> Chess is different from sports in only one way: the loss of very intelligent capable people who could be helping to create the future.
Being good at chess does not mean you're "very intelligent". Most of the top players are good at chess because they are very good at memorization & pattern recognition, those are the actual abilities of a high level chess player. Does that translate into other intellectual pursuits like theoretical physics or math? Not really.
Grandmasters aren't going to be dumb by any stretch of the imagination, but they aren't super-intelligent geniuses, either.
Being good at chess does not mean you're "very intelligent". Most of the top players are good at chess because they are very good at memorization & pattern recognition, those are the actual abilities of a high level chess player. Does that translate into other intellectual pursuits like theoretical physics or math? Not really.
Grandmasters aren't going to be dumb by any stretch of the imagination, but they aren't super-intelligent geniuses, either.