"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life."
Only with age I can appreciate how true that quote is. There was an article that came up not long ago about GMs selling games for others to earn their GM norms. And the sad truth is being GM in chess doesn't put a food on the table.
The very peak of the players can make a living some as coaches or streamers but not everyone can be a 'winner'.
This reminds me of a quote from Raymond Chandler, describing a chess game:
> ..seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armor, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.
Chess is to humans as Bitcoin is to computers (Chess : Humans :: Bitcoin : Computers). Except humans stick up for the wastefulness of both, and computers stay silent on the matter.
You know little about either chess or bitcoin. The first enables self knowledge, molds character, and helps develop a mental model transferable to other pursuits; the second is the first iteration of computer money.
>The first enables self knowledge, molds character, and helps develop a mental model transferable to other pursuits;
That's what quickly got me out of chess, when it was me playing with my brother as a kid it was about thinking really hard and trying to explore as many options as I could - it was really about who can think faster and outsmarting eachother since we only knew the rules.
When I decided to look into chess I found out it was about learning openings, recognising patterns, traps, etc. I didn't feel any smarter learning those, I just learned more about chess. You can draw up silly strategic methapores with any activity, but chess does seem to have that Sun Tzu status.
I kindly disagree. It may appear that chess is a memoization game, but when or if you want to become a master of the game , you'll notice that rote learning will not take you there.
You do need to understand phases of the game, set up strategy, estimate your position, know when to attack or to defend, and have confidence in your technique.
Mind you, that is only for the plain master title (FIDE or even a national master). Grandmasters are a whole new level in comparison, aliens.
But this wasn't my critique. Chess strategy is again chess specific, the things that translate are going to be superficial. You can draw parallels between many domains, like there are phases, strategy and coordination in many competitive online games, and I'd argue that the cooperative nature translates better to most real world than chess.
Chess has this poetic image of playing around with kings, queens and pawns that lets artist paint grandiose metaphors about real world, but at the end of the day spending a bunch of time on chess is going to make you good at chess, doubt it will do much better than any other similar hobby for transferable skills.
“… the focus on those pure, well-defined, and easily discernible objects like triangles, or more social notions like friendship or love, at the cost of ignoring those objects of seemingly messier and less tractable structures.”
Which is exactly my point, chess is just another game but it has this social status where it's a sign of intelligence or whatnot. The whole thread is in response to OP making such claims.
>> the second is the first iteration of computer money.
I mean... I am charitably trying to find interpretation/context in which this is meaningfully true, and failing. In which way is bitcoin more "computer money" than any other money these days?
I purchase things, pay my bills, obtain payment, invest, and do all my transactions at least 95% digitally, with "computer money".
Uncharitably, I could call Bitcoin "that, but less practical / more wasteful". Charitably, I could say "There are specific goals/circumstances where Bitcoin has benefits".
But I feel it's decades late to be "first iteration of computer money", unless there's some squinting and extremely specific ad-hoc defining that I haven't imagined. Even the "Money" part (as practical transactional currency) is these days increasingly less relevant,by proponents and pundits alike, as opposed to "investment vehicle" or "storage of value".
(as for chess, I don't know; I gave up when I realized how much memorization, as opposed to developing of understanding, was involved to get much better; it may indeed enable self-knowledge and mold character at some level beyond the ones I've achieved. Therefore, I cannot contribute to discussion on whether Chess is practical/efficient/meaningful way to grow those characteristics - i.e. hammering rocks for 5,000hrs probably grows character at some level but may not be sufficiently practical/efficient to matter. I respect it like a do Golf - it takes immense skill, dedication, and investment to develop it to a high level, and world-class players are incredibly good at it; but it's not a skill I desire to grow myself anymore).
No they're not. Money is supposed to be scarce and has been for the vast majority of the history of civilization.
But let's agree to disagree there. Even then, money has multiple roles: unit of account, store of value.
Currently, Bitcoin plays the role of storing value. Like a savings account, or "digital gold". Not for payments. It might play a payment role in the future on layer 2, or it might not. Too soon to tell.
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments, and start following the site guidelines? You've been doing this kind of thing repeatedly and we ban that sort of account. It's not what this site is for, as you'll see if you review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I thought "advertising agency" was referencing that the best minds of our generation are thinking about how to make people click ads
at google/facebook.
