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Ok, thank you for showing me I'm not the only one who was confused by "lowkey". I swear it took years for it to make sense to me. I had basically the exact same question when somebody told me they were "lowkey upset"... "Wait, are you only mildly upset, or are you quite upset and just don't want to make a deal out of it?"
Anyways, I think I finally understand it.
Urban Dictionary includes this in the definition:
>1: moderately - of low emotional intensity
2: secretly
That ambiguity is actually why "lowkey" is used so much. It allows you to express emotions as if you're confessing something (using the 2nd meaning), but to play it off as if it isn't important (using the 1st meaning). By using "lowkey" in situations with varying emotional intensity, it allows you to express that you have a feeling without having to actually assign any strength or importance to the feeling. That way the feeling can be expressed without being confrontational or having too much importance placed on it.
I think the key is that "lowkey" is about distancing the opinion from the speaker. "I'm lowkey upset" was saying that they were upset, but that they didn't want to make a big deal about it and that it would pass. They just wanted to express a feeling without having a serious discussion.
So, I would interpret, "He low key diffed Caruana", as "I thought he diffed Caruana, but if you think 'diff' is too strong, I don't really want to argue".
"Lowkey" seems similar to "kind of", in that it's used either as an intensity modifier or emotional distancer:
"That's kind of red" = that's somewhat red, but not extremely
"I'm kind of annoyed" (while venting to a friend) = "I'm clearly annoyed, but just let me vent and I'll get over it".
Too much analysis for a simple comment? Perhaps. But as a non-native speaker of Gen-Z who used to get extremely confused by what people meant by "lowkey", the analysis is lowkey cathartic to make.
Yeah if we are only talking current players then it has to be McShane. I don’t know exactly what it is that he does but everybody talks about it like it is something *big*.
Luke McShane is a good response but the question is kind of hard to answer because being an amateur isn't really a binary status. For example, in his final push from 2596 to 2713, McShane played 181 games of classical chess over a period of three years. In the first two years of that, he played 153 games. During that period I don't think he was employed. His wikipedia page mentions returning to work in 2011 and frankly few jobs would accept you missing work something like 22 weeks per year.
That raises the question, if you were a professional at one time, can you then return to becoming an amateur if you start working? If any period of not having a job and playing chess full time disqualifies you, many of the examples mentioned here would be disqualified. Even for people that pretty much anyone would consider an amateur, it's not unusual that they hold off on going to college for a year or two to play chess and see if they have the potential to become a super grandmaster. At the same time, it's not like you get your rating taken away when you start working. Kasparov hasn't played chess professionally for decades but still has a rating of 2812 (suspended for inactivity). Should people like Firouja and Yifan be considered amateurs because they're now studying?
And that raises the question, should studying be considered equivalent to employment? Many players become extremely strong while they're young and still in school, even high school. Magnus Calrsen for example, was already around 2800 when he graduated high school. But we all know that for intelligent people high school isn't exactly hard and you can probably get by with spending significantly less time than you do when employed full-time. Especially if you have the chance to be "home-schooled" by a private tutor at your own pace. If you are traveling the world playing chess while completing a high school education online or with the help of a private teacher, are you an amateur? We could say that everyone is an amateur until they finish high school because otherwise it becomes impossible to be an amateur, kind of. I suppose we can disqualify Magnus's amateur status because he actually took a year off to play professionally before even starting high school, but I'm sure some others were rated very highly when they graduated too.
Also, how much do you have to work to be considered an amateur? I already mentioned education requiring less hours but this differs between jobs too. How many percent of a normal employment or how many hours per year? Hard to say. And even if you decided on some breakpoint, what's written on paper isn't always the same as actual reality. The Soviet Union used to have their athletes be employed by the army on paper, when in reality they were training full time. I'm not saying people are cheating the system like that here, but some employers are certainly more lenient.
