"I Knew I Wasn't Going to Be a Normal Person"

In a recent tournament, I was talking to a GM after our game and he asked me what I do (I have a 9-5 job). When talking about himself, who’s basically been focused on chess his whole life, he laughed and said this line:
“When I decided to be a chess professional, I knew I wasn’t going to be a normal person.”

There was another line he’d said in another post-game chat some years ago that left a strong impression on me. When I said something like “I get close [in our games] but you beat me in the end!” he looked at me and said:
“Well, chess is just a hobby for you, right?”

I’d been an International Master for several years by then and played for Australia at the Olympiad. But there's a bigger gap than you might realise between an IM with a day job and a full-time GM. He didn’t mean the line in a bad way. But I never saw chess as just a hobby.

His line reminded me of other moments I'd witnessed. Times when I saw what "not normal" actually looks like.

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The Post-Loss Ritual

I played Rameshbabu Vaishali at the Bangkok Chess Club Open 2015, when she was rated around 2250. I was about 150 points higher, and won the game. After we shook hands, she immediately asked:
“Where was my mistake?”

I talked about a couple of key moments where I thought the tide had shifted. Then we went our separate ways.
I remember the way she asked that question. It was clear that she genuinely wanted to know, and you could even say she had already moved on from the result of the game. In that moment, where else would the learning come from? That question was her default when she lost a game.

11 years later, she’s now the Challenger for the Women’s World Championship.
Photo by Frans Peeters, License

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The Dinner Party

My family used to host a big dinner on one of the nights during the Doeberl Cup, Australia’s annual premier tournament. I’d invite around ten friends playing at the tournament for catching up and playing games.

One year, an FM friend was staying in the living room where he held the dinner. He looked visibly annoyed by all the noise and the people. Even while sitting on a chair or sofa like everyone else, he spent most of the evening looking at his laptop, preparing for the next day’s game.

The other players there, including GMs, were enjoying the chats and games. But for him, the dinner and everything that wasn’t related to the tournament itself was a distraction.

I remember noticing how he was behaving differently to all of the others there. But looking back, he wasn’t choosing chess over fun. For him, the chess prep was the evening.

Putting his 100% into the chess at every moment was his default. A few years later, he became a grandmaster.

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“Normal”

Most of us are normal. Some people aren’t.
With the ones who aren’t, you can see it before the rating shows it. Vaishali was asking the question before she was a master. The FM couldn’t switch off even at a party. It’s not something they forced. It’s just who they are.

Throughout our childhood and teenage years we strive to attain the correct distance from objects and phenomena. We read, we learn, we experience, we make adjustments. Then one day we reach the point where all the necessary distances have been set, all the necessary systems have been put in place. That is when time begins to pick up speed. It no longer meets any obstacles, everything is set, time races through our lives, the days pass by in a flash and before we know what is happening we are forty, fifty, sixty...
—Karl Ove Knausgård, A Death in the Family (My Struggle #1)

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