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Comment by sjducb | Hacker News Reader

This argument generalises to all sport.

If you want to become the best in the world at something then you have to give it 100%. It will be everything in your life.

Most people who try to be the best don’t make it. If you’re nearly the best then your life sucks. You’ve spent all of your energy trying for something that’s not going to give you any returns personally.

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I suppose it does to a certain extent but most of my experiences were with Chess, Football and Boxing. People say Chess is a sport but it's not really physically-exerting like some other sports or even healthy at all.

In terms of other sports, I think football (soccer) is a sport you don't really have to be 100% at, since that sport is somehow globally recognized and profitable so even subpar players can live well off it and it also seems much healthier than Chess and then there's the whole team aspect of it.

I think you have to be very good at football/boxing to make a living off it.

A subpar 3rd division football player is a better athlete than anyone you have ever met in your day-to-day life.

Chess supports maybe 30 full time competitors, whereas football supports a few thousand. However millions more people try to be footballers. Your odds of success are probably better with chess.

All three of those sports destroy your body. With chess it’s the hours sitting still and being stressed. With boxing and football it’s the concussions, tough training regimes and accumulated injuries that never fully heal.

Elite sport is bad for you.

Football is very different because you don't have to spend as much time. Professional players train for 1-3 hours per day and that's it. The remaining time of the day they do nothing at all because there's no point to physically exert yourself more, you'll just get injured for no benefit. Also, you have to be 100% rested when game time comes which means that 2-3 days prior to the game you take it very easy during training, or even don't train at all.

This is true. With physical sports you have a limit on the time you can spend training. That’s different to chess and other e sports.

Local football team has people who are mostly mediocre and they make decent money, since I know one of the players. I don't mean to belittle their efforts or the time invested but generally, it is a competitive sport but it's also at same time providing more opportunities overall.

I suppose it depends on where you are and how competitive it is.

You do have a point about elite sport though the argument extends to casual as well, where casual football, tennis or even basketball is just healthier than sitting over a chess board. Pardon me, I might be a bit biased here since I am maybe too conscious about sedentary chair-lifestyle since I work from an office and spend a lot of time in a chair and lately been trying to get more active.

Mediocre compared to who?

I’m pretty sure the worst professional player in your local team could beat me and my whole five aside team by himself.

The skill gap between professional and good amateur is huge.

I agree all casual sport is good, and that physical sports are better than sedentary ones.

American football is literally a chess match. It's an orchestarted sport where scheme's are major components of the game. bill belichick (coach for New England) invented a type of coverage (pattern-match) that took professional football coordinators 20 years to understand but once they did it altered how the game is played and took away sections of the field. Once you understand what they're doing Football is an incredibly complex sport compared to Basketball, Hockey and Soccer (pure sports).

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