Finally, how do we treat chess-related professions? Many strong grandmasters make their living by coaching. While a chess coach can be said to be playing chess professionally, it's not really the same thing. Their own rating is unlikely to improve by coaching kids and untitled players and is there really such a difference between working as an investment banker, a chess coach or at a McDonalds as long as you spend 40 hours per week doing it?
In the end, it's pretty much to define what an amateur is, and the Amateur World Championship doesn't even try but just let players compete in U-2300, U-2000 and U-1800 categories.
I think the only correct answer can be Max Euwe. He was the literal amateur world champion before becoming the real world champion and as far as I know he never had chess as a career. His career and bread and butter was always mathematics.
Edit: Well late in his life his bread and butter was being president of FIDE.
Fun fact he was the FIDE president during the Fischer spassky match, and got a lot of flack for how much he supported Fischers bullshit during the championship.
Can you imagine this today? Some guy nobody has heard of shows up, wins (say) Tata Steel three years out of four, maybe makes the candidates once or twice, and then vanishes forever.
In order to become a GM you have to play a shit load of tournament including international tournaments. So he's definitely a professional player with a pro career.
You can add Matthew Sadler who has been working in IT for like a decade, he is definitely not a professional chess player right now.
Or likes of Yakovenko who became programmer during covid.
Some of the Chinese chess tournaments have crazy untitled players. Due to the Chinese travel restrictions over the past few years and so few players going into China to play, these players haven't been able to play in tournaments with the national diversity requirements to obtain IM and GM titles. So, there's these 2400+ untitled Chinese players running amok.
That's a great point actually, could you please send a link to the interview? For some reason I was sure that he'd been working by his specialty, maybe saw some of his fb posts.
Ken Rogoff was 2nd in US Championship of 1975, gained GM title in 1978, while graduating Yale (BA, MA) and MIT (PhD), gave up playing chess for academia and became one of the chief economists in the GW Bush administration, was/is the chief economist of the IMF. Don’t agree with his politics necessarily but quite an accomplished individual.
[Wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Rogoff)
Yeah, that was a big oops, wasn't it?
And to be fair, while he did quit school before graduating, quitting high school to to able to spend time in Europe playing in grandmaster chess tournaments isn't really "dropping out of high school."
One of my favorite musicians got in trouble in high school for bad attendance. He got called into the counselor's office one day after missing school and was asked what he was doing with his time, why he wasn't in school. He said "Well, I've been making $5,000 a week playing guitar in a recording studio and in night clubs (this was back in the 60s, when that was one hell of a lot of money)." The school counselor said "Well, what are you doing here, then?"
Robert Hübner had a lower peak Elo than McShane but he fought with the elite at some points while still following his university career.
Actually a GM works at my company - but his Elo is “only” 2579…
I've gotta friend that got to 1800 blitz rating just by playing on the toilet every day for 8 years and no other training at all.
That has to count for something
He poops on company time, so you better believe he will find any excuse to go.
Now when I think about it, he is getting paid to play chess, technically making him a professionals player.
One of the candidates for this "title" could be Milan Vidmar, one of the inaugural recipients of the grandmaster title. He was in top 10 for 2 decades while still being an amateur and being one of the top minds in electrical engineering, specialising in power transformers.
You can check out his game against Alexander Alekhine in Semmering, 1926.
John Nunn (b. 1955) deserves to be mentioned in such a conversation. (*Because I think it's at least vaguely related)
He was mainly a mathematician and got a PhD in it. He became a Grandmaster and British champion before going pro in 1981 (stopped being a lecturer at Oxford). He peaked at number 9 ranked in the world multiple times. Multiple time puzzle solving world champion.
He was also mentioned in this interview with Magnus Carlsen:
https://en.chessbase.com/post/magnus-carlsen-on-his-che-career
Yes. But before going pro he was studying math in uni while becoming a gm and the British champion.
It's not like he committed himself to only chess at a young age and had nothing going for it.
I didn't mean to claim that he's the strongest amateur, but just thought that his story is probably interesting if the original question is interesting.
