The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Notes -
This picture was posted on the chess subreddit and I can't stop laughing and thinking about it:
https://imgur.com/a/JATi25D
https://old.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/12r6psl/a_story_in_two_pics/
The right picture is Ding Liren, who is currently playing in the World Championship against Ian Nepomniachtchi, when he had something of a mental breakdown which lost him Game 7. He played fantastic as black until he had a small advantage, but then he froze, he blundered his remaining time because he couldn't bring himself to make a move. He just couldn't. He was paralyzed by his fear to overlook something and losing the game. Which ironically lost him the game. When he finally moved with 0:45 seconds remaining for 8 other moves (Nepo had 12 minutes left) he was visibly lost and depressed and he just got through the motions until he lost the game. Anish Giri commented that Chess is not a physical sport, so you don't normally see when someone collapses, but this was a collapse.
The left picture is Gigachad Magnus Carlsen, soon Ex-World Champion but still nonetheless best player in the world, arguably maybe best player ever, better even than Kasparov and Fischer at the height of their time, who has the time of his life partying with the Botez sisters and GM Aryan Tari, drinking shots and having fun playing Chess while everyone is dancing to cheesy Europop bangers.
When he mouseslipped and only got second place in an online tournament he exlaimed to the laughter of all: "I quit the fucking world championship for this?!"
https://clips.twitch.tv/AlertRespectfulQueleaHassaanChop-7SH5g20q4uKdQXlb?tt_medium=clips&tt_content=recommendation
"He should be ashamed for this. What a nonsense."
vs
"this is a fever dream of a stream tbh"
"Fever dream is the best way to describe it. Magnus is having so much more fun, has plenty of money, and has little left to prove. Seeing him vs Ding and Nepo right now makes it clear to me he made the right choice for himself"
vs
"what a time to be alive"
In your life try to be like Magnus, even if you are like Ding. It looks way more fun and you can wear cool sun glasses.
Chess is a game. It's something to play, to exercise your faculties, to have transient moments of joy and frustration about. I think professional sport is in general a pretty perverse culture, precisely because it kills the playful spirit of games, turns them into a high stakes rat race, essentially creates evil out of thin air. The value of discovering natural genius and pushing it to the limit is not worth this tradeoff.
Particularly seeing as that genius, confined to the realm of the game, doesn't contribute anything tangible to the world. Assuming the fungibility of IQ, Magnus and others are an immense lost opportunity. If we are tolerating this, might as well let them have a good time instead of pointlessly forcing the solemn ethos of self-sacrifice for the greater good where there isn't any.
How many full time professional chess players are there in the world? If it is more than low five figures, i would be surprised (and large part of them are weird people who would not fit in professional scientific or engineering world, even if chess never existed).
If you want to be angry at waste of high IQ potential, better targets for your rage are things like this.
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Seeing this I gained a lot of respect for Magnus (not that I didn't respect him before, but I respect him even more now). Having a talent can happen to anybody. Developing a talent takes a lot of hard work and dedication. But not letting this talent alone take over your life and subsume all of you, being the ultimate master of your life while keeping the talent - this is a sign of greatness.
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Step 1: be best human chess player ever born
Step 2: retire and have fun
It’s easy, we should all do it!
In all seriousness have you considered the possibility that Anish was playing up the drama because he’s commentating? It is possible (some would say likely) that Ding was just unable to find a continuation that wouldn’t lose him the game anyways.
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Yes, I think it's pretty obvious that it's better to be talented, attractive, rich and a winner than not those things.
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You cant be on the left of the picture without having been on the right.
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No, he’s a coward. Why isn’t he playing in the world chess championship right now?
Of course, he’ll say that he doesn’t like preparing for big championships. Okay, fine, don’t prep. Have the courtesy to sit there and let someone better prepared beat you. Show some respect to the game.
If you don’t have Magnus’s respect, and you beat him, he will ruin you.
How did chess of all things become about hanging out with chicks?
Because he doesn't want to? He has proven to himself what he wanted to prove. He doesn't owe anything to anybody.
Maybe some chess club somewhere prayed extra extra extra hard?
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But wouldn’t people think it even more disrespectful if he blitzed his moves, then left to chat up the Chessys, take a dip in the pool and play his game boy? Some are still going to lose. He may want to spare them Salieri’s humiliation.
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Eh Magnus is a poor sport but at least he’s enjoying himself. We modernized folk need to learn to take ourselves less seriously.
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Just began chess. It is a cool hobby. I am at that noob phase so no theory for now but chess is one sport I like because it is mostly just analysis even when you watch it, less parasocial elements.
Anyone here on lichess?
me
how do i add you?
Can you please dm me your username on that platform?
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Streams by or with Magnus are always great. Playing memetic moves to humiliate "noobs" (GMs that would wipe the floor with any of us), actually talking with the chat and his friends while playing, beating Alexandra Botez again in another one of her "five minutes for me, fifteen seconds for you" challenges, then suddenly getting serious when he's matched against a top player, he's making "watching chess if you suck at chess" entertaining in the same way watching basketball if you suck at basketball is.
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