We're All Bozos on this Bus!

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  • #16
    Re: We're All Bozos on this Bus!

    Originally posted by Ed Seedhouse View Post
    One of those books was on the psychology of the chess player and was, to be generous, pretty much total crap (I read it). I seem to recall having read somewhere that someone once said that Fine's switch from chess to psychoanalysis was a sad loss for the former and no gain to the latter.

    On the other hand Fine made a pretty good living as a psychoanalyst, which is probably more than you can say about his chess days.
    Toronto master Geza Fuster once played in a tournament which included Reuben Fine and an obnoxious German player by the name of Klein. The players there joked that Fine is kleine (small - he was just over 5 ft tall) but Klein is not fine!

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    • #17
      Re: We're All Bozos on this Bus!

      Is this board so quiet that threads three years old are being revived? :-)

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      • #18
        Re: We're All Bozos on this Bus!

        "The amount of study and practice required to make a person proficient in chess brings a serious drain upon the time, and the fascinations of the game are such that once a person has become thoroughly interested in it, everything else is laid aside, and it is notorious that no man distinguished as a chessplayer has ever been good for anything else."

        Aside from the fact that the last part of the above quote has been shown to be wrong by other posters to this thread...

        One could easily substitute the names of many other sports/games for 'chess' in the above quote. But nobody seems to criticize a top Olympic track star, or an NHL/NBA/NFL/MLB star, or a PGA golfer, or a top ten tennis pro for much the same single-minded devotion to their sport. Maybe it's because society accepts obsession with an activity as long as one makes tons of money doing it?

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        • #19
          Re: We're All Bozos on this Bus!

          Originally posted by Peter McKillop View Post
          From Edward Winter's Chess Notes; a recurring opinion:

          6311. R.F. Foster
          Oliver Beck (Seattle, WA, USA) notes the following passage in Foster’s Complete Hoyle, which was originally published in 1897:

          ‘The amount of study and practice required to make a person proficient in chess brings a serious drain upon the time, and the fascinations of the game are such that once a person has become thoroughly interested in it, everything else is laid aside, and it is notorious that no man distinguished as a chessplayer has ever been good for anything else.’
          There are of course exceptions, but it is probably difficult to work full time at something other then chess and to reach your full potential in the game. One of the strongest "amateurs" right now is likely Luke McShane, I believe he works in the financial sector.

          I really like playing, but at the end of the day, my job has to come first because that's what brings home the bacon. That and I'm not very good at chess :D

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