Pursuing a university degree vs playing games/boardgames professionally

[Kyriakos]

Games are supposed to be fun, so there's that too They simply can't be fun for pros, even if it starts that way. Like @EvaDK said, anyone would come to hate a game they have to play for hours each day to make a living.
And it also ties to the university learning angle, because there you can at least expand what you are doing and learn more. With games the scope is limited to begin with, and there's no world outside the immediate game for progress to flow into.

 

[Moriarte]

A few exceptional people did manage both chess and academia, for them it didn't have to be one or the other. Hou Yifan is the recent example. She won the women's world chess championship 4 times before joining Shenzhen university as a professor. There have been others, managing the same - Paul Morphy achieved a law degree after beating everyone in chess. Spending youth in games, while the adult life is spent in pursuit of more societally useful work - what's not to like?

While chess requires dedication, you aren't discovering anything outside the very limited world of chess itself

Ah, but chess is not completely useless. Combinatorial thinking, one of the skills trained in the game of chess, is useful in life. Also, you are training memory. Good memory, being a perishable skill, is the thing that requires constant exercise. Recognising patterns is another. I'd say a good chess player is suitable for academic life, which supposes critical thinking & absorption of large volumes of information. Rarely chess players of notable level break away from chess, but I think when they do, they are decently prepared for many things.

 

[Kyriakos]

Afaik, computational and memory skills acquired by playing chess are pretty standard and not uniquely - or even optimally - gained or sustained by playing chess.
I doubt anyone would argue that (say) a famous game (chess or not) champion is comparable to a great mathematician in mental accomplishment or mental ability.

 

[dusters]

Here in Latvia in Academia you are paid less than average wage in country unless you are a leader of department or Uni rector.
In chess there is almost no money at all. Unless you count chess coaches at chess schools who are paid like 75% of average wage in country.

So both ways mean poverty.

There is one GM called Alexei Shirov who switched to Spain and plays chess professionally. And then there is GM Neiksans who has many contacts
in chess world and coaches Americans for fees according to American wages, like 120 usd/hour. He also coaches Levy Rozman who has millions of followers.

All other GMs from Latvia AFAIK has other jobs. GM Neiksans worked in finance for several years before returning to chess at age of 27.

 

[Moriarte]

I doubt anyone would argue that (say) a famous game (chess or not) champion is comparable to a great mathematician in mental accomplishment or mental ability.

That’s where we differ: there is no doubt in my mind that mental ability of chess genius and mathematical genius correlate. Playing chess at higher levels requires the same set of abilities required to be able to learn and exercise mathematics. Deep memory, flawless knowledge and application of formal logic, ability to critically examine ‘a problem’, or, for chess, ‘a position’.

As for “comparable” - lets see if any chess players proved, over centuries, that their genius is in fact comparable to genius level intellect required by mathematics:

Mikhail Botvinnik - The father of Soviet chess, 3 times world champion, PhD in electrical engineering, developed first Russian chess computer, AI researcher.

Max Euewe - 1935 world chess champion, PhD in Mathematics, wrote several books on chess and math.

Kenneth Rogoff - chess GM, awarded in 1970’s. Also served as chief economist at IMF through 2001-03.

Jonathan Mestel - GM, 3 times British chess champion, professor of applied maths, Imperial College London.

Emmanuel Lasker - held the title of world chess champion for 27 years, PhD in mathematics, algebraic geometry researcher, Lasker-Noether theorem named, partly, after him.

There are many more.

It’s fairly obvious to me that chess champions and aristocracy, if I may call them that, are the people suitable for the highest posts in academia, science, engineering and many other fields. Equally, many great scientists have the mental ability and depth to train themselves to perform at the highest levels of chess. That is because chess ability and science prowess are both abstractions that stem from superior intellect. There is no such thing as chess intellect, which applies only to chess and nothing else. There’s just Intellect, which can be applied to and learn from many fields, including chess and mathematics.

 

[aelf]

I think it's a nice topic for discussion: would you rather pursue academic learning or strive to be a top player of a game?

In recent times, the most lucrative (non-sport) games to be a pro in are arguably some e-games with global leagues. The best players (a tiny percentage) make considerable money out of it. Such games include rts like Starcraft and AOEIIDE.

