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Hi everyone. Wanted some feedback. Basic question: when does playing chess become fun? Am I ever going to love just playing? Is it always going to just be a source of stress? With lingering anxiety after a session?

Some background. I have been playing on and off for years. Highest rapid ranking on chess.com was 1100. It was a grind, and I realized that after getting to 1000 I was really no happier than when I was 700. I will never be great. I realize that. But will it ever be like ‘I have arrived’ or ‘ok, I am content.’? I am coming to the hard conclusion that perhaps there is no end in sight and i don’t know how to make peace with that. Is 1200, or 1300 going to make it all great? The grind is not necessarily worth just hanging on to a 1000 rating. I don’t know. Problem is, I am an obsessive person and have a part of me that is drawn to the highs and lows of play. But it’s not all that fun.

Would like some input from others and see if this is a common feeling and maybe some things that helped or whatever.

Thanks!

Any specific methods or studies that helped you immensely in your improvement? I feel like it's so much harder from here.

Tal Memorial 2011 was held in Moscow, Russia, at Pashkov House from November 16 to 25. The tournament had an average rating of 2776, making it a Category 22 tournament and, at the time, the highest-rated 10-player round-robin tournament in chess history. The tournament featured an incredible lineup of 10 players:

• Magnus Carlsen — 2826 (#1)
• Viswanathan Anand — 2811 (#2)
• Levon Aronian — 2802 (#3)
• Vladimir Kramnik — 2800 (#4)
• Vassily Ivanchuk — 2775 (#6)
• Sergey Karjakin — 2763 (#8)
• Hikaru Nakamura — 2758 (#10)
• Peter Svidler — 2755 (#12)
• Boris Gelfand — 2744 (#14)
• Ian Nepomniachtchi — 2730 (#20)

Carlsen and Aronian finished tied for first with 5½/9, with Carlsen taking first place on tiebreak.

Also, the closing ceremony of the event https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt_5_-Gk3g0

Rank	Player	Age	Approx. career winnings
1	Magnus Carlsen	35	$12,246,172
2	Viswanathan Anand	56	$10,302,229
3	Garry Kasparov	63	$8,735,599
4	Anatoly Karpov	75	$6,756,427
5	Vladimir Kramnik	51	$6,512,030
6	Fabiano Caruana	34	$5,179,991
7	Ian Nepomniachtchi	36	$4,521,320
8	Levon Aronian	43	$4,136,545
9	Hikaru Nakamura	38	$3,974,396
10	Bobby Fischer	64 at death	$3,519,650
11	Veselin Topalov	51	$3,361,454
12	Wesley So	32	$3,237,790
13	Ding Liren	33	$3,172,858
14	Maxime Vachier-Lagrave	35	$2,876,256
15	Boris Gelfand	58	$2,469,933
16	Alireza Firouzja	23	$2,345,248
17	Alexander Grischuk	42	$2,327,309
18	Sergey Karjakin	36	$2,065,966
19	Gukesh D	20	$1,961,802
20	Boris Spassky	88 at death	$1,849,564
21	Anish Giri	32	$1,767,564
22	Peter Svidler	50	$1,725,979
23	Nigel Short	61	$1,694,636
24	Shakhriyar Mamedyarov	41	$1,467,570
25	Gata Kamsky	52	$1,419,204
26	Michael Adams	54	$1,405,658
27	Peter Leko	46	$1,161,443
28	Vasyl Ivanchuk	57	$1,152,170
29	Jan-Krzysztof Duda	28	$1,138,553
30	R Praggnanandhaa	21	$1,129,778
31	Vincent Keymer	21	$1,044,968
32	Leinier Dominguez Perez	42	$1,042,781
33	Arjun Erigaisi	22	$1,002,529
34	Alexei Shirov	54	$940,383
35	Ruslan Ponomariov	42	$858,887
36	Nodirbek Abdusattorov	21	$834,739
37	Javokhir Sindarov	20	$778,684
38	Jan Timman	74	$726,397
39	Alexander Khalifman	60	$691,066
40	Daniil Dubov	30	$676,899
41	Hans Moke Niemann	23	$669,426
42	Teimour Radjabov	39	$668,878
43	Dmitry Andreikin	36	$622,960
44	Nihal Sarin	22	$619,175
45	Andrey Esipenko	24	$600,072
46	Vladislav Artemiev	28	$596,346
47	Alexander Morozevich	49	$577,718
48	Richard Rapport	30	$561,709
49	Wei Yi	27	$555,902
50	Vladimir Fedoseev	31	$529,831

Would this be a practical loophole in a 90+30 chess tournament?