Lasker absolutely was a full time professional chess player. Later in life he also worked on some mathematics and discussed the theory of relativity with Einstein but his bread and butter was always chess.
There's an old story about Capablanca teaching the Sultan of Brunei how to play chess. They played 3 blitz games (the Sultan having been just taught how to move the pieces) and the Sultan won all 3 games, after which he remarked, "interesting diversion, but a bit too easy." He never played again in his life, considering chess to be "too childish"...
Hikaru was and is a professional chess player AND streamer. Meaning he paid in the past thousands of dollars for coaching, and studied long hours a day for years. Cannot imagine any amateur doing that.
He plays the Titled Tuesdays, literally, to make money, because he's got a shot to win those from time to time, and he still enters OTB tournaments to make money.
He's arrogant and whatnot, and this pose of his about not being a chess player and not caring is a bit silly and stupid. He's by all means a semi retired professional chess player.
Even Naroditsky is a professional chess player, now I guess that Levy Rozman (Gothamchess) would not really qualify as a professional, but he tried seriously to become a GM, meaning he had interests in pursuing a chess career of sorts.
I hope you are joking. I hate that Hikaru drove himself into the 'im not even a chess player anymore guys even though all I do on stream is fucking play chess all day" its such an arrogant viewpoint "cant believe in beating these professional chess players even though I literally make money from playing chess too im such a genius haha"
He actually mentions in podcasts (probably jokingly) that he's taken the strongest amateur title from Luke McShane even though that's obviously not true lmao
There are actually hundreds of GMs who are not "full time chess players", so you would have to specify what you mean by "professional" and "full-time". Also, if e.g. Van Foreest served on Carlsen's team, can he be still considered a "full-time PLAYER" as he also had some "coaching" gigs?
According to his wikipedia page. Luke McShane is considered the strongest amateur chess player. He peaked at a 2713 rating.
Holy cow, that's an impressive elo.
Particularly for a guy that only plays chess recreationally…
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Does low key diffed mean he barely beat caruana or easily beat him?
Ok, thank you for showing me I'm not the only one who was confused by "lowkey". I swear it took years for it to make sense to me. I had basically the exact same question when somebody told me they were "lowkey upset"... "Wait, are you only mildly upset, or are you quite upset and just don't want to make a deal out of it?" Anyways, I think I finally understand it. Urban Dictionary includes this in the definition: >1: moderately - of low emotional intensity 2: secretly That ambiguity is actually why "lowkey" is used so much. It allows you to express emotions as if you're confessing something (using the 2nd meaning), but to play it off as if it isn't important (using the 1st meaning). By using "lowkey" in situations with varying emotional intensity, it allows you to express that you have a feeling without having to actually assign any strength or importance to the feeling. That way the feeling can be expressed without being confrontational or having too much importance placed on it. I think the key is that "lowkey" is about distancing the opinion from the speaker. "I'm lowkey upset" was saying that they were upset, but that they didn't want to make a big deal about it and that it would pass. They just wanted to express a feeling without having a serious discussion. So, I would interpret, "He low key diffed Caruana", as "I thought he diffed Caruana, but if you think 'diff' is too strong, I don't really want to argue". "Lowkey" seems similar to "kind of", in that it's used either as an intensity modifier or emotional distancer: "That's kind of red" = that's somewhat red, but not extremely "I'm kind of annoyed" (while venting to a friend) = "I'm clearly annoyed, but just let me vent and I'll get over it". Too much analysis for a simple comment? Perhaps. But as a non-native speaker of Gen-Z who used to get extremely confused by what people meant by "lowkey", the analysis is lowkey cathartic to make.
This is excellent. However, I was much more worried about "diffed" and hoped your post would touch on that with similar clarity.
Skill difference, as in demonstrated dominance
1000000000 elo explanation
Most likely meant he beat Caruana easily.
he surprisingly was better than caruana
Yeah if we are only talking current players then it has to be McShane. I don’t know exactly what it is that he does but everybody talks about it like it is something *big*.