I think he meant that the best minds of his generation were devising advertising campaigns and writing advertising copy for laundry soap and canned vegetables. Advertising was more text-centric then, and talented writers like Chandler could make more money writing ads than books.
Possible. But I think more likely is that it was a good frame of reference for him as he was an executive at an advertising agency for quite some time.
And in those jobs being good at chess is only part of the equation. You have to be personable, someone that people aspire to. Physical attractiveness is also never a bad thing in the world of streaming. I once chatted with concert violinist. She was not happy about trends in the soloist community. "The moment I saw an exposed midrift in a concert hall, I knew I would never be a soloist."
> Physical attractiveness is also never a bad thing
I used to work with an ex-military guy (extremely bright, hard working, excellent leader, etc. etc.).
He was about 64 inches (1.63 meters) tall, balding, and not the handsomest fella. He told me point blank: "I was never going to become a general or achieve any other extremely high rank simply because I didn't have 'the look' or physical stature of a general."
Photos have been a big part of promotions in the US armed forces. There has been pushback in recent years, iirc the marines abandoned photos last year, but you still have to "look the part" and attach headshots to many promotion applications. I've seen people pay actual money ($$$) for professional photographers to get an edge over their peers.
Compare Canada where, beyond not having photos, even gender-based pronouns have been removed from performance reports in order that reviewers not risk gender bias.
How do descriptions of physical attributes work? Possibly by just giving the candidate's percentile rank by sex?
That would be gender-blind but also ignores the fact that absolute scale actually matters in war sometimes - running speed, ability to lift and load heavy tank shells for a few hours etc.
One might argue that actual physical strength doesn't matter much. One way to check this claim would be to look at recently granted medals for valor, and see how many of them are related to absolute (not relative) physical prowess.
Physical attributes are not particularly important wrt promotions in the military; you just need to pass that baseline fitness bar to not be flunked out on medical.
Indeed, the higher up you go, the more your job becomes about leading and the less it becomes about individual feats of strength. I think you're thinking about the military a little bit wrong here -- this isn't the Roman era (when centurions led from the front and had to be legitimate physical badasses). Being higher up in the military nowadays is a lot more akin to being a paper pusher director at a company.
>> baseline fitness bar to not be flunked out on medical.
Medical and fitness are different things. Lots of people can pass the fitness tests but still flunk out for medical reasons. Diabetics. People who get cancer. Failing eyesight. Sever allergies. It is very possible to ace the fitness tests while still failing the medical.
I'm not so sure. Attractiveness is a good quality if you want a claim to power through networking, but it's not the only way.
Take Thatcher or Merkel. Both women for whom this arguably matters even more, not attractive, and not even coming from a background that lends itself naturally to climbing hierarchies. Kohl, Merkel's mentor used to often refer to her as his "Mädchen", ('girl', but diminutive, only used for children) and she basically back-stabbed him and took control of the entire party.
There's definitely ways for unattractive or more generally, people who nobody expects to rise to power to do exactly that.
This New Yorker profile from a few years ago is a long read but very much worth it if you want to get a overview. The beginning recapitulates a lot about her childhood so you might want to skip that part if you're only interested in her career.
> Physical attractiveness is also never a bad thing in the world of streaming.
That's life in general. Even at my company when choosing photos of people to profile to for recruitment posts on LinkedIn, it's pretty clear they lean towards attractive people.
I also notice that with Company Profile page, where who they show is not really indicative of who comprises the company.
>That's life in general. Even at my company when choosing photos of people to profile to for recruitment posts on LinkedIn, it's pretty clear they lean towards attractive people.
There have been several studies on this. Apparently being an attractive woman is a net negative when it comes to being hired by other women (6% fewer callbacks than the same resume with less attractive photo attached in one particular study).
I think Alexandra Botez manages this kind of thing well— obviously she's young and attractive, and there's a certain amount of goofing around that goes on (her younger sister is a co-host), but overall the channel is pretty tightly focused on chess games, commentary, etc. And she's certainly a very serious player herself and has specifically spoken out on sexism issues in tournaments and the larger chess community, eg:
I'm curious what would constitute managing well or not well in your opinion. She certainly uses it to her advantage, while nonetheless being a very strong player.