Hypothetically:

• I'm playing Black against a 2200-rated player.
• My friend is playing White against another 2200-rated player.
• Our boards are next to each other and start with exactly the same position.
• My friend is unrated and is willing to lose his game.
• Whenever my 2200-rated opponent makes a move, my friend immediately copies that move on his board.
• Then my friend's 2200-rated opponent makes a move, and I copy that move onto my board.

So the move flow is:

2200 White → Friend → 2200 Black → Me → 2200 White → ...

The two 2200s are effectively playing the same game against each other without realizing it. My friend and I are just reproducing their moves.

The potential usefulness is that instead of me having to find moves against a 2200-rated player, I would effectively be using the moves chosen by another 2200-rated player in the exact same position. My friend gets the equivalent benefit from the other 2200.

Assuming both boards remain perfectly synchronized, would this actually be practical in a 90+30 game? Would the time control make it feasible to keep the positions synchronized throughout the game?

Obviously this would be cheating in an actual tournament; I'm asking about whether the mechanism itself would work.

(used chatgpt to frame it)

Rank	Player	Age	Approx. career winnings

1	Ju Wenjun	35	$1,856,172

2	Tan Zhongyi	35	$1,064,841

3	Alexandra Kosteniuk	42	$1,016,237

4	Koneru Humpy	39	$928,461

5	Hou Yifan	32	$921,781

6	Aleksandra Goryachkina	27	$883,779

7	Kateryna Lagno	36	$813,450

8	Anna Muzychuk	36	≈$787,228

9	Lei Tingjie	29	$652,037

10	Valentina Gunina	37	$604,746

11	Bibisara Assaubayeva	22	$568,158

12	Harika Dronavalli	35	$506,792

13	Nana Dzagnidze	39	$481,627

14	Mariya Muzychuk	33	$435,276

15	Irina Krush	42	$410,553

16	Alice Lee	16	$409,949

17	Zhu Jiner	23	$398,889

18	Carissa Yip	22	$395,626

19	Judit Polgár	50	$375,352

20	Xie Jun	55	$355,400

21	Vaishali Rameshbabu	25	$329,669

22	Antoaneta Stefanova	47	$325,115

23	Anna Ushenina	40	$301,950

24	Polina Shuvalova	25	$220,562

25	Elisabeth Pähtz	41	$212,296

26	Anna Zatonskih	48	$198,071

27	Divya Deshmukh	20	≈$197,262

28	Alisa Galliamova	54	$191,614

29	Natalija Pogonina	41	$187,345

30	Alina Kashlinskaya	32	$186,033

31	Pia Cramling	63	$166,077

32	Tatev Abrahamyan	38	$161,648

33	Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova	27	$158,481

34	Olga Girya	35	$158,144

35	Xu Yuhua	49	$157,500

36	Bella Khotenashvili	38	$152,649

37	Sarasadat Khademalsharieh	29	$148,635

38	Jennifer Yu	24	$147,777

39	Nino Batsiashvili	39	$146,899

40	Tatiana Kosintseva	40	$145,075

41	Zhu Chen	50	$144,099

42	Zhansaya Abdumalik	26	$139,015

43	Zhao Xue	41	$137,011

44	Susan Polgar	57	$125,400

45	Stavroula Tsolakidou	26	≈$123,897

46	Ekaterina Kovalevskaya	52	$115,619

47	Nazi Paikidze	32	$113,495

48	Elina Danielian	48	$105,752

49	Natalia Zhukova	47	$105,007

50	Nurgyul Salimova	23	$102,655

1. Tata Steel

Net: +4

Raw: +4=9-0

Place: 2nd of 14

TPR: 2833

2. Candidates

Net: +6

Raw: +6=8-0

Place: 1st of 8

TPR: 2908

3. GCT Romania

Net: +1

Raw: +2=6-1

Place: Tied 3rd-4th of 10

TPR: 2783

4. Sinquefield Cup

Net: +1

Raw: +2=6-1

Place: Tied 3rd-4th of 10

TPR: 2788

Average TPR over all 45 games: 2837

His only remaining Classical tournament prior to the World Championship is the Olympiad (to my knowledge). We'll see if he can keep up his performance there too.

The top American chess players are all in their 30s (Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So, Sam Shankland) with Leinier Domínguez Pérez and Levon Aronian in their early 40s.

After that, there doesn't seem to be much of an American presence in the international chess scene except for folks like Hans Niemann.

When the old heads fade and lose their edge, where is the next generation of American players to take up the mantle? Why aren't the likes of Awonder, Sam Sevian, Ray Robson, Abhimanyu Mishra, etc. making much waves in the international scene while the young Indian / Uzbek chess players are all over the place?