In Jack Peter’s column last Sunday, he reported on Karpov’s recent dismal performance in Donostia and remarked on the usual decline in a player’s results when he gets over the age of 50.
It may be easy to conclude that this chess playing decline is the result of a general decline in mental ability as we get older. Probably some of it is. But, I think it may be something else.
My theory is that it is not natural to be extraordinarily good at anything. Ability is necessary, but what sets the champion apart from a merely competent amateur is desperation, a total insecurity. There is nothing that can focus the mind better than the belief that you will lose the love of your parents if you do not succeed. Remember the line in the movie, “Searching for Bobby Fischer,” where the mother is concerned that the father is putting too much pressure on Josh to win. He is a sports writer and the mother asks, “how many of your ballplayers fear that they will disappoint their fathers every time they go up to bat?” After a brief thought, he answers, “all of them.”
But that kind of fear does not endure for our entire lives – except for a very few unfortunate souls. As we get older we put chess into perspective. I believe that the first time you take your child to the emergency room is the last time you will be a truly great chess player. It suddenly is just not as important as it used to be. You can still be technically proficient, but your intense focus and concentration will never be the same. Then, you must make room for the new, still desperate, generation.
I think I lost that desperation when I was about 16. While I no longer believed that winning a game was the most important thing in the world, how I performed in a given game or tournament depended upon whether I could convince myself that winning was the most important thing – for me at that particular moment. A disastrous tournament was assured if I ever asked myself, “why am I wasting my time here?” And the final game on a Sunday afternoon was guaranteed to be lost if my girlfriend had said, “if you finish the game early come on over. I will be waiting for you.”
If you play chess because you enjoy the comradery and you enjoy the mental challenge just as you would enjoy solving a chess problem, Sudoku, or a cross-word puzzle, then you will play forever and enjoy it. But for those of us who have used chess to define our insecure selves, we use the game for what we needed it for and then we just fade away from tournament play.
Very insightful comments from Steve. I wasn’t as driven (or as good as a teenager) as Steve reports, but I knew or observed people who were better than I was as a youngster, when I attended the World Open or some events in NYC or read the magazine. Of course I wished I were better, but I was who I was. I was among the best junior players in my area of Wilmington Delaware.
I stopped playing a few years later, after I improved some more, because it was primarily stressful. Except against strong IMs and above, the only reason I would lose would be a miscalculation, so it seemed pointless to play unless I could live a life of only playing “strong IMs and above”, and that was not realistic. Other than that it was just hard work and, frankly, luck to avoid making a mistake. Even if I did qualify for a world where I was playing mostly 2500+ opponents, just a few mistakes against lower rated opponents could knock me out of that world, because ratings are used for qualification.
And against most opponents, I felt that I was just playing, waiting for their mistake. So, the stress was still there and the excitement mostly gone. I decided that other challenges were more important. so I got my 22 prefix and retired. I retain an attachment to the game and read the magazine, now in electronic form, but I have not wanted to return to tournament competition in 30 years.
Our brain and memory always continues to decline as we age.
I think someone said it begins to go downhill around the age of 25.
We also acquire/carry baggage(good and bad) from life in general that hinders us.
How can we stem the tide against us and continue to get better at chess? Eventually baggage will tell us we can’t or don’t want to!
If at that point we accept this fact and just play for the love of the game, it was all worth it!
For me it was just a case of burnout. I was one of the top players in central Mississippi and everyone was preparing to play me–they were improving while it seemed I had little to win and much to lose in every tournament. Finally came the realization: “Chess is a recreation and you are not enjoying yourself. What are you doing here?” I played seldom after that but stayed active running or helping in scholastic tournaments and in clubs. Last year I visited the US Open for the first time since playing in Atlanta in 1980 (trying to get my round robin tables in the USCF Rulebook), but didn’t play a single game, offhand or otherwise. Some info is here, scroll up a paragraph to see the burnout.
I like to check out my tactics at chesstempo and play unrated games online from time to time, but that is it right now.
Elo studied that life-long players topped their rating between the ages of 34 and 37. Of course there exceptions like Korchnoi and Smyslov. Overall, I have to agree with Steve. The fire in the belly to win isn’t always there when you’re over 50.