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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   2697 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 18, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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The others are right, chess at its highest level doesn't feed into anything but itself. If your daughter had that rare acumen and you wanted to support her and she made WGM, chess would be her work and her life. I think you might wonder if this would be so bad. WFM Anna Cramling is the daughter of WGM Pia Cramling and GM Juan Manuel Bellón López. There's this video of her watching as her mother plays an amateur at a chess bar in Paris, and it's idyllic. Titled chess players also generally come from moneyed families; there are worse people to fall into crowd with.

But there are examples of highly successful non-career chess players who were good at it, namely Stanley Kubrick and Peter Thiel. I'm not attributing, obviously it's that the traits that made Kubrick a superb filmmaker as an adult, saw him interested and successful in chess as an adolescent, same with Thiel. Maybe chess is the nascent flame of something much brighter in her future, why not encourage it?

If you want to brush up yourself, IM Jeremy Silman wrote the best general book: How to Reassess Your Chess

Edit: linked the wrong vid, updated the link, the old vid is below

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_xFS2X-sHlQ

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