Chess can be a tough game, and we got some more examples recently. Levy Rozman, better known as the star streamer GothamChess, announced he was quitting competitive chess. Hans Niemann, one of the world’s very best juniors, said chess “just sucks the life out of you” and wondered out loud how long he would last in chess.

Chess is a game that’s fascinated people for 1500 years, but though on the surface it looks as gentlemanly a pursuit as you could imagine, any regular player knows it can be brutal. Bobby Fischer was asked what’s the greatest pleasure in chess and replied, “when you break his ego!”

There’s very little luck in chess and it’s an individual sport, so that successes — and failures — are almost entirely on you. That can be tough to take, and we got some more examples recently.

26-year-old Levy Rozman, whose GothamChess YouTube channel has 1.55 million subscribers, is an international master and plays at a level most of the world’s chess players could only dream of. But that doesn’t make things any easier. He recently played in the New York Summer Invitation IM tournament, where he scored 50% after starting as the 2nd seed.

It was the kind of result that can happen in tournaments where you’re playing rising stars such as the winner, 11-year-old sensation Tani Adewumi. Tani scored his 2nd IM norm, of 3 required for the title, and in fact played a beautiful game against Levy.

White would be doing well here if not for a move Tani had to have seen far in advance, 33…d3!, opening a path for the black queen, so that after 34.Bxd3 Bxd3 Levy couldn’t capture the bishop or it would be checkmate on b2. After 35.Qc3 Qxc3+ 36.Bxc3 Bxc4 Levy was just a piece down and resigned.

Blows like that are tough for anyone to take, though in this case you might look back on it as you would losing to a very young Magnus Carlsen! For Levy, however, the tournament was the last straw.

Of course we hope the retirement isn’t permanent!

Then in the last couple of days we’ve seen similar thoughts expressed by one of the rising stars of the game, US Grandmaster Hans Niemann. The 19-year-old has had a stunning rise since the pandemic hit to reach within 13 points of 2700, the marker for where the chess elite begins.

Hans had a tough schedule, including playing all five games in the Chess Bundesliga, where his only loss was a long game against world no. 4 Fabiano Caruana. Then the start of the FTX Road to Miami, on the evening of the last Bundesliga game, went well, before the wheels began to come off.

It was after that loss to Richard Rapport that Hans was interviewed by Kaja Snare. In hindsight perhaps it wasn’t the time for an interview, but we got to see the raw emotions even the best players can feel on such occasions.

There were some extraordinary quotes, with Hans summing up:

"It feels like everything that could go wrong has been going wrong. Perhaps it’s a bit of fatigue but I had a great start, as I always have in these tournaments, and then I just got a bit tilted and obviously it’s very strong opponents, but I cannot explain the way that I’m playing. I don’t even know why you asked me for an interview, I’m very embarrassed myself and there’s no words to explain how ridiculously bad at chess I am."

Would it be a good idea for him to switch off from chess for a while?

"When I have such bad results it sort of consumes my entire day, my brain, every single waking thought, until I recover. It’s all just misery and pain, disappointment and just disgust with myself, so I think it’s impossible for me to not think about chess when my display is just not my best chess, not even close to it, so I don’t think that I can not think about chess."

His comments escalated, as he generalised to chess as a whole.

"Chess is just a game that sucks all the life out of you! Just look what happened to Fischer. Chess is a very bad game and it is just terrible, and it just sucks the life out of you. So we’ll see how long I last in the chess world."

Kaja referred to Hans’ fans and how much they were supporting him, but Hans saw little comfort there.

"All my fans, please find someone else to follow who’s better at chess! I recommend this Magnus guy, he’s pretty good. If you’re a fan of chess you should follow a winner. I’ll try to get there, but I don’t think I deserve any fans as of now."

Hans will certainly be back, but at least for anyone out there suffering from a bad day at the chessboard there’s evidence that the world’s most talented players also have moments of self-doubt and despair.

Have you suffered anything similar at the chessboard? How did you get back into the game?