises me is the number of talented juniors that quit even though they don't have jobs or family or other grown up concerns. I think some players have been pressured by their parents to play the game but don't really like the game but like the winning aspect. Then when they get old enough to disobey their parents they discover their true passions. I remember when I was a child that I was particularly strong in a certain physical sport (which I hated) and liked to please my parents that I kept playing.
Reminds me of Andre Aggassi
The biggest driver toward chess excellence is ego. The biggest shortcoming is lack of talent.
The biggest driver towards excellence in anything is psychological problems of one kind or another.
Why can't it just be that I enjoy it ? ....oh, wait, that is what makes me mentally ill because, I enjoy the torture and torturing of others....right, ok...lol
I was harkening back to the post regarding that no one takes note of when weaker players quit. Apparently no one stops and says to themselves, wow, that guy is only rated at 400 USCF ( a random number). Why does he keep playing ? I actually have asked that question and guessed that they must be into a challenge...
inertia
Now I can't help but to think about where ideas, information, emotions and spirit, meet flesh. It is easy to imagine a why inertia's effect, holds sway over the physical world and much harder to imagine how it could over the unseen but, maybe it is where their unseen fabrics are woven together that such influence crosses over ?
I was harkening back to the post regarding that no one takes note of when weaker players quit. Apparently no one stops and says to themselves, wow, that guy is only rated at 400 USCF ( a random number). Why does he keep playing ? I actually have asked that question and guessed that they must be into a challenge...
Yeah, that's an interesting question.
Improvement is satisfying even if it's very little. Also competition against peers is satisfying... and there's no shortage of terrible players ;)
I was harkening back to the post regarding that no one takes note of when weaker players quit. Apparently no one stops and says to themselves, wow, that guy is only rated at 400 USCF ( a random number). Why does he keep playing ? I actually have asked that question and guessed that they must be into a challenge...
Yeah, that's an interesting question.
Improvement is satisfying even if it's very little. Also competition against peers is satisfying... and there's no shortage of terrible players ;)
I love a good mystery. I am sure there are those who are less adept at finding the clues and putting them together as I, yet they are no less compelled.
they can hire celebrities to serve as role models to encourage these players to keep playing or to come back to the game after they quit
list of potential candidates
1) Dustin Diamond
2) That guy who played steve urkel
3) Doogie Howser
4) Jennifer Lawerence
5) Woody Allen
I suspect that most chess players below the top 10 +/- discover sooner or later that chess just doesn't pay the bills unless you live very modestly and do a lot of teaching. And the bills have to be paid, since living in a cardboard box under a freeway overpass is not conducive to improving one's chess game. That generally involves getting a job (and even teaching chess is a job in this sense) and that takes time away from serious chess improvement. Alas, the "little time to play and study" effect is worse the stronger a player is. That's just reality.
By that logic there should be more 2700s than there are 2600s and 2500s.
Not really. I think if you look closely you'll find that the large majority of those 2500-2699 GMs are younger than 35 years old and either (1) are below 25 years old and living like students (and maybe doing a little part time work) or (2) spend a lot of time working (including some who are teaching and/or writing about chess and others with "real jobs") and play as time allows, or (3) are subsidized in some way (government, scholarships, parents, etc).
Most of the 2500s and 2600s are NOT going to become 2600s and 2700s respectively. Ten years from now, many (and likely a large majority) of the current crop of 2500s and 2600s will be doing something else and there will be a mostly new crop of 2500s and 2600s.
That has nothing to do with what I wrote.
Ditto.
jeroen piket also stopped playing chess
i read that reshevsky was an insurance salesman as profession
but not a chess player as profession
Who is this Alex Woijtkiciez guy? I've tried to search for him on google but theres nothing to find... Really weird imo.
There are a lot of strong chess players who just quit the game and stop playing regularly. i was wondering why they quit after spending all those hours studying and trying to get good and have a high rating.
Sometimes family and career obligations are the reason in 1908 William Napier withdrew from serious Chess and became vice President of the Scranton Insurance Company for many years and after WW2 Reuben Fine withdrew from the game after receiving his doctrate in psychology from the University of California, Fine abandoned professional chess to concentrate on his new profession as a psychoanalyst.
There are other reasons some men lose their passion and love for the game and others withdraw from Chess after a devatating defeat a meltdown they break like a mirror smashing on the ground into a 1000 small little pieces they never recover from the shock of the loss its too much for them.
my point is stronger!