Nah, even top players of most competitive games don't make all that much money. Likely not more than someone with a halfway-decent job. They'd probably have to supplement it with other income, like from streaming.

Recently, a top SC2 player won a world championship that netted him more money than he'd won in his entire career, and that was because the prize pool was unprecedented.

I agree with his sentiment. While chess requires dedication, you aren't discovering anything outside the very limited world of chess itself - assuming you will even get to discover something new and then add to chess theory. It is a very self-contained endeavor, similar to being a pro-player in sports, just a bit more prestigious (for better or worse). It's not something where your knowledge can translate to fields outside of it, nor a field where your growth is exponential. Last but not least, for decades now the best players are computer engines, and humans merely compete for ceremony.
This is in contrast to fields like math or science, where the room for expansion is vast and (imo equally importantly) so is the room for interconnecting knowledge. So in that respect, assuming we avoid a nihilistic view where nothing matters and all is equally unimportant, it can be said to be more meaningful to pursue.

Hate to break it to you, but most people who went through higher education make little to no contribution to the advancement of humanity. Most end up working pointless jobs for a living, and the best they can do is not to create harm - which many can't even manage.

Pursue what makes you happy. Chances are, that's all you can hope for.

 

[Kyriakos]

You differ on that point also with Kasparov (and the OP video's personality), who explicitly has stated that chess is not comparable to math/science intellectually (Magnus can be mentioned too, he has discussed how people tend to think he is genius-level intelligent, while he is only good at chess). I think you are viewing it in a very romantic way; perhaps you only meant that a chess champion also requires a high IQ (I won't argue with that), but imagine (to refer to impact) if Einstein played online games for a living; the name wouldn't mean as much now. Besides, you tried to correlate it by mentioning a few names (who are not world-renown mathematicians; Lasker was a world-renown chess player); there is a sea of players of the game and most talented enthusiasts do abandon it for university, the arguments against lamenting which are what prompted the OP.

 

[Angst]

all i'm gonna say for this discussion is that as hard as it is landing a job dealing with researching something (in or out of universities), esports and/or boardgames is even harder to live on. i'm both acquainted with competetive aoe (go lyx!) and chess here, and both are huge bottlenecks. chess infact is infamously hard to survive just playing, unless you're the top ten players or whatever, and it's chess, it's like the game. it's not like the (kind of strange) us football scholarship system in the current environment, even if it's an industry on its way forward. professional gamers usually try and get around this issue by doing streaming and being community entertainers, which then adds the competetiveness of streaming into the mix, which we all know is similarly cutthroat. i play with a guy who averages like 20 viewers, and he's made it clear once that with that viewership, he barely made it into the top 1% of streamers at some point. this is how schewed it is, even if we all know of the success stories.

chasing academia is a niche bottlenecked field, but it's still much easier to get going than doing professional gaming at this point. it may change.

as to value of purpose independent of an economic situation, i pretty much find them all equally weighed. all are good parts of life in different ways.

i'm never going to yell at kids for pursuing their dreams, like, i'm a goddamn poet, i weighed what i wanted and am happy with my choice, even with the economic situation. i will support it all the same. but i want people to be aware of what they can realistically expect from going into a profession, and if you don't want my income level, don't be a gamer or a poet... aim for academia then.

 

[Kyriakos]

@Angst 20 viewers? I suppose it's a typo? ^^

 

[Angst]

@Angst 20 viewers? I suppose it's a typo? ^^

nop.

viewer distribution on twitch is insanely schewed. and there's a lot of streamers.

mind you. maybe he was top 1% in revenue and not views. but he wasn't bringing up the number to brag. he brought it up to clarify the economic reality of trying to make it on twitch.

 

[Kyriakos]

nop.

viewer distribution on twitch is insanely schewed. and there's a lot of streamers.

mind you. maybe he was top 1% in revenue and not views. but he wasn't bringing up the number to brag. he brought it up to clarify the economic reality of trying to make it on twitch.

