POV #001
Why I don’t play chess
Chess is Mental Torture ~ Gary Kasparov
Chess is Non-Transferable
The intrinsic aptitude of any person will transfer across games, like say a Chess GM moving from Chess to Go, will do well in Go, but that has little to do with Chess in itself. It will hold true for all games of similar style
The core skills which chess itself needs have not shown to be useful in most other fields despite significant efforts. Optimising my entire life behind pushing pieces on a board is a meaningless endeavour for something which adds 0 value to me outside that specific zone.
Why will I optimise my life? Because I have no self control to not be obsessed with getting better at it.
Chess is very Isolating
From full time players like Magnus Carlsen to part streams like the Botez sisters, it is a well expressed fact, the unlike even most other individual sports like Tennis or Wrestling which have some sport camaraderie; Chess has none. Chess is you and your mind, and you inside your mind. That’s it.
And as time goes on, by nature, chess becomes more and more singular, due to its individualistic nature. For someone so intelligent enough to be a grand master. Is that all you want to do in life? Just be a grandmaster. Chess drains away time and life energy from being able to do anything else because of how intense it is. Chess is also not like cycling it requires constant maintenance.
Chess is like body-building. If you train every day, you stay in top shape. It is the same with your brain — chess is a matter of daily training. ~ Vladimir Kramnik
Over time as you put hours and hours and hours into a game and then lose. You know there is no one else to blame but you, no other possibility of error or luck. Chess is not so much about some amount of chance as in most other sports, but about being able to do this one extremely specific task better than the person in front
Chess is Overrated
Chess has become a default recognition for someone to be smart to and fro.
“Hey you’re so smart you must really be good at chess?”
No I hate it. Its a boring game, so I probably suck at it
(Immediately assumes that the person is not smart, even if he is a Doctor in Quantum Mechanics)
Chess can be hyped, sure, like say football. But why does it have to be so intrinsically tied to a human’s intelligence level? Or say their worth generally. I want to see if Kasparov could even understand Tensor Algebra let alone discovery Gravity? or could Einstein beat Karpov in a one to one game?
Using chess to evaluate machine intelligence is a fair argument which can still be fought for due to the primitive nature of Machine Intelligence now. But after 5 million years of ruling and then destroying the whole planet, using it to classify human intelligence, is just crude.
Chess is Overhyped
Chess is also not as difficult as it seems. It would seem overreaching coming from (me) who basically sucks at chess. But hear me out
Research has shown time and again that chess is not just about pieces on a board and broad strategies. There are patterns. It is a well researched fact as referenced in sever pop sci books that even chess masters cannot recognise memorise instantly random positions on the board unless they could come up in a chess game naturally. Hinting at the fact that their memory is not better than our memory
Another good example is that the Polgar sisters were exposed to chess since they were born by having chess pieces in random places, posters around the house etc making them obsessed with it eventually making Judit Polgar the first women in chess top 10. This strongly suggests that chess as a skill can be cultivated and not just be born with.
