Bruce smiled at him, trying to imagine paying to see a chess tournament - but the underlying concept was indeed pretty familiar. He'd never experienced it for himself, thank god, but that showmanship might be involved in or even required for tasks that ought to have been completely unrelated to exhibition did ring a certain bell. "That's what I hear, yes. It can take you pretty far - that kind of charisma."
But it needed something to go with it, normally. "Nine is pretty young for anything. You grew up with it." As he'd expected. "I suspect it had a heavy impact on the way you think. Would you agree? I'm sure it's difficult to speculate. But if you hadn't spent so much time playing, so much of your youth immersed in it - don't you think you would have become someone rather different?" Anything absorbed so intensely at an early developmental stage would have to become as much a structure on which to hang a personality and an intellect as a skill or a pastime. It wasn't just a thing to learn - it was a method.
"I don't claim to know, though." He dug up a couple of packets of splenda, and emptied them into his mug. "I never got much past the queen's gambit. Chess club was a little cut-throat for my tastes."