At a surface level, this may seem like a counter-example. However you are making a very strong statement about the particular quality you've identified as bein

At a surface level, this may seem like a counter-example. However you are making a very strong statement about the particular quality you've identified as being critical to your success. You're also discounting the possibility that there is some other quality "B", which you may not possess, that would allow another player who lacks your chess memory to be competitive with you. You may be right, but your hypothesis is both clear and testable. The best models I've seen proposed to explain the correlation of chess memory and chess knowledge/performance attribute the memory strength to the results of experience, rather than the other way around. The aspect of your abilities that led to increased motivation is not direct evidence for the direction of causality. In fact, studies on chess grandmasters suggest that they perform no better than novices on memory for randomized board positions. (Unlikely to be encountered in a game) Here is an interesting study discussing the recent state of the literature which lends some credence to your ideas. https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-017-0768-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-017-0768-2