Date: 12/01/1998
From: Jim Geary
Newsgroups: rec.gambling.poker
Subject: Re: Stu Ungar
On Tue, 1 Dec 1998, heldar wrote: > Searching for Bobby Fischer was supposed to be reality, i.e., a biography. > Of course, it wasn't exactly objective, since it was written by the > prodigy's father. ding. > But he does talk about how obsessed some of the kids > (*and their parents!*) super ding. The primary problem with scholastic chess (and perhaps numerous other endeavours, of which I do not have first-hand knowledge) is psycho parents. It's the little league syndrome to the nth power. When I worked as a chess coach I saw all the worst in parenting. I was only 21 or so when I started, but I could already tell that many of these kids just weren't in a healthy environment. In my brief tenure (prior to the poker flourishing in Phoenix bars..) I saw: - A prodigy who was force fed chess but had no idea that there was anything wrong with it. A decade later he went on a drug-crazed killing spree across two states. Far be it from me to attribute cause and effect. For the record, I always knew him as a nice kid. - A parent from another state shop his kid around from school district to school district to get the best deal for his chess-playing prodigy. El Duque aint got nothing on 8 year old wunderkinder. -Many smart kids with muddling grades whose parents paid me to give their kids private chess lessons. These are only a few people I knew personally. There are several noteworthy nationalish examples as well. Whether the stories of bad things happening are any more prevalent than a similar sized cross section of the population, I don't know. Anecdotally, tho, I think it is so. This is not to say that all kids who play scholastic chess grow up with problems. For the vast majority, it is truly a positive experience and one I would support for my own child. But as in many systems, irregularities start to occur at boundary values. Of the many grandmasters I've met, and the few of whom I have the pleasure of knowing, all are well-developed adults. I postulate that the improper parenting is an obstacle towards achieving grandmasterhood. The problem isn't the kids. And now getting back to the subject line. I dispute the notion that has been almost accepted as fact. That is, that the same forces that compel one to greatness correlate with forces that compel one to self destruction. At best I rate these traits as orthogonal, but I really tend to believe they are negatively correlated. 99% of the people who achieve greatness do so while having all their shit together. A half dozen exceptions (and one fictional character -- sheesh!) culled from four centuries is frankly not enough evidence to contra-indicate this.
Last Modified 2/9/00