I'm not a regular follower so I don't have a lot of history to base it on, but based on the streams I've caught, it just seems well balanced— like the presentation is definitely not "sexy" in the way of, like, a hot tub streamer, but it's also not completely locked down and soulless— there's personality and shenanigans in the way of a radio host or commentator, and also a lot of great chess-playing.
Another good example is Xyla Foxlin, who walks a similar line with a YouTube engineering/maker channel and has been very explicit about her approach: "I refuse to “act more like a man” in order to achieve legitimate and respectable success in the professional world. I happen to be someone who embraces her femininity and feels powerful in cute shoes and sparkly makeup, and I don’t see how any of that makes me less of an engineer." [0]
They're different titles though. Grandmaster (GM) != Woman Grandmaster (WGM). Judit Polgár, for example, peaked at an Elo of over 2,700, so she easily qualified for Grandmaster (requirement of 2,500).
Similarly, a Brigadier General is not the same rank as a General, despite some commonality in word choice between the two ranks.
Well OK, but it doesn’t explain why there’s a WGM. There isn’t a “woman sergeant” position, and we’d definitely take offense at a company defining separate “senior engineer” and “woman senior engineer” positions.. so why accept the condescension of WGM?
"These titles are sometimes criticized and some female players elect not to take them, preferring to compete for open titles. For example, Grandmaster Judit Polgár, in keeping with her policy of playing only open competitions, never took a women's title."
If the titles required the same Elo to achieve then there wouldn't be a point to have separate titles. The female-only titles are useful to encourage women to compete imo.
"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." - Paul Morphy
Frighteningly apropos
EDIT: After becoming the greatest chessmaster of his time, Morphy retired from chess at 22. He then had a rejected marriage proposal, failed legal practice, and died at age 47.
"After becoming the greatest chessmaster of his time, Morphy retired from chess at 22. He then had a rejected marriage proposal, failed legal practice, and died at age 47."
Put another way, after abandoning chess at 22, he lived another 25 years, fell in love, and was given wide latitude to live a life of comfort and pursuing his passions owing to his family's wealth. Unfortunately he developed something akin to paranoid schizophrenia before the world knew how to effectively treat it.
Really hard to sum up an entire lifetime in a couple sentences. Pointing out only a few bad things is just as misleading as only pointing out a few good ones.
I have to say I don't really like this quote. The first part smacks of superficiality i.e. learn chess enough to be able to show off in polite society. The second part I think simply denotes a misunderstanding of what playing chess well means. You can play chess well without being a GM.
In my family I had/have two people who plaid chess well (2000-2300 range) without wasting their lives in any way. They held full time jobs, had families and enjoyed the game at a pretty serious level. If anything chess helped them stay mentally active and engaged well into their 90's.
The point is it exponentially harder to break the 2500 / 2600/ 2700 barriers . It is hard work.
The reason it is hard work is because beyond a point the preparation is a lot about memorizing and remembering a lot of lines variations not improving on your understanding or theory. That's also why older you grow it is harder to be at the top, understanding is not diminished at 40+, however memorizing abilities are.
You will have to understand Paul morphy story to understand to why he said something like that.
He was the world best by a good distance and he quit playing at 22. He had struggles and was consumed by it. After spending most of your formative years and not finding the meaning in the life despite having won pretty much everything can be life altering. He is known as the pride and sorrow of chess with good reason.
> That's also why older you grow it is harder to be at the top, understanding is not diminished at 40+, however memorizing abilities are.
I'd like to see some evidence of that.
However, what does decrease with age is physical stamina. And classical chess tournaments, oddly, take a lot more physical stamina than you might think.
Counterintuitively, the whole faster/blitz chess systems have been good for older chess players.
There is evidence of decreasing memory with age, many brain function related diseases like Alzheimer higher risk for older people. Senility and memory loss are commonly related.
Also certain types of information is more easier learnt when you are younger like multiple languages. I believe there is research on learning pedagogies for senior citizens having different approaches than children factoring in the ability to learn quickly.
Most mathematicans and many other scientists achieve the peek before 40, while there are exceptions like Euler or gauss it is not common.
Even in tech you find a lot more younger workers than other more stable technical fields as the learning curve is recurring and steeper than in other fields
I wouldn't disagree there is more physical stamina required for tournaments, however I doubt it so difficult for players in their 40s/50s cannot manage it without loosing competitive advantage.
