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.

From physics genius to dissapearing one day with no known fate.

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.

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.

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.

In his defense I don't think morphy intended for people outside the chess world as a general statement.

And yet you still claim that your point is correct if quote is taken out of context.

Its shifting goalpost fallacy.

> 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 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.

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 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.

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.

2600 rating on sites like lichess or chess24 is much more plausible, it corresponds to roughly 2150-2300 fide rating.

Yes. He's a pretty well known Australian player, not sure how active he is anymore though. Now has a full time academic career.

Edit:

After verifying on the FIDE website, I see his ranking is around 2500 now. He is a GM though.

(Two of them are from exUSSR, and the last one has a surname that sounds Chinese)

(Also, verifying the plausibility of statements by internet users is a personal hobby of mine, hope you understand)

> verifying the plausibility of statements by internet users is a personal hobby of mine, hope you understand

https://xkcd.com/386/ not sure it's the healthiest hobby, but I guess I understand.

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.

The Wikipedia section about his abandonment of chess is tragic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Morphy#Abandonment_of_che...).

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.