@mchill said
Chess is not about taking green pills and skipping school.
Please pardon my nitpicking, but Bobby Fischer skipped school a lot, and he was a rather strong player. Green pills?--well, it's just a fictional story.
Mchill replied to Congruent.
GM Joel Lautier has said that school is a waste of time for an aspiring professional chess player.
GM Irina Krush was very bored by her American high school and preferred to avoid it.
She was an aspiring chess professional, which American teenage girls did not understand.
She has said that she had no friends in high school.
Judit Polgár was famously educated at home.
"According to Susan, Judit was not the sister with the most talent, explaining:
"Judit was a slow starter, but very hard-working."[28](Judit) Polgár described
herself at that age as "obsessive" about chess. ... Judit was asked about playing
against boys instead of in the girls' section of tournaments:
"These other girls are not serious about chess... I practice five or six hours a day,
but they get distracted by cooking and work around the house."
--Wikipedia
In contrast, Hou Yifan (who potentially could have surpassed Judit Polgar's record
of the highest FIDE rating for a woman) has often put her education ahead of chess.
She temporarily retired from chess in order to be a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University.
It's common for top Chinese women chess players to retire in their mid-to-late 20s
after they get married and start to have children.
My point is that the top women players have made different choices.
Judit Polgár was trained almost from birth to play chess and that was her whole life.
Hou Yifan, also a prodigy, has chosen a more 'well-rounded' approach to life.