The Future Of Chess

 The Future Of Chess...

Okkkkkkkkk thennnnnnn.....

Just woke up and have this on mind... always nice to get it out when you can...

So...

I've been playing chess since I was 4. I wasn't that serious about it..... when I was 4....

But when I was 7 I played like nearly every lunchtime at school. QEGS Wakefield had a lunchtime chessclub which tbh very few schools have...

As I've mentioned in previous posts which I might repost here... even back in about 1990 my parents paid about £3,500 a year to send me there when I was 7. That's about £13,000 in today's money...

Check the fees for QEGS junior as they are now if you like

Anyway... I played chess because I LIKED playing chess... I liked to win. I liked to think ahead...

Many smart people can play chess... but you'll notice the RICHEST ones are not FULL TIME CHESS PROS...

They'll like stop playing quite young to be senior in Google or something. Charlie Munger used to talk about chess... he obviously decided being a multi billionaire share investor was better use of his time though...

Where am I going with this?

What is the future of someone say who wants to spend a fair bit of time on chess... but ALSO try and make money from it?

Online may be the way really... or to be more exact perhaps ONLINE PLAYING AND CONTENT CREATION...

I watched a video of a guy who basically had decent fulltime jobs before but was giving up trying to do a full time regular job to try and be a CHESS STREAMER...

He was like about 33. I think he had played v little or NO OTB chess like about a year before. His ONLINE rating was about 1500...

Very surreal...

If he played in a chess tournament OTB there would be plenty of 12 year olds who could beat him....

So...............

LOADS of people actually do like to play chess. For real I watch plenty of self development videos... you get the MILLIONAIRE poker players and share people talking about how they play loads of chess sometimes.....

And they're like.... oh my RATING is 800.... trying to get it up to 1000. They're talking about their ONLINE rating as that's all they know.

When I started to play online chess a bit more seriously last year I beat someone about 2300 on lichess with little new training. The whole ratings of people online is very like... fluid you could say. Sometimes I'll beat people who are 1800 who are good sometimes they aren't good...

An OTB rating (I started playing RATED OTB chess when I was about 13) is much more reliable as you know it's not a bot etc. I played one OTB game in September, won with black. That gave me an OTB ECF rating of 1840... which is better than everyone apart from about 5 active players around Huddersfield, maybe less than 5. From one game.

HOWEVER I can totally see why people judge or think their online ratings are their real ratings... as that's how they play chess. Say you're doing a 60 hour a week high paid job.............

Are you going to want to go to HULL or the 4NCL to play chess? Bearing in mind the costs and time etc...

No way... and not many players in their 20s or 30s do...

So.... let's wrap this up...

Is it still worth playing some chess from time to time anyway? Yep... it's a good mental workout at least. That's why it's second most popular sport in world.........

If you want to get BETTER at chess I am happy to coach you cheaply. I'll even give you a free copy of my chess novel which I spent 18 MONTHS writing if you book a couple of hours of sessions....