>Most players are never going to become even close to that, and they know it. The fact that AI has beaten the best of human players should be, theoretically, ir

>Most players are never going to become even close to that, and they know it. The fact that AI has beaten the best of human players should be, theoretically, irrelevant to their interest in chess, other than having a novel teacher to learn from. That is exactly what's happening, players learn from engines and try to understand why they play this move and not that move, and as a result, there are a lot of competing players in top level chess, except that players started memorizing lines and the opening phase of the game became a bit dull and boring, however, this was only another obstacle for players, they simply needed to adapt and they did. Magnus Carlsen is well known for winning endgames that seem to be a dead draw, he keeps pushing and pressing until his opponents make a mistake and this is why he has been the world champion since 2013 (e.g. game 6 from the 2021 World Championship [0]). >So I’m genuinely curious, does the chess community see a large number of discouraged average players? No, the Queen's Gambit [1] made chess very popular, online chess is at its peak, it's pretty interesting to have world champions streaming and seeing them play variations that they wouldn't play in real life since they involve too much risk, or simply lead to losing positions, but they also make for exciting and amusing games. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmQs1KhB948 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmQs1KhB948 [1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10048342 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10048342