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Why do people become strong chess players?

What i mean is - why do they do it? I understand why people play chess - they enjoy it. I understand why people want to get from rating 1200 to 1700(elo) - its easy and quick to do. You probably can get this in year or two with correct training. But why someone rated 1900 spends 20 years to get to 2500? Or someone 1600 rated tryes to get 2200(which is enough for first master level - national master)?

Lets assume that this 1900 is 20 years old. That would mean that he would be grandmaster level at age of 40 and it is believed 20-40 are the golden years of a man(30 being best ones), so hes spending his best years just to learn to play a game, basically...

Or lets assume that 1900 is 30 years old(like me, but i'm rated 1750 but dont tell anyone:)). That would mean that if i wanted to get to a grandmaster level i would have to spend most of my time every day for next 20 years and i would be 50 - basically already an old man. I would like to achieve it if i can and i will try for a year at first and see how it goes, but i'm wondering - why people are doing that?

P.S. And yes i know about talent, that some people can get grandmaster in 15 years and some cannot get in 50 years, but thats not the point. Assuming that you have a talent, but not like magnus, MVL or Giri.
EDIT: Too bad there is no edit function in this forum:P I just wanted to add, that playing chess would not be only thing i do with this level of play. I also want to do other things like coaching, writing theories, books, organize tournaments, promote chess in any way possible, develop chess programs to sell and help others study, but if im 1750 nobody will take me seriously and my material would probably be not that good as well, so i kinda need it:P
Because they don't have anything better to do. If they wanted to be less selfish and contribute to society they'd do that instead.

Since nobody likes to play themselves I'd say there's a big social aspect to the behavior. If the world population was 1-5, I doubt anyone would play.
@kabacis #1
With an IM and GM title one does not have to pay entrance fee at a lot of chess tourneys, and it is probably much easier to get customers for chess coaching, and options to write chess books, chess articles, newspaper columns, and do live chess commentary in tourneys or matches.

But becoming a stronger chess player also means more chance to play against titled players in team matches and tourneys.

In general I like to play against them, because winning or drawing against a chess master usually feels better than winning against a non titled 1200 rated player :-)
@achja Have you written any chess books? I would like to read some. You are very gifted writer. That's much more important than having the GM title.
@Tangelo777 #6
Interesting idea, thanks.

So far I've only done chess blog articles. Someone suggested me to do chess videos, but I have no experience with that, and there's lots of other chess and non-chess stuff that I need to finish as well. Cheers!

They LOVE to play chess and enjoy it!

They aren't sitting thinking: If I do this and this I become that when I'm at that age.

I think that's the answer to your question.
To feed their egos? I assume majority of them play chess just because of that.

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