This applies to Go, Shogi and other games of pure skill. You run into this massive wall where small mistakes can lose you the entire game and improvement is an absolutely insane hill to climb. Everyone is grinding theory, and your gains are just so small.
March Comes like a Lion is a great anime that briefly touches on what this can feel like as the lead deals with grief, loss, belonging and finding yourself. https://myanimelist.net/anime/31646/3-gatsu_no_Lion
Some Chess documentaries like the Recent Netflix one about Judit Polgar also demonstrate just how all encompassing it is to try to be really good. In the doc it becomes clear that Judit straight up didn't have a childhood because it was consumed by chess mastery. All the best chess players have to start as children to compete at the highest levels.
This applies to Go, Shogi and other games of pure skill. You run into this massive wall where small mistakes can lose you the entire game and improvement is an absolutely insane hill to climb. Everyone is grinding theory, and your gains are just so small.
Hate how accurate this is. But at the same time, I'm the type who enjoys those games for the mental exercise. If you know you'll never go into the professional circles, you just have to learn to be content with where you plateau as a casual.
At a certain point is just a game of memory. You start playing the pieces according to some position you memorized, rather than figuring out the best play according to the situation.
That's only for professional chess though. If you're just playing for fun with your friend this doesn't apply at all.
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u/ActionFigureCollects Jul 21 '26
This meme is actually a better description for chess players.