Has anyone else joined the most recent chess boom?

[Legend]

The best chess players are pretty absurd.

This is Magnus Carlsen, who is pretty safely the best chess player in the world.

He's able to recognize a position from a famous game 25 years ago without seeing the pieces in the second example, as well as was able to recall the next ~10 moves.

How much of modern chess is strategy vs brute analysis/skill? Is knowing all these past games partially why he's so good, or is it a byproduct of him being so good?

[the-pi-guy]

How much of modern chess is strategy vs brute analysis/skill?

I think it's a lot of both.
There's a lot of theory for openings and endings, whereas the middle part of the game I think tends to be more about brute analysis.

With the openings in particular, there's a lot of theories on what moves to make first, and how to respond.

What I've heard is that for grandmaster level, the difference of having an extra pawn is often enough to win a game.  

Is knowing all these past games partially why he's so good, or is it a byproduct of him being so good?

Based on what I've heard, it's a bit of both, but probably moreso the latter.

Some have talked about how he would often intentionally have a strategy of making unusual sequences of moves, so that he could beat them on the analysis.  

It doesn't seem to be very unusual to be able to memorize games like that for International Masters/Grand Masters, but it sounds like he manages to do that better than anyone else.  

[darkknightkryta]

I think it's a lot of both.
There's a lot of theory for openings and endings, whereas the middle part of the game I think tends to be more about brute analysis.

With the openings in particular, there's a lot of theories on what moves to make first, and how to respond.

What I've heard is that for grandmaster level, the difference of having an extra pawn is often enough to win a game. 
Based on what I've heard, it's a bit of both, but probably moreso the latter.

Some have talked about how he would often intentionally have a strategy of making unusual sequences of moves, so that he could beat them on the analysis. 

It doesn't seem to be very unusual to be able to memorize games like that for International Masters/Grand Masters, but it sounds like he manages to do that better than anyone else. 

Back in the day, my friend had mentioned he used to play chess a lot with a friend of his.  His friend read a book on chess, and after reading, he got a lot harder to beat.  So I imagine that assessment is correct, there's probably a lot of opening and ending strategies.  Since there's only so many moves you can make in an openning so those have probably been super analyzed. 

My students play an online one.  It's pretty simple looking but I don't know what it's called.