It's true I didn't know about Morphy when I made my comment, I read on Wikipedia afterwards.
In context the quote has different connotations. However, having taken it at face value, I stand by my comment.
Nothing in the Morphy quote explicitly addresses the technicalities of becoming a world class chess player.
In general playing chess well means something else to the general public than to a GM level player. My comment was made having the former interpretation in mind - Morphy was obviously talking from his (very different) point of view.
Indeed. I didn't mean to attack Morphy, I just interpreted the quote on its own, thinking it was made by some random person (in different places in the thread people had quoted various writers etc. not necessarily great chess players).
I didn't take a quote out of context, the context was not provided. There is no a priori expectation that somebody should read a Wikipedia page to find out the missing context behind a quote.
> Its shifting goalpost fallacy.
There's no fallacy here. I have my opinion, I stand by it regardless of the quote's context. I understand that Morphy didn't mean what I thought he meant. It's just that my opinion on the usefulness of chess is still the same.
> The second part I think simply denotes a misunderstanding of what playing chess well means.
The quote is from Paul Morphy, the best player of the 19th century. He practically invented playing chess well. And he hated it, he felt he should have become a lawyer and did something useful with his life.
+1, Paul Morphy might have been the most fascinating and influencing chess player of all time.
When he was still actively playing, he seemed almost unbeatable, and nobody understood why. Somehow Morphy intuitively knew when to start an attack and when he did, it magically always worked out, while other top players at that time often saw their attacks turn into nothing and would soon lose afterwards.
It took a decade until an a dedicated studier of his game, Wilhelm Steinitz, figured out the logic behind it.
His theory of positional play changed the way people looked at chess and meant the start of the modern chess era.
Morphy himself didn't live to see this, after quitting chess he became increasingly schizophrenic and eventually died penniless and alone.
> The quote is from Paul Morphy, the best player of the 19th century.
The point was taken, see my comment below. I didn't know the context behind the quote, I understand that Morphy didn't mean it the way I took it.
Nevertheless, I think that under the general interpretation of what it means to know chess well (which is surely different from Morphy's), I stand by my idea that knowing chess well can be a positive thing.
> Sounds like the disagreement is just about what is required for "playing chess well".
I think so. I'm getting a lot of flak over it though :-<
> If we raise the bar to 2500+ maybe you will agree?
I can't say. I do have an acquaintance who is at ~2600 level who is also a well adapted guy. He's not a full time player anymore, though.
I have no opinion on whether chess performance at a GM level is bad for you. All I wanted to say was that you can get pretty far with chess (I think a level of 2000-2300 qualifies as pretty far for the general population) without it affecting your life negatively.
See my edit. I just don't feel comfortable dropping his name here. I wanted to make a general point about my impression of the impact of playing chess on people, I don't want to turn this into some personal thing.
Well the pool of 2500+ players is significantly larger. It just immediately raised my attention because 2600 is superrare, and prior to 1990s only select few ever had a higher rating: it is really something special.
(Also, verifying the plausibility of statements by internet users is a personal hobby of mine, hope you understand)
Googling "Australian chess grandmasters" I get the following list: Walter Browne, Max Illingworth, Darryl Johansen, Temur Kuybokarov, Moulthun Ly, Ian Rogers, David Smerdon, Anton Smirnov. The guy I'm talking about is on the list, I won't give the exact name.
> verifying the plausibility of statements by internet users is a personal hobby of mine, hope you understand
> In my family I had/have two people who plaid chess well (2000-2300 range) without wasting their lives in any way.
Although seemingly not so far away by sheer number, the 2000-2300 elo range is worlds apart from 2500+ (GM) levels, in terms of how much effort (and talent) is required.
> Although seemingly not so far away by sheer number, the 2000-2300 elo range is worlds apart from 2500+ (GM) levels
I know that. My point was that a score of 2000-2300 can still qualify as knowing chess well. Didn't know Morphy was a top level player when I made the comment.
This is why my grandfather never played chess with me and actively discouraged it - "too many great minds are wasted on chess".
We always instead played checkers, for real - always encouraging and teaching, but no patronizing wins for me - it was a long time until I could actually take a few games. Great memories, and he was gone too soon.
