Don't let your children grow up to be professional
chess players. It is a lonely life full of neurosis and disappointments with
very little financial reward except for the very best. This isn't baseball
where a utility hitter can still make millions. It is an all-absorbing life
where chess pieces move around in your head and you replay your losses time
after time to see where you first went wrong. Bobby Fischer is the best-known
example of a chess life driven close to madness. There were others before
him, perhaps the most known being the American player in the 1800's, Paul
Morphy who was considered the greatest in the world but went insane. I was
pretty good at it in my teens and studied all the masters and knew all the
openings - but I got lucky - I got interested in girls and chess became much
less important. I was also about 10 levels below a prodigy.
This film is based on a true person Josua Waitzkins who was a chess prodigy
and teetered on the edge of obsession. But he was able to pull back and love
the game but not let it eat him up. Today he is a chess player and a martial
arts teacher - a pretty good balance that has a certain overlay to it. Chess
is a martial art of the mind. Now some 45 years have passed since I picked
up a piece and I am beginning to miss it - have a desire to start again -
maybe because at this age women no longer matter so much!
