Chess Amateurs, Chess Pros, When and If the Twain Shall Meet

Mark Weeks of Chess for All Ages kindly posts a thoughtful and extended answer, Do You Care About Today's GMs? to my previous post on this question.  In the comments to Mark's post Michael Goeller, the most excellent Kenilworthian recalls his take on the question, Chess Amateurism, from a couple of years ago.

Mark also makes a point in his post about the openings being "exhausted" at some point in the next 10-20 years. He is becoming more and more interested in chess960 as a result.  I figure that even when chess (not just the opening) is "solved" in the way checkers is now solved, there will still be plenty of space for fallible humans to enjoy playing each other.  Whether there will still be a demand for grandmasters to get paid to play each other at that time is another matter.

I really appreciated the many cogent comments to that post, but especially this one:

Hardly knowing anything of chess, I hardly know of any of today's GMs, much less their games.
 

I am, as in most things, interested in the antiquated.

That's Aaron DeWeese, and you may want to take a look at his his fascinating Nether Letter Log.  I'm with Aaron, love me some antiquated chess; probably, I'll still be saying that when they download my whole brain content into a hard drive and send it on a trip to the stars in a self-replicating space exploration machine.  Of course, the Really Big Database will be available for review, and it'll be something like the Star Trek TNG Holodeck.  I'll spend part of the time playing a match with the Ghost (in the machine) of Tarrasch.  Neither of us will have computer assistance.

Remember, the purpose of philosophy is to screw the inscrutable (or, alternatively, to eff the ineffable).

For a change today, let's NOT ROCK, let's be COOL: