Chess is like Boxing. Pays nothing. The workload is insane, the natural talent is insane, your competition is global.
Only the very top 0.5% get name recognition (money). And like Boxing, these athletes could get paid more had they devoted their life literally ANY other pursuit with their work ethic and talent. With far less punishment involved.
Unlikely at the top levels. The top chess masters are taking home a better income than the average college graduate. Sure CEOs take home more, but typically not until later in life. If you can get great chess is a good career.
Of course few get great. Even if you don't get to great, many people make a satisfactory amount of money from chess (mostly teaching), so there are options.
Also, you can switch at any time when you realize how hard the competition is. Your study habits to get good will do you well in other positions so there is no loss failing so long as you get out soon enough. There is a reason many pretty good players quit after high school: they had fun now it is time to settle down. Some play once in a while, but it is no loss. Unlike boxing where a few knockouts and you may be mentally unfit to do anything with your life.
Read on Magnus Carlsen[0] and Josh Waitzkin[1] - both have top spots in other fields, (and I'm sure others do too, these are from memory). Either talent is less specific than you'd think, or work ethic is more important than you'd think.
I don't see this with Carlsen. Fantasy football? Well ... Waitzkin may be successful in martial arts but still that's the exception not the norm.
Also I would claim that talent is domain-specific insofar that very few people have a mental and a physical talent at the same time. For instance there are professional athletes who are very good in some other sport but I know of no one who is also very good at chess.
You may discard Fantasy Football, but it is not easy to be a top player - there are thousands of people who spend a few hours a day practicing, and have been for years. It’s been a while, but when Magnusen rose from “not playing”’to the top spot it was impressive and unusual.
Emanuel Lasker was iirc a very noted mathematician. As I mentioned, this is from memory. I’ve known a person who had both made the national swim team as a 19-year old, and was a national bridge champion in his thirties (not in the US).
I don’t know to separate talent from work ethics, but my layman’s impression is that that these aren’t simple, and definitely not independent, measures across fields.
The point is that they didn't come from some "Chess Prodigy" family. There wasn't some "talent" laying there that they picked up. And, even among the sisters, Judit wasn't the one with the most "talent".
Judit's level and achievements were due to training and persistence.
Still they might have a talent for chess and not for ballet for instance. It might be otherwise but that was my claim and the Polgars don't refute it.
Also the Wikipedia page says she was a "chess prodigy". From my personal experience I strongly doubt that you can make every five year old child a chess player who wins blind matches against grown-ups only through hard work.
"Prodigy" simply means you hit your 10,000 hours as a child.
And the "youngest grandmaster" title simply keeps moving downward, so apparently you can convert random 5 year olds into chess experts.
I really don't understand why people still cling to the notion of "talent" in intellectual pursuits. It's pretty clear that "number of hours" is what places you in the top echelons.
When you assume 8 hours a day straight work 10.000 hours means 3.42 years including weekends. I'll claim that's impossible (not to say inhumane) to do with a child.
Only the very top 0.5% get name recognition (money). And like Boxing, these athletes could get paid more had they devoted their life literally ANY other pursuit with their work ethic and talent. With far less punishment involved.
Concept of Talent Stacking: https://personalexcellence.co/blog/talent-stack/