Let me tell a story of when I was little. Starting around 6 I started drawing, I knew way back then that I wanted to be the best artist in the world. I was always told I had a natural talent for art and my family said I was the next Leonardo de Vinci. So I grew up with art coming natural to me; I never truly had to put any real effort into making beautiful art. However, as I got older and with the internet coming into the world; I realized I am not even close to being the best artist.
People who started making art in college were producing work I could only dream of making. I realized it didn't matter if I started young or had a natural talent for art; all that was meaningless in the face of dedication and hard work. I guess one could argue that mastering the canvas is easier then mastering the chess board; but I am not so sure about that considering I have seen people struggle to make halfway decent art.
In short, I believe in modern times starting young and talented is irreverent especially when someone has the drive.
The problem is no one has defined what 'start' means. Is it engaging with the game from an early age on a continuous basis up to the present point; or can one engage with the game then stop and do other things with their life but the imprint and logic of the game is imbued upon other things in their life. Then this person picks it up again at a later stage.
Let's define start and what that means.
Yeah Difford, I played chess in my childhood and teens, does that count as a start? Probably he meant consistent training from that early age.
Masters....START means ...Training...START means practicing ....START means competitive...START means making blunders and learning from it ..START means understanding ur level in game...START means when to quit from game and choosing second options...
In my opinion ist just another facet of Dunning-Kruger. A total underestimation of the whole matter.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effectWinning some online skirmishes, having not devoted thousands of hours to studying serious chess (early), but predicting master level for anyone at any age. It‘s the biology which kills our adult dreams. So be at least realistic. ;)
It‘s like this gentleman:
en.chessbase.com/post/trump-kramnik-botvinnik-junge-benkoAt least I know my limits. As a late-starter (16) I made more or less the best which was practically possible.
(I have seen tens of thousands of starters way back. I have a clear picture of what is possible. It shatters your adult dreams of becoming master, sorry.)
What's involved in "learning chess", and why is it so unlikely to become master when starting as an adult? Let's look at the sub-tasks:
1) memory (opening lines, mating sequences ...) - kids are much much better at this, as anyone knows who lost a memory game against a 5-year-old. But granted, adults can practice this and get better. They need much more time though.
2) calculation skills and visualization - this can be trained by kids and by adults. Adults need more time to improve.
3) "move selection" - this is probably the most mysterious part, as it involves intuition. In a chess game, there are many more lines than can be calculated. How to decide which candidate moves are good and worth a closer look? There are pattern recognition processes involved and I think this aspect comes closest to learning a new language. You can do it as an adult, but you will never be perfect.
Again and again: chess has to be considered as a procedure, not only accumulating dry knowledge. It resembles more a skill or a feeling how to do.
And in this respect kids outweigh us old ones even more.
I am not angry if someone proves me wrong. Where are the whizpensioners?
All the given examples are
-centuries ago
-hardly documented
-highly dubious
-started much earlier with chess
-not proven
-more or less „normal“ like OBrien, starting 20yo and having 2149 FIDE 30yo
Even if there are exceptions - I weigh in a million kids having learned chess early and have become master.
Good luck - be the evidence of your adult master theory and become master yourself. Just do it!
Over and out.
CM Sarg0n is the best, because his humour is so dark it can not only crush my middle age dream but yours, and his own at the same time. LOL
It is entirely possible to start "late" and become an CM or FM, unless we are talking about 40 year old and over then no at that age no one is going to make any serious progress. I have a guy that I helped getting into chess at age 22 and he is now well over 1700 in just a few months.
