>>His point was that, unless your goal is to become a world champion and somehow earn a living out of playing Chess the game can very easily become a huge waste of time. You don't learn anything more than playing Chess. It is false to assume that good Chess players are really smart people. Yes, they might have the ability to achieve deep concentration and focus on the game. One would be surprised to learn just how bad some really good Chess players are about other things in life.

I realized this while playing Sudoku. During my college days I had become a super expert at solving Sudoku. So much so the I would just start writing number as I saw the puzzles. All my college buddies though I was a uber genius guy with special abilities to solve Sudoku puzzles. But internally I new I was just a 'Human Database' as you would put it. Soon Sudoku go boring and I stopped playing it altogether.

I find the same with programming. I have far too many code templates and patterns in my brain. For every problem you throw I know a bunch of code patterns that can be inter played to form a solution. So much so that coding has become typing now.

Its just not fun anymore!