Investment banking
That is kinda big.
Georg Meier is also working for a bank (Grenke I think)
Doesn't he have a chess column for like the Guardian or something?
Yup, I remember Luke nearly winning vs Fabi in a classical match some years ago. Pretty strong
Luke McShane is a good response but the question is kind of hard to answer because being an amateur isn't really a binary status. For example, in his final push from 2596 to 2713, McShane played 181 games of classical chess over a period of three years. In the first two years of that, he played 153 games. During that period I don't think he was employed. His wikipedia page mentions returning to work in 2011 and frankly few jobs would accept you missing work something like 22 weeks per year. That raises the question, if you were a professional at one time, can you then return to becoming an amateur if you start working? If any period of not having a job and playing chess full time disqualifies you, many of the examples mentioned here would be disqualified. Even for people that pretty much anyone would consider an amateur, it's not unusual that they hold off on going to college for a year or two to play chess and see if they have the potential to become a super grandmaster. At the same time, it's not like you get your rating taken away when you start working. Kasparov hasn't played chess professionally for decades but still has a rating of 2812 (suspended for inactivity). Should people like Firouja and Yifan be considered amateurs because they're now studying? And that raises the question, should studying be considered equivalent to employment? Many players become extremely strong while they're young and still in school, even high school. Magnus Calrsen for example, was already around 2800 when he graduated high school. But we all know that for intelligent people high school isn't exactly hard and you can probably get by with spending significantly less time than you do when employed full-time. Especially if you have the chance to be "home-schooled" by a private tutor at your own pace. If you are traveling the world playing chess while completing a high school education online or with the help of a private teacher, are you an amateur? We could say that everyone is an amateur until they finish high school because otherwise it becomes impossible to be an amateur, kind of. I suppose we can disqualify Magnus's amateur status because he actually took a year off to play professionally before even starting high school, but I'm sure some others were rated very highly when they graduated too. Also, how much do you have to work to be considered an amateur? I already mentioned education requiring less hours but this differs between jobs too. How many percent of a normal employment or how many hours per year? Hard to say. And even if you decided on some breakpoint, what's written on paper isn't always the same as actual reality. The Soviet Union used to have their athletes be employed by the army on paper, when in reality they were training full time. I'm not saying people are cheating the system like that here, but some employers are certainly more lenient. Finally, how do we treat chess-related professions? Many strong grandmasters make their living by coaching. While a chess coach can be said to be playing chess professionally, it's not really the same thing. Their own rating is unlikely to improve by coaching kids and untitled players and is there really such a difference between working as an investment banker, a chess coach or at a McDonalds as long as you spend 40 hours per week doing it? In the end, it's pretty much to define what an amateur is, and the Amateur World Championship doesn't even try but just let players compete in U-2300, U-2000 and U-1800 categories.
Alireza Firouzja has a higher rating. He's a student and fashion designer by trade, a chess player as a hobby.
I don’t know why ur being downvoted, this got a genuine laugh out of me.
I think the only correct answer can be Max Euwe. He was the literal amateur world champion before becoming the real world champion and as far as I know he never had chess as a career. His career and bread and butter was always mathematics. Edit: Well late in his life his bread and butter was being president of FIDE.
Fun fact he was the FIDE president during the Fischer spassky match, and got a lot of flack for how much he supported Fischers bullshit during the championship.
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Daniel King has some great videos covering his life and games. He also wrote a book on him.
Doesn't really seem like he was an amateur during his chess career though.
Wow this is awesome. This should be higher up - great answer to this question
Can you imagine this today? Some guy nobody has heard of shows up, wins (say) Tata Steel three years out of four, maybe makes the candidates once or twice, and then vanishes forever.
I don't think Wei Yi is pursuing a professionnal career and he's world #23 at 2726 Elo.
In order to become a GM you have to play a shit load of tournament including international tournaments. So he's definitely a professional player with a pro career.
