I would like to think everyone can keep improving and maybe eventually to master :)
Here is an article I found:
www.quora.com/Is-there-any-famous-chess-player-or-grandmaster-who-started-late-like-in-their-20s-or-30s@piscatorox That's the best reply I've read so far in this thread. I've also pointed that out earlier, but your choice of words and analogy with mother tongue/ times table really drove the point home.
Btw just checked it, my earlier post I was referring to is #25, check it out if you have time.
Listening to the Perpetual Chess Podcast's episode with GM Larry Kaufman as the guest, it struck me that one of his anecdotes would be worth mentioning here both because the exchanges within this tread have failed to explore or even consider how mastery of another game might impact an adult newbie's chances of becoming very good at chess as well as because of its broader implications, as far as adult improvement is concerned, some of which I tried to touch upon in my #292 post which did not strike a chord with anyone...
In the PCP episode, around 1h07, GM Kaufman tells the tale of how Toshiyuki Moriuchi, a 9th dan, and lifetime Meijin professional Shogi player, picked up chess as an adult and played his first game in the U.S. as an unrated in the American Open and drew against IM Jack Peters - who was close to the GM title, at one time - despite going into the endgame with much better chances thant the chess master. In disbelief that someone could play such a masterful opening and middlegame and botch a win with such pitiful endgame play, the IM Peter's voiced his concerns to Moriuchi who essentially responded: "I've never played a rook endgame before". According to Wikipedia, Moriuchi's Elo was 2310, as of Jan 2018.
This is a funny story, for sure, but I bring it up as a certifiable example - though purely anecdotal - that an adult most certainly can master chess at a later age. Perhaps this is mostly limited to cases where expertise in one field can translate without loss or much effort into another field, but it seems to me that it certainly puts to rest the debate as to whether it is even theoretically possible to become a very good chess player, even master-level, as an adult from scratch.
More generally, as far as obstacles to adult improvement are concerned, I think adults (like older children) develop an aversion to "rating-point-loss" and shy away from the exploration and experimentation which may result in temporary rating point losses but is necessary to break through to higher ground. They then get mired in a chess plateau of their own making and stagnate there forever despite devoting much time and effort to the study of the game.
I heard this point of view expressed somewhere (PCP?) or perhaps read it and it instantly resonated with me.
My guess is adults can't shed the "materialistic calculus" we all learn when starting out and never develop a true appreciation for more abstract concepts such as "space" which would inform their decision-making process because providing a better analytical framework when evaluating certain positions or moments in the game.
Much like how turn of the 20th-century physicists could not shed their "deterministic world-view" of physics on the micro-level and embrace quantum physics or their "absolutist world-view" on the macro-level and embrace relativistic physics.
This stuff isn't even an issue with your run-of-the-mill undergrad physics student today. It isn't because they are smarter than those white-haired physicists of old. It is because they start out their training as physicists with a different set of underlying assumptions so quantum and relativistic physics are integrated quite naturally whereas those people had staked their entire careers on the notion that a body's characteristic (say, velocity and location) could "simultaneously" be precisely determined or that light travelled "instantaneously" from one point to another or through an "unseen ether that permeated the universe" or that the size of said universe was unchanging...
The history of sciences is replete which such examples wherein unstated assumptions prevent intelligent scientists, even the occasional genius (such as Einstein), from "seeing" things that the ordinary undergraduate student today takes for granted.
#323. I plead guilty to the charge of OTB Rating Loss Aversion which leads to the inability to successfully breakthrough a deficiency in chess knowledge and skill because of this fear.
But at least I can do the chess CAPTCHAs and do a checkmate in one move to post a comment. ;-)
@SeniorPatzer I also experience a peculiar sense of satisfaction (insert weird face emoji here) completing the CAPTCHA mate-in-one. Strange, how little it takes to trigger that region of the brain. ;D
Those interested in a more scientific approach to this problem might consider reading a recently published article that reveals the results of a study designed to investigate whether deliberate practice or other chess-related experience is sufficient to explain individual differences in chess expertise and to investigate other factors that may contribute to chess expertise.
It Takes More Than Practice and Experience to Become a Chess Master: Evidence from a Child Prodigy and Adult Chess Players, by Yu-Hsuan A. Chang and David M. Lane, Journal of Expertise / June 2018 / vol. 1, no. 1.
Here is the link to the article:
pdfs.semanticscholar.org/02b7/54b8b4224365287af2a452055abbf85e4a8e.pdf.93646493.1680627796.1576117216-1669557526.1576117216Another extremely interesting paper is from Gobet, F., & Charness, N. (2006). Chess and games. Cambridge handbook on expertise and expert performance (pp. 523-538). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. (
http://www.cambridge.org/). it recaps de Groots finding that skilled players use their knowledge about chess configurations to generate plausible moves for limited searching, examines the perceptual mechanisms
that support this rapid perception advantage, looks at chunking theory, etc.
Here is the link to the paper:
pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b053/f1ec89b136e1ae3b67eecd6888df4cb6b65c.pdf.62857900.1680627796.1576117216-1669557526.1576117216Much like sketching/painting chess is a pleasure hobby for book-ish types... having to learn more isn't a deterrent.
Maybe someone would ask why is rating important at all? Why do you want to be rated 1900+, 2000+ or be titled player?
Well, the answer for me is simple. In this day and age, nobody takes you seriously if you are not at least 1900+ in strenght. At least in Croatia, if you want to engage in regular OTB chess activity (and my interest is in OTB, I don't see chess as a video-game), you have to be a strong player or you are all alone.
Maybe in the past it was different, you could be 1500 player, go to a club, play in the lower-rated ligue, find players of similar strenght and just enjoy the game without worrying about your rating. But those days are past, if you are not strong player you can't play club chess.
This is very unfortunate, but it looks like chess is just not popular as it used to be.
@LukaCro chess is way more popular. It just has shifted from real world to online world. And elo 1500 here is above average. And in OTB tournament woudl be strugling win anything. Average Elo in finland for Licence holders 1800.
