The chess density is extremely tense nowadays, if you're in your twenties you will face all the under-rated whizkids who know everything and have praxis, tons of it. It looks gloomy if you want to become a decent master.
Actually, I started with 15-16 y. and had 2000 4 years later. The 10.000 expert hours devoted to chess I had certainly multiple times. :) See talent (at least not untalented) plus hard work versus age. I had also wins against players up to GMs and countless local tournament wins but overall there was a lower cap: CM at the age of 39.
Good luck!
Sargon
While I understand Kaspy’s obvious point, which he borrowed from Tolstoy, talent is talent, hard work is hard work. For 30 years I have taught, mostly one on one. I taught all, total beginners, adults, kids 4 years old, world’s top level, as well as total losers. One out of 100 kids is talented. One out of a thousand is talented among those talented ones, a true genius. It’s shocking and weird to see what they can do, it’s puzzling how they know what to do, since nobody taught them it yet. Talent exists, sadly. I say sadly because it’s not fair to others who are not born that talented.
I’ll go against the grain on this one, guys.
I don’t buy this admiration and fear of titled players: oh I can never become a master, I started late! Oh nobody who learned as adult reached 2000, oh only 0.0000000000001% of chess players will ever become a Grandmaster etc.
As a total idiot in chess who hardly ever works on the game with any degree of seriousness, and someone who learned chess as an adult I have smashed many titled players, and destroyed players ranked 2000 in various time controls and formats. I see nothing in their playing that should intimidate someone, there are no memorized deep lines, no instant tactics, no endgame magic, just same old blunders we all make, just less. That’s all it is. Someone ranked 200 points higher than you is simply someone who blunders a tiny tiny bit less than you and solves puzzle rush 1 or 2 seconds faster.
Reaching elite level is a whole other story, but simply reaching professional level in anything is easy, since most professionals are actually pretty bad. In my field a talented Ameteurs are often better than low end professionals.
Last time I made a run here I had some 2300 and 2400 rated opponents, some were titled. I did pretty well, am I supposed to believe that I can’t attain their “title”? Gimme a break. If I have a 5-5 score VS them now without any work, you simply can’t make a case that I will lose to them if I do prepare properly.
I’ll see you guys at 2400 soon. You guys got me all motivated now! Gonna get my tactics and openings materials out.
Rant/
*gets ready to be ridiculed*
Hic Rhodus, hic salta.
Go and get your otb title!
@Kusokosla Good luck!
What I find most players who started as adults lacking is feeling for the position. Learning openings and endgames is easy and anyone can pick up on that regardless of age. On the other hand acquiring the feeling for the game is something that, at least in my experience, adults are very rarely capable of.
I've seen countless examples of adults playing opening very well then transitions into a middlegame their familiar with only to misplay it or blunder horrendously when things get out of what can be evaluated without having to rely on intuition.
I'm not saying that it's impossible to become a FM as someone who started in their late 20s or 30s, but the amount of work one would have to put into it is simply not worth it. Such FM would probably be more knowledgeable about the game than most IMs who started playing as kids since those IMs can rely on intuition much more.
Good luck.
Here's my levels of normalisation from my own experience on chess talent, hard work and achievable levels:
As a junior I was good - I won several national kiddo championships, and twice came in top 10 in world kiddo championships. So by most standards I was talented at the game. I decoupled from chess starting from about 14/15 as academic work took priority and now have recoupled 20+ years later as my children start to play; my (rating-based) title was gained as a teenager although I didn't actually claim it until last year.
Now, based on all the other juniors who were my contemporaries, my level of talent + lots of dedicated chess focus in late teens/ early 20s would have turned into strong IM/weak GM level (roughly, the minimal threshold for the insecure life of a chess professional). Looking at the kids who were my rivals when we were 8,9,10,11 who stuck with chess, some became <2600 GMs and some tried hard but didn't quite make it to GM level - and these are people who were already playing 100 standard games a year since they were 10 and were focussing full time on chess. And generally, I think most 'strong juniors' could make it to CM/FM level with hard work.
But then there's real talent: a few years younger than me and my friends was a boy with blazingly, obviously, manifestly, more talent than all of us put together. At age ~10, on the national rating lists he was (the equivalent of) 500 ELo points ahead of the next strongest child in his age group, and is now ~2700 and sometimes called the world's strongest amateur.
I think a bit of experience of having seen such players can provide some humility to claims about how easy it is to reach professional level, and a degree of scepticism to claims about smashing titled players despite never having studied the game.
The lower titles of CM and FM may be attainable for someone who starts late, but has *both* lots of talent *and* lots of spare time in their 20s to devote to chess rather than work/family etc, but there is a huge gap from 2200 to 2400 ELO and an even bigger one to 2600 - nothing to do with puzzle rush scores or blundering, and it begs belief that anything more than a minuscule fraction of people could get there having started to play as adults.
Hanging pawns ain’t going nowhere boys. Another one bites the dust!!
Thank you
@LukaCro @DerekMcGill I dont have one I have never played OTB, the only otb experience I have is playing against this chess computer I bought, it says its rated 1850 fide, and I have beaten it once, drawn many times and lost a lot, but it has levels so I can beat it consistently up to level 3, I only every beat it legitimate once but I was so happy when I won.
@newagear I wish but there is no chess club here, its just up to me I dont know anyone who plays chess
@Sarg0n Thank you Sargon, for the brutal truth but I still believe in myself and will keep going for my dream, I want it as bad as I want to breathe!
@Panagrellus All I really do now as a student is go to school(accounting student), do my homework, and then I just workout and study chess like all day, but yeah wish I could afford a coach, student life is rough
@piscatorox Thank you friend
I know what I need to work on my calculations, going like more moves ahead then a couple, focusing hard and looking at if my position is better, and I struggle in dynamic play, but I feel like I am really strong positionally, and I understand the game much more in that sense. Im going to start looking at Karpov's games and studying them I think they will help me improve at my level right now.
@PetarBosnjak Thank you for your input
