{"id":5666,"date":"2019-01-27T17:33:25","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T01:33:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danamackenzie.com\/blog\/?p=5666"},"modified":"2019-01-27T18:24:06","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T02:24:06","slug":"the-big-trade-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/?p=5666","title":{"rendered":"The Big Trade-off"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Daniel Naroditsky (right) chatting with his opponent, Cemil Marandi of Turkey, earlier this month at the Bay Area International.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s post is about two players on the San Francisco Mechanics who are both coming to a turning point in any young chess player\u2019s career\u2014or indeed, in the life of anyone in their early twenties: graduation from college. This is the point where they have to decide, am I going to keep on pursuing chess as a professional, or am I going to get a \u201cregular\u201d job or perhaps pursue an advanced degree? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no right answer, and the decision will be unique to each individual. Daniel Naroditsky and Yian Liou represent two points on a whole spectrum of possibilities. I hope that their thoughts might benefit other young players who are approaching the same crossroads, and I would welcome some comments from readers!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the two, I\u2019ve\nknown Danya better and for longer. I think I first became aware of him at the\nFar West Open in Reno, in 2005, when he scored a sizzling 5\u00bd out of 6 to win\nthe Class B section. By coincidence, I scored 5\u00bd out of 6 to win the Expert\nsection in the same tournament. Back then, TD Jerry Weikel used to have a\nlittle prize ceremony, and I was amused to see this tiny, curly-haired kid\nstepping up to accept his trophy. Although I was higher-rated than him then, I\nsuspected that my days of superiority were numbered, and I was right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
A much younger Daniel Naroditsky at a celebration of his world under-12 title in 2007. (The emcee is John Donaldson.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Danya first made\nhis name known on a worldwide scale in 2007, when he won the world under-12\nchampionship in Turkey. By that time his rating was already above mine, and he\nhas only continued to go up and up, earning his Grandmaster title and\ncontinuing to be active in the chess scene even while going to Stanford\nUniversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Danya has been writing about chess since a very young age. His first book, Mastering Positional Chess<\/em>, came out when he was only 14 years old! Wikipedia says, \u201cHe is the youngest published chess author in history,\u201d and while I don\u2019t know any way to verify this claim, I also see no reason to doubt it. I had a very close look at both this book and his next one, Mastering Complex Endgames<\/em>, before they went to the publisher. I was a stylistic consultant mostly, and Danya even mentions me once or twice in the second book. All of the ideas and all of the examples in these books came from Danya. They grew out of a notebook he had been keeping for himself, on his own initiative, for years. Probably he was already writing that notebook when I first met him as a curly-haired 9-year-old in Reno!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Danya\u2019s chess\ncolumns in Chess Life<\/em> have really\nbeen a continuation of Mastering Complex\nEndgames<\/em>, and they continue to be full of deep explorations of the kind of\nendgames that books rarely talk about. He has long since outgrown the need for\nany sort of \u201cstylistic consultant,\u201d and I can only say that I read his columns\nwith a mixture of awe and pride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I caught up\nwith Danya before the PRO Chess League season, I had only two burning questions\nto ask him: Are you going to try to make it as a chess professional after you\ngraduate from college? And: Are you going to write any more books? His answer\nto the first question: Very likely yes. \u201cMy heart lies in chess,\u201d he said.\n\u201cMaybe I\u2019m deluded, but I\u2019m still optimistic that I have something to offer the\nchess world.\u201d Obviously, it won\u2019t be easy. His rating has been about level\nsince he went to Stanford; his high-water mark was 2733 (USCF), when he played\nin the 2017 U.S. Championship. Obviously one priority is to get back to a level\nwhere he can be invited again\u2014but that is not easy, given the constant influx\nof new, high-rated grandmasters from abroad. You\u2019ve got to improve continually\nto even keep up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer to my\nsecond question was even more exciting: Danya is working on a new book, about\nhis chess philosophy. He offered a couple tantalizing hints of what is going to\nbe in it: \u201ctopics that don\u2019t get covered enough in the chess literature, things\nthat grandmasters aren\u2019t straight about.\u201d One possible chapter: Why You Suck at\nTactics. Hey, I need that chapter!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