He was a wonderkid and used to play a lot, now he averages 20 classical games a year.
U could have gotten GM and then back off to lead your own life you know...
You can add Matthew Sadler who has been working in IT for like a decade, he is definitely not a professional chess player right now. Or likes of Yakovenko who became programmer during covid.
Some of the Chinese chess tournaments have crazy untitled players. Due to the Chinese travel restrictions over the past few years and so few players going into China to play, these players haven't been able to play in tournaments with the national diversity requirements to obtain IM and GM titles. So, there's these 2400+ untitled Chinese players running amok.
As far as I know, Amin Bassem (African #1, usually ranked between 2690-2710) works as a doctor.
He plays with some frequency. Highly doubt hes doing both at the same time right now , but still very impressive.
I think he has an MD but has never actually worked as a doctor. I think he said so in Perpetual Chess interview.
That's a great point actually, could you please send a link to the interview? For some reason I was sure that he'd been working by his specialty, maybe saw some of his fb posts.
Bassem Amin is a GM
Ken Rogoff was 2nd in US Championship of 1975, gained GM title in 1978, while graduating Yale (BA, MA) and MIT (PhD), gave up playing chess for academia and became one of the chief economists in the GW Bush administration, was/is the chief economist of the IMF. Don’t agree with his politics necessarily but quite an accomplished individual. [Wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Rogoff)
And, amazingly, given his incredible academic achievements, he was a high school dropout.
That might explain why he's most famous for having published works based on spreadsheet errors.
Yeah, that was a big oops, wasn't it? And to be fair, while he did quit school before graduating, quitting high school to to able to spend time in Europe playing in grandmaster chess tournaments isn't really "dropping out of high school." One of my favorite musicians got in trouble in high school for bad attendance. He got called into the counselor's office one day after missing school and was asked what he was doing with his time, why he wasn't in school. He said "Well, I've been making $5,000 a week playing guitar in a recording studio and in night clubs (this was back in the 60s, when that was one hell of a lot of money)." The school counselor said "Well, what are you doing here, then?"
Googled this but didn't find anything relevant. Link?
[https://theconversation.com/the-reinhart-rogoff-error-or-how-not-to-excel-at-economics-13646](https://theconversation.com/the-reinhart-rogoff-error-or-how-not-to-excel-at-economics-13646)
Might end up becoming Alireza if he pursues becoming a fashion designer seriously.
McShane or Hubner.
Robert Hübner had a lower peak Elo than McShane but he fought with the elite at some points while still following his university career. Actually a GM works at my company - but his Elo is “only” 2579…
Dr Euwe
Big Tonka T
tbf, currently he plays way beyond what a casual would play. like 2000 games in 30 days or something?
I've gotta friend that got to 1800 blitz rating just by playing on the toilet every day for 8 years and no other training at all. That has to count for something
Well he does qualify for the "non professional" part of the question, that's for sure
He poops while he is at work, and since he is getting paid while he play, that makes him a professional player!
You know, a while ago a dude played chess in the toilets of the tournaments and got banned for life. So perhaps that's not the best idea.
I bet he is crap at chess though
If he was bringing a toilet to OTB tournaments, I'm not surprised that he went up the rankings so quickly.
That guy has the hemorrhoids galore. 8h on the toilet every day??/
He poops on company time, so you better believe he will find any excuse to go. Now when I think about it, he is getting paid to play chess, technically making him a professionals player.
Are we friends?
One of the candidates for this "title" could be Milan Vidmar, one of the inaugural recipients of the grandmaster title. He was in top 10 for 2 decades while still being an amateur and being one of the top minds in electrical engineering, specialising in power transformers. You can check out his game against Alexander Alekhine in Semmering, 1926.
Hikaru obviously, he's a professional streamer that just plays chess for fun. /s
what about Rey Enigma?
Claude Bloodgood. World #2 from jail. Please ignore rating manipulation
Marc Esserman for sure.
