It’s Day 7 of my #500DaysTo50 project, and right on time, Vishy Anand, one of my chess heroes, turns 50 years old today.

I’m sure I first heard of Anand when he was 14 and I was 13. Back then, I thought I was on the path of becoming a grandmaster player, and I figured I had plenty of time to catch up to him on my way to greatness. 36 years later, it’s obvious I’ll never be as good as he was at 13 years old!

That’s one of the strange things about aging. Prior hopes and dreams simply must die – or at least be scaled back to reality. I still enjoy chess immensely, and I can be among the top 1-2% of all rated players in the world. But statistically, someone like Anand would beat me 100% of the time for up to 1,000 games in a row. That’s a big difference!

I first realized I didn’t have that special thing that makes for greatness when I had to chance to play 3 tandem games with Peter Svidler in 1989 as part of the run-up to the Goodwill Games. I was 17, and he was 12.

We easily won the first two games. In the third game, I couldn’t see the right way to conduct an attack, and we drew that one. Young Svidler was extremely upset. In perfect English, he went through a series of moves that I hadn’t even considered. He just saw the game in a different way. He had a genius for that it that I just didn’t have.

I do remember being mostly OK with that, even though it was clear at that moment becoming a grandmaster was just never going to happen.

Getting back to the present, Anand at 50 does give “old guys” like me great hope for our own future. Chess is a sport – yes, a sport! – for the young. He is one of only two World Top 20 players over 40 years old, and it’s just now becoming apparent he probably won’t be competing for the World Championship again.

If he can remain *that good* at 50, we can all still hope to achieve our own amazing progress at more advanced ages.