I did play some in HS & college, very much enjoyed some intense games, and still think it was good advice.
The Paul Morphy quote is spot on, save maybe for great champions like Garry Kasparov, who also went to to greater things. I suppose the same could be said about many pursuits where only a few get to truly earn a living, such as acting, music, sports - it becomes what you make of it but perhaps chess is a bit more extremely consuming?
Learning and playing chess is great for you, but probably only up to the point of being competitive.
Mid/high level players to progress up are in large degree forced to study positions memorise lines etc. To large extend its a competitive memorisation game.
This is natural step in high level chess, its like a precopmutated hash table, the more upfront work you can precomputate the less time you need to spend over the board on that move.
I play chess for fun and as casual hobby, and i think its a great way to exercise your brain. Thinking about board and evaluation positions. It translates into real world too.
Its also one of the last few things i can do and not get distracted by anything else.
I suspect you are right about the strategy and point at which it reaches a point of diminishing returns. Your likening the memorization of huge numbers of opening and mid-game sequences to precomputed hash tables seems spot-on...
This phrase from Morphy and your story about your grandfather reminds me of this "Maybe I can win a pawn" scene: https://youtu.be/pOzaIcZwpwQ?t=60
This is what the mentor in the movie means: some become good, some foolishly pursue nothing. The game can be addictive. But to be great is the rarest thing.
> The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life
Wasted in what sense? Aren’t we all playing made up games and solving artificial problems at the end of the day? Most GMs probably aren’t doing it to make money, they get a similar thrill from it as, say, a mathematician gets from understanding and solving deep math problems.
> Most GMs probably aren’t doing it to make money, they get a similar thrill from it as, say, a mathematician gets from understanding and solving deep math problems.
Very apt analogy. Most math faculty members in my department stopped being productive in the last third of their career. After a while, it just gets old. Proving yet another theorem no longer excites them.
Most faculty also teach as well, their paychecks for most part are well earned.
The reason the contributions usually drop for mathematicans is less to do with losing interest and more that they simple don't have the mental capacity they did in their 20's and 30s into the 50s .
The comment is from the world champion of 1850s . Being professional back then was considered equivalent to gambling. Professional sports or hobbies wasn't thing till early to mid 20th century. The early Olympics even had amateur only rules.
There is more to life than being a chess player or a mathematican. His point is more to do focusing/obsessing on a single narrow subject, given morphy's own experience I would say he is more than qualified to make that comment.
There are certainly some negative examples. But
"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." is way too harsh imo. You learn dozens of things that help you in life & business as well:
-pushing yourself to the limit
-how to learn best
-how to get back on track after defeat
and much more. For me, getting the GM title was sort of a life school. I'll profit from the journey my whole life.
The oppurtunity cost is huge though. That level of dedication, focus, and intellect applied to a productive endeavor like science, technology, or business is likely to push science forward or create millions of dollars of value.
Hikaru says becoming a GM to like getting two PhDs.
If studying and playing tons of chess very well brings you joy, by all means go for it. The wasted life part seems very harsh and judgy.
Sure, the oppurtunity cost is big. And I'm not saying it is the best way to put out value in the world.
Two PhDs sounds like a lot. After all, most GMs get the title before their twenties. But such comparisons are very hard anyway. But it is also possible to get the title while pursuing another career path, you don't have to focus 100% on chess.
As you say, the wasted life part is way too harsh and based on only some madly crazy examples in chess history.
Paul Morphy also played at a time when chess was much less respected than it is today. You couldn't make a living off chess and it was viewed similar to gambling.
Eh, there was nothing really for him to do in the Chess world. At that time period there wasn't really professional chess like there is today, he could have made a living gambling at it essentially but he would have considered that wasting his life.
Become a history teacher and open up a chess club. Organize tournaments and write books. There’s a lot he could do beyond “professional chess” as it’s known now.
There weren't really academic chess clubs around, and he became an attorney so he could have done that rather than being a history teacher. Likewise tournaments and demand for books wasn't really a thing in his lifetime.
"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life."
Only with age I can appreciate how true that quote is. There was an article that came up not long ago about GMs selling games for others to earn their GM norms. And the sad truth is being GM in chess doesn't put a food on the table.
The very peak of the players can make a living some as coaches or streamers but not everyone can be a 'winner'.