In the past, I blocked out playing chess because of this pessimistic view (and possibly a burnout at middle school). Now that I have a more optimistic view of the game, maybe I should start again?

Also, Congratulations Gukesh!

Ding's Rf2 blunder and Gukesh's unrelenting active defense yesterday is most definitely the human side of chess. Even the best of the best failing to see what you could see as a viewer, and the game favoring the one with the most optimistic approach and the strongest head game.

I'm starting to form a more optimistic view as I'm maturing. The beauty and the "human touch" lies in those blunders and recoveries. Chess is interesting to watch/play because you know that it's going to be more chaotic and unpredictable than two bots playing against each other.

I used to reductively think of the good players as just people with a good mental map between the current state of the game, the next state that is favorable to them, and the position that allows them to transition to that state - very machine-like and very non-human-like.

I found it pessimistic that there is always an optimal move (which a computer with enough compute can bruteforce through), and the game is mostly about correcting yourself back to playing optimally after blunders or exploiting your opponent's blunders without room for creativity.

Earlier, I used to see it as people competing to see who could mimic Stockfish the best. I found it quite unsettling that a human can (probably) never beat an agent like Stockfish and concluded that there is no "human touch" or "creativity" in chess - hence boring and useless.

This calls for a preface - I never played chess professionally but have casually played (a lot) against my friends in school, some of whom were prodigies (2000+ elo in middle school, beating Magnus on a simul). So, I might have formed a very biased view of the game very early on.