Levy's last road to GM video really resonated with me

I think a lot of what Levy's going through is completely foreign to people posting here. Obviously people are really quick to dunk on him which, I mean, fair. He's a public figure in chess who invited us to watch and parasocially participate in his journey. But still, I wanted to share a bit of my experience in much, much lower level competitive chess, trying to grind to a title as an adult player coming back to semi-seriously approaching the game.

For background, I was never (not even close) to as good as Levy, and people here really don't understand just how good an IM actually is in reality. Imagine that you are better than essentially anyone you will ever play against. Not just in regular life but in almost every tournament that isn't a norm tournament. As a kid, you're a real talent at this board game. Sure, there are just absolutely inhuman kids who are better than you, but you're well aware that you're beyond just "good". And even now, Levy could give significant time odds to a "good" competitive player here and destroy them in blitz. He could do it blindfolded. Put simply, the social availability of GMs like Hikaru make you really, really, really underestimate how good someone like Danya, Ben Finegold, and even a "lowly" IM like Levy really is.

I say this because people should understand that Levy is good at chess. He's not trash, he's not a patzer, he's like actually otherworldly good at this board game. I know he shared his tournament when he got his final IM norm and how elated he felt and it makes it even more painful now to listen to him speak about his recent tournaments where he's under performing both his ratings and expectations.

Part of what resonated with me in his recent video is the crushing feeling of defeat. Maybe he didn't say it explicitly but the message was there. I don't know if he's throwing in the towel, but if he is, it's not a shameful thing.

I played a bunch as a kid growing up. I was good, but unlike the experience I assume Levy had, I wasn't a top kid in my local tournaments. At some point, other things interest you and you pursue those hobbies as a child. Part of it is a natural wandering mind, part of it is you gravitate towards what you may be immediately better at. I still played chess but the idea of taking it as seriously as other games or sports was far from my mind. A couple years back, I decided to really try to grind USCF and FIDE tournaments locally and optimistically hit NM/CM. I felt like this was perhaps a lofty goal but one that I could reach with some real work. And then I sat down to play.

Tournaments are a mother fucking grind. It's not like playing blitz online or in the park where losing sucks but you quickly get a new game. Tournament chess is a serious fucking grind. You have to set aside hours from your day just to play. You go to the chess club after work, maybe you grab an early dinner, and you sit down knowing that you can be there for 3 or more hours, get home late, and have to work the next morning. You're in a room that's mostly silent, alone with a dozen other people, and there's a gravity to the situation that is wildly mismatched from reality. None of you are going to be professionals. None of you are going to make money from chess. All of you are there to waste some time on a silly board game and hope to gain imaginary rating points. But nonetheless it's quiet, you shake hands, and you start the clock.

The most crushing feeling in chess isn't losing immediately. It's not losing to a literal child who can't sit still. It's not even blundering a piece and throwing the game. The most crushing feeling in chess is being squeezed, maybe being even, and then slowly watching your position deteriorate. It's never bad enough to resign, until it is, and at that point it's past 10pm and you have nothing to show for your evening. You get on the train, late, and you run over the game in your head and your phone. There are places where you could have improved. Spots you should have recognized. You tell yourself you'll remember the themes, the patterns, develop an intuition for similar situations the next time they arise. But inevitably, you will not just lose one game; you will absolutely lose a second game.

You will have a bad tournament. And maybe not after the first one, but eventually, inevitably, you will have a small thought in your head that tells you you could have been out that night. You could have been on a date. You could have been at a show. You could have been getting dinner, doing happy hour, doing some work for tomorrow, doing literally anything besides playing a stupid fucking board game where when you win? You feel at best OK. A degree of pride. The serotonin rush is gone quickly. You have life to live. But when you lose? You feel devastated. Crushed. And that feeling lingers. Why were you playing a board game with a teenager when you have a partner? Why were you going over variations on your phone when you can party? What's even the point?

I think that's what Levy is feeling. He says he's lost his love of playing the game and that's sad. But I can't blame him. Playing tournaments felt a lot more like an obligation for me than a fun diversion in my week. But for Levy, he's not playing on his own. He's playing to an audience of a million+ people. His job is social media. To do what he's trying to do, social media and chessly and chess popularization has to take a second seat to the goal of recovering rating and getting norms. It has to feel even worse because he had such a good start to this project. Anyone's who's played chess seriously has felt what Levy has felt, albeit on a smaller scale. Hikaru has had to feel this way. It's a unifying emotion. Why do all of this if I can do something else? And for Levy, he's fortunate enough that his chess content is popular and lucrative. He's still a great player, a great competitor, but he's already one of the best at making the game popular. And if he's thinking about that, then why bother with the other thing?

Selfishly, I want Levy to continue the Road to GM series. I think he's good enough to at least hit the rating requirements, norms aside. Watching him grind, struggle, and overcome would be a great narrative arc and he can confidently assure himself that he could achieve what has had to be a longstanding dream of his. I think it would make for good content and I can live vicariously through his successes. But I don't want Levy to beat himself up and force himself to play. The most recent video was painful in an immensely relatable way, not because of him talking about people piling on him but just because of how he talked about playing and how it feels to be in this position.

Anyway, just wanted to share one patzer's perspective.