International\nMaster Yian Liou is probably much less well-known to most of our readers than\nDaniel Naroditsky, but he is just about the same age and started playing at the\nsame time. He\u2019s 21 years old and in his senior year at that \u201cother\u201d big\nuniversity in the Bay Area, the University of California at Berkeley. I\ninterviewed him by e-mail, and I think he gave some unusually frank and\ndetailed answers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dana:<\/em> I\u2019m pretty sure that Michael Aigner was one of your first\ncoaches. What approach did he take, and what did you learn from his coaching?\nDid you move on to other coaches once your rating got to a high enough level,\nand have you been satisfied with what you learned from them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yian<\/em>: From what I remember with Aigner, a decent time chunk was\nspent learning and memorizing new openings with Chess Position Trainer. From\nhim, I got a solid opening repertoire, good intuition of the middlegame (from a\npositional and tactical perspective) and endgame. All of those components put\ntogether are necessary to improve up to 2000 USCF. The synergy of everything he\ntaught is very powerful, and I\u2019m not sure how he came up with it. Afterwards, I\ndid have other coaches, Larry Christiansen and Predrag Trajkovic. Larry focused\nmore on dynamic play and openings, while Predrag focused on strategic play.\nOverall, I was quite satisfied with what I learned from them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dana<\/em>: Do you plan to become a full-time professional chess\nplayer, or do you have other plans such as grad school? If you\u2019re not sure, how\nare you planning to decide?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yian<\/em>: I\u2019ll be going into the tech industry as a software\nengineer. In the US, going to college would be considered a hedge for people\naiming for a professional chess career, but I never got to the level where I\nhad the option of going professional vs. college. Maintaining my chess\nabilities while attending school at Berkeley has not been too challenging, but\nadvancing in chess is too much of a commitment to balance with a top CS\nprogram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me, it is\nvery hard to justify going professional in chess. If I was capable of getting\nto 2650-2700 FIDE, things could have been different. I think chess is very\nuseful for kids in general, but it can also be leveraged to get into a top\nuniversity. If someone takes a similar route that I did, time spent on chess\nduring college will drop and it\u2019s almost certain that the person won\u2019t go\nprofessional. If that person wants to go professional, he or she will know from\nan early age whether they have the ability and option to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dana<\/em>: Was there ever a time when you really thought about being\na professional chess player rather than a professional computer scientist? If\nyou think that 2650 is beyond your reach now, do you have any other chess goals\nthat might be more attainable? Sometimes I think that goals can be almost\ncounterproductive \u2013 for example, if the goal becomes your reason for playing,\nand you no longer enjoy the game itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yian<\/em>: Nope. I never considered becoming a professional chess\nplayer as opposed to going into the tech industry. A few years down the line, I\nwill consider going for the GM title, but otherwise I have no other goals. If\ngoals are only marks that indicate a player\u2019s development, then that is fine.\nMore often than not that isn\u2019t the case, and you enjoy the game less, as you\nmentioned. I encountered such an issue when I was going for my IM title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dana<\/em>: Tell me more about going for the IM title. When did you\nget your norms? How many tries did it take? When did it, as you stay, stop\nbeing enjoyable?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yian<\/em>: I got 2 norms in 2012 (North American Open and\nMetropolitan IM Norm), then my third norm in 2014 in Serbia. The third norm\ntook five tries before I finally got it. Things became less enjoyable while\nsearching for the third norm; in retrospect, a year and a half isn\u2019t that long,\nbut it was not pleasant. After I got the IM title it became easier to enjoy the\ngame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dana<\/em>: What would you think of going after the GM title Larry Kaufman style? You could have a profitable and enjoyable career as a computer scientist, then win the World Senior Championship at age 50 and automatically get the GM title. Of course, that\u2019s a heck of a long time to wait with no guarantee of success\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yian<\/em>: Going after the GM title Larry Kaufman style is tempting!\nPlaying some strong opens and getting norms there is an option, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Readers, please\ntell us what you think about the college\/career\/professional chess tradeoff.\nWhat would you do if you had a chance to go either direction? Could the USCF do\nmore to support young people embarking on a chess career? Could corporate\nAmerica ever be persuaded to hire someone and support him or her as a chess\nprofessional, with the understanding that there would be a more regular job\nwaiting for him or her if it didn\u2019t pan out?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s post is about two players on the San Francisco Mechanics who are both coming to a turning point in any young chess player\u2019s career\u2014or indeed, in the life of anyone in their early twenties: graduation from college. This is the point where they have to decide, am I going to keep on pursuing chess […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,1363,14,25,3669,171],"tags":[7,4264,4265,4263,950,329,2832,618,79,4266,1140,986],"class_list":["post-5666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chess-life","category-current-news","category-literature","category-people","category-pro-chess-league","category-ruminations","tag-books","tag-careers","tag-coaching","tag-daniel-naroditcky","tag-far-west-open","tag-larry-christiansen","tag-mastering-complex-endgames","tag-michael-aigner","tag-norms","tag-predrag-trajkovic","tag-san-francisco-mechanics","tag-yian-liou"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5666"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5674,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5666\/revisions\/5674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}