Originally posted by heinzkatIts the sweetest candy in the word, in its correct form it is as beautiful as a flawless rose, more addictive them heroin and, like heroin, it has the power to make men happy... yet restless and miserable at the same time.
What is this thing called chess?
1) Chess is a form of art: a lousy one, if you ask me
2) Chess has the power to make geeky, insecure men feel "happy" - while they are not really happy
3) Chess is an infection: but it is not really the kind of infection that is contagious, is it? What do you mean - a disease? Is chess a disease?
Originally posted by heinzkatOnce chess has gotten its hooks into you, it's pretty hard to get rid of it. There are many kinds of treatment (e.g. extensive search for another hobby) but they don't always work.
1) Chess is a form of art: a lousy one, if you ask me
2) Chess has the power to make geeky, insecure men feel "happy" - while they are not really happy
3) Chess is an infection: but it is not really the kind of infection that is contagious, is it? What do you mean - a disease? Is chess a disease?
Originally posted by heinzkatchess is abstract. those things can hurt you, cost you thousands of working hours, trap oxygen carrying molecules in your system or whatever.
So what is the defining difference between chess and other standard addictive habits such as gambling, drugs, smoking...
1)Chess can't do those things.
1.a)Now you can say that actually all activity, including purely intellectual ones, somehow do have real effects. Well yeah, but not as materialistic effects as the above.
1.b)Even if we fail to define a difference between chess and some other activity by certain criteria, that doesn't mean they are as harmful or as good as each other. they just happen to be in the same category. for example, if chess can end someones marriage, so can resident evil 5. that doesn't mean one (resident evil 5) doesn't suck and one (chess) doesn't rock. 🙂
2)those aren't art. (some games in gambling MAY be, like "wow did you see that guy playing poker? he is amazing!" but well... yeah.)
Well, what else can I say. You try smoking and you either hate it and never do it again or start smoking and just can't drop it. It's similar with chess, once you start playing it, it's hard to stop.
That's the point I was trying to make, though I'm not so sure about it now after elaborating so I'll just stick with Tal - Chess is first of all an art.
Ah here's another one - I'll even rip it out of context for you.
Chess is so-called "intellectual"! Ha! Have you ever seen a FM/IM/GM that was a university professor too? OK, you may name some, maybe three, maybe five, but there you have to conclude - in general, chess players aren't that bright a group of people.
Originally posted by heinzkatI agree chess players aren't intellectual people by default. chess is an intellectual activity though. You can't be good at everything. The majority of academy is absolutely ignorant about political economy for example, that doesn't mean their expertise doesn't require any intellectual activity.
Ah here's another one - I'll even rip it out of context for you.
Chess is so-called "intellectual"! Ha! Have you ever seen a FM/IM/GM that was a university professor too? OK, you may name some, maybe three, maybe five, but there you have to conclude - in general, chess players aren't that bright a group of people. 🙂
Originally posted by heinzkatLasker? Ok, that's not even three.
Ah here's another one - I'll even rip it out of context for you.
Chess is so-called "intellectual"! Ha! Have you ever seen a FM/IM/GM that was a university professor too? OK, you may name some, maybe three, maybe five, but there you have to conclude - in general, chess players aren't that bright a group of people.
However, becoming a university professor is not a necessity for becoming intelligent although it's probably true that most of them (GM's etc) aren't very bright (no offense intended) since most of their lives are spent studying chess. I could wrong though.