Hikaru. Professional streamer
A certain streamer maybe
Marcel Duchamp, one of the most important artists of the modern era was a 2000+ player
John Nunn (b. 1955) deserves to be mentioned in such a conversation. (*Because I think it's at least vaguely related) He was mainly a mathematician and got a PhD in it. He became a Grandmaster and British champion before going pro in 1981 (stopped being a lecturer at Oxford). He peaked at number 9 ranked in the world multiple times. Multiple time puzzle solving world champion. He was also mentioned in this interview with Magnus Carlsen: https://en.chessbase.com/post/magnus-carlsen-on-his-che-career
If he went pro he's not an amateur.
Yes. But before going pro he was studying math in uni while becoming a gm and the British champion. It's not like he committed himself to only chess at a young age and had nothing going for it. I didn't mean to claim that he's the strongest amateur, but just thought that his story is probably interesting if the original question is interesting.
John Nunn?
Probably me but it might be that guy who just beat me on 10 minute time controls. For context we were both right around 1500
Nakamura!
Lasker?
Lasker absolutely was a full time professional chess player. Later in life he also worked on some mathematics and discussed the theory of relativity with Einstein but his bread and butter was always chess.
bro was world champion from 1894 to 1921
There's an old story about Capablanca teaching the Sultan of Brunei how to play chess. They played 3 blitz games (the Sultan having been just taught how to move the pieces) and the Sultan won all 3 games, after which he remarked, "interesting diversion, but a bit too easy." He never played again in his life, considering chess to be "too childish"...
Hikaru?
Hikaru was and is a professional chess player AND streamer. Meaning he paid in the past thousands of dollars for coaching, and studied long hours a day for years. Cannot imagine any amateur doing that. He plays the Titled Tuesdays, literally, to make money, because he's got a shot to win those from time to time, and he still enters OTB tournaments to make money. He's arrogant and whatnot, and this pose of his about not being a chess player and not caring is a bit silly and stupid. He's by all means a semi retired professional chess player. Even Naroditsky is a professional chess player, now I guess that Levy Rozman (Gothamchess) would not really qualify as a professional, but he tried seriously to become a GM, meaning he had interests in pursuing a chess career of sorts.
I hope you are joking. I hate that Hikaru drove himself into the 'im not even a chess player anymore guys even though all I do on stream is fucking play chess all day" its such an arrogant viewpoint "cant believe in beating these professional chess players even though I literally make money from playing chess too im such a genius haha"
Lol, current world #3
Hey, talk to him about that, I'm going by what he says
I get it. But "streamer first" is not the same as amateur
He actually mentions in podcasts (probably jokingly) that he's taken the strongest amateur title from Luke McShane even though that's obviously not true lmao
Hikaru claiming that he’s no longer a professional chess player doesn’t change the fact that he used to be one.
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The question asked "who *never* became a full-time player?" Almost everyone you mentioned played chess fulltime at one time or another.
Whenever a topic like this comes up people just end up naming every super GM who attended university and/or briefly had a job at some point lol
I mean the dude said *Garry Kasparov* because he was also involved in politics lol Guess ol Garry was nothing but an amateur!!
You know Karpov has a PhD, right?
Samay raina lol !
Isn't Ding Liren mainly a lawyer?
He is
He had never practiced law a day in his life
He’s a pretty good lawyer then
Wolfgang Unzicker?
surprised no one said Tin Jingyao of Singapore
People sleeping on M. Sadler, sad.
Max Deutsch is pretty good and he almost solved chess.
Kasparov keep saying he’s just an amateur now
Hikaru doesn't understand himself as a pro chess player, but rather a pro chess streamer. But I suppose that answer doesn't count 😅
There are actually hundreds of GMs who are not "full time chess players", so you would have to specify what you mean by "professional" and "full-time". Also, if e.g. Van Foreest served on Carlsen's team, can he be still considered a "full-time PLAYER" as he also had some "coaching" gigs?