20 viewers on Twitch landing you in the top 1% even for a second would seem rather unlikely, no? (then again, see below )

Though at least this (2-year-old) Reddit thread claims otherwise:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Twitch/comments/w0a6aw/how_is_everyone_apparently_in_the_top_1_of

Which only alludes, however, to being in the top 1% (with 20 viewers) having no meaning.
Only Asmongold matters

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

Anyone who can beat 99.9 percent of other people at something is going to have an audience of some sort, an audience which pays to see them. I'm sure that even includes cup-stacking.

The trick is, it mostly takes A LOT of luck to both a) be very good and b) to get noticed. You become something rarer than hen's teeth. Something I'm sure almost every single participant in an spectator event has ultimately failed at...
Hardly anyone will ever make it. Good luck.

tl;dr to quote Maximus

(warning: blood)

 

[Quintillus]

Easy choice, university degree. The job possibilities it opens up vary by major, but the chance of getting a sustainable long-term career by getting a university degree is hugely higher than by trying to do so via games/boardgames. It broadens one's horizons, too, and provides a social foundation - lots of benefits, but purely from an economic standpoint, it's a far better option. I also agree with those who say that it may be fun to play games, but trying to make a career out of a hobby can drain the fun out of it pretty quickly.

Exceptions exist. If you were Judit Polgar, youngest chess grandmaster in history before reaching university age, of course it makes sense to pursue chess as a career. But most of us are not in that position. I'm assuming the question means for an average-to-good person at a game field, not the eqivalent of LeBron James as a high school basketball player whose career trajectory was obvious even then.

As for the Erie Canal? I saw it a couple years ago, and it's quite impressive, especially when they are letting boats through the docks. Highly worth visiting. It doesn't employ as many people, or mules, as it used to, however. Probably better to seek a university degree than to plan to make a career out of the canal, unless you have a connection locally.

 

[Angst]

20 viewers on Twitch landing you in the top 1% even for a second would seem rather unlikely, no? (then again, see below )

Though at least this (2-year-old) Reddit thread claims otherwise:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Twitch/comments/w0a6aw/how_is_everyone_apparently_in_the_top_1_of

Which only alludes, however, to being in the top 1% (with 20 viewers) having no meaning.
Only Asmongold matters

so as you noticed from the thread, the point is that i don't think people really comprehend how much "dark material" is out there, it's simply not available to our natural experience because we, well, don't watch it. for every guy that has 20 viewers, there are indeed a huge weight of people in the bowels with 5-6 viewers, and even more streaming alone. it's one of those cases where exposure overwhelms reality.

literally first comment on the thread (with 0 upvotes)

 

[amadeus]

How many of those people are even remotely entertaining? It’s more like sports broadcasting: who cares if you know every player’s stats if you’re a bore?

 

[Kyriakos]

How many of those people are even remotely entertaining? It’s more like sports broadcasting: who cares if you know every player’s stats if you’re a bore?

I am not familiar with Twitch, beyond the very basic (having heard through youtube of the major names). It would be a safe bet that those making it as high-earning streamers have a combination of good looks/sufficiently popular niche/coming across as friendly. That said, high (as in notably above average) intelligence doesn't appear to be as needed - but that isn't surprising, you are streaming to vast numbers of people so the critical mass of your viewers will inevitably be at average.

 

[Narz]

How many of those people are even remotely entertaining? It’s more like sports broadcasting: who cares if you know every player’s stats if you’re a bore?

Entertainment is key. On twitch a boring chess player in the top .1% of skill will lose out to a cute bubbly girl who's a strong beginner but highly engaging.

I wouldn't want to do it whatever the pay, pretending to be everyone's friend, trying to do something requiring concentration while bsing w all the lonleys in the chatroom 10 hours a day. Sad existence.

 

[Kyriakos]

To bring it back to university, on the other end of the spectrum you have (very very rarely) people like Sidis, who while being massively more intelligent than his peers, in the end accomplished (comparatively) very little.
Still, he would never be content with playing some game. He ventured into many different fields, although the end result was (again, comparatively) underwhelming - and then he died, quite young (at 46).

 

[Narz]

Social skills and ability to appeal what you know trumps raw intelligence

In the future even more so

Intelligence is to be leveraged, if you don't have it use the intelligence of others

 

[amadeus]

I think it takes a kind of intelligence to know how to appeal to people, certainly in a crowded space like video entertainment.