On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years
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My only real commentary is that trying to follow a progression like this can be profoundly, profoundly frustrating. You need to really make sure you're enjoying this hobby before you try to dedicate yourself to a trajectory like this. It can really make you feel like shit a lot of the time, as you find yourself continually repeating mistakes that other people breeze past without issue. It takes true love of the game and a great deal of patience and persistence to push through all the downspells.
Eventually I decided that I no longer wished to prioritize the game over other things. The enormous time investment was no longer a worthwhile trade-off for me, and I stopped playing almost all together. I haven't regretted it since. There's just so many things to do in life. I gave it thousands of hours of my time, and now the door is closed on that. Now I'm learning Ruby on rails!
At which point were you able to reliably not fail the boar lure ?
Cool, to hear from some decent player. What time did you play? Around 2002?
Since I was a 2k player at the time, let me assure you, that the top dudes at the time (Koven, Sheriff for example) were already so called pro gamers who got payed/sponsored and they were exceptionally good.
The true story is, that many folks above 2k+ did what was called "points trading" back then. Koven once stated, that they got payed according to their rank in the official ladder.
So he also had to defend against cheaters, un-sync games etc. He was always top notch, but he had to adjust his rating accordingly, due to cheaters.
Almost all at the top did points trading. Smurf accounts, the system, some refusing to play against weaker players, or some playing DM to get points faster. Also some game "hacks", like the farming bug etc. that gave you the edge in early FLUSHing games.
So take this: 1850 is extremely good in RM 1vs1. 2k+ players are exceptionally good at micro-management. A skill to be learned.
I was part of CN, you might remember this clan from our most famous player, Lightning_CN. Greets to Force, Gwenny etc. where ever you are! :)
PS: There is a book from L_Clan_Chris at Amazon. Some knowledge bites to digest.
I've watched endless videos of DauT and Viper playing AoE. ZeroEmpires has done a lot to popularize AoE streaming. Here's his YouTube channel if anyone is interested - https://www.youtube.com/user/ZeroEmpires
He also started as a pretty mediocre player and now deserves his rank among the best players! He shares a lot of his secrets and is also #1 commentator now for AoE II:DE related games: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZUT79WUUpZlZ-XMF7l4CFg
Also watch his Twitch account.
Spirit of the Law is also a great resource: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChzLZJo-SxuPHz-oYKAIC_g
T90 is doing great. Also improved massively his commentator skills. Give him a try! :)
As T90 himself said, "The trouble with playing viper is that if viper memes me, and I win, people just say oh T90 isn't good, viper wasn't trying. And if I lose, well, T90 can't even beat viper when he's not trying. So it's a lose-lose situation." Too true.
I see he is #96 on rankings right now though, that's terrific. Being able to beat #1 isn't the only measure of success and I don't mean to imply otherwise.
> He shares a lot of his secrets
? Teachers don't have to be the best at the _thing_, they should be really good at explaining concepts. Maybe T90 is the people watch when then want to go from zero to average?
I don't want to be coached by the best tennis player in the world, it would be a waste and I couldn't do any of the things they could teach me.
A solid above average player that knows my limits and can explain how to correct flaws would be much better (for me).
(Their first round runs up to the 39:00 mark.)
1750: This is also a great ranking. Competition there is pretty tough. Congrats! I remember playing lots of 1700er dudes whenever I started out with my smurf accounts, and I had plenty off em.
DE has led to a massive resurgence of interest and a 3rd generation of players. First gen was AoE2 (CD), 2nd gen was the forgotten empires continuing things, 3rd is DE. Some players have spanned all 3. My current favorite streamers are Viper and Hera.
No twitch obviously and very few blogs going around for strategy as well. It's amazing to see how far gaming has come in 15 years.
This is what I unfortunately found as well. I reached Legend in Hearthstone (The top rank, no clue what percentile it was) a while back and top 3-5% in StarCraft II a couple of years ago.
In both games I stopped playing shortly after reaching that level because the time investment just didn't seem worth it to me. I love games, but playing at a very high level requires a lot of practice and focus.
I don't really think it's possible to play competitively and do much else because of the time investment required just to stay at your current level, let alone improve. I love games, but it's hard to justify when I could be doing something more productive with my time.
I've learned more valuable lessons from competing in Starcraft than I can count. Without knowing the exact opportunity cost, I think trading my highschool grades for the competitive experience was worth it.
The biggest mistake I think I made was not cutting games out completely after having learned those lessons.
I experienced both sides. First trying to become a professional CS:GO player, and after just having fun playing the Starcraft 2 story.
Some of my friends still deeply enjoy the competitive aspect. Sometimes I just want to see big stonking robots blow up aliens :)
The competitive scene has been stable and has kept sc going forever.
Browser games tend to respect your time more by making you login every day but limit how much you can do. You won't see players who play the game 24/7 because the game tells you to stop after you ran out of action points or scheduled your base, etc.
Most professional soccer players spend about 1-2 hours per day on training. Off-season they will spend slightly more but that's only for about 3-4 weeks.
Doing anything more leads to injuries.
Anyone remembers DBD_Jinx? For very long the only western dude to compete with the Koreans in 1vs1. However he also confessed, that he had partly sacrificed his private life for it.
I trained a lot. I trained hours a day on 2X speed hunting, build order. I played under many smurf accounts, to then foster my primary account(s). MrFixIt forums as well.
I played 1vs1, team games, I played DM as well.
After intense 2 years (time zone shifts as well, many sleepless nights) I decided to never ever play online in a community again in order to prevent my lazy/fun loving side to be sucked in again in clans, games etc.
No Warcraft nothing. To this day I keep the vow. Only game I play still from time to time is AoE II: DE.
I used to love RTS but...
1. Rushing is stupid, all RTS seemly suffer from allowing it even when devs attempt to curb that down, I remember in AOE for example people training on how to build towers on the enemy base in 2 minutes or how to win with villager rush. (also knew a guy that relentlessy tested ways to rise to the second age faster)
2. Singleplayer often the AI is super cheaty, after a while I got bored with that, because I couldn't use actual strategy to win, for example the match that made me realize that was when the last AI was on an island, I conquered the rest of the map, was careful in my usage of the market to stockpile all resources for myself and deny the AI... then whenever I attacked with the 200 unit limit, the AI defended itself successfully, after I got bored of hours stuck on this stalemate, I used cheats and found out the AI stripped the whole island bare but was still pumping units non-stop AND knew where I was going to attack, so they always had perfect defense.
3. Multiplayer is a matter of how fast you click and how good you are with pattern matching and some other training-related things, intelligence for example isn't that important, rote learning, time to practice, etc... that is.
So I concluded that basically multiplayer RTS is a huge timesink, and to me, unfun. And singleplayer RTS after the campaign is done is or too easy (because the AI is utterly dumb) or too hard (because the AI cheats), I never found out a difficulty I enjoyed playing against the AI.
I have to politely refute this. "Rushing" is the word inexperienced players use for "playing in a more optimal way that prepares you to attack sooner." If you call it "rushing," what you're really saying is that you need other players to deliberately play worse to give you extra time to prepare. All of these strategies have counterplay and usually lead into long games. Using a vil rush or tower rush is not a way to end the game, it's a way to begin it.
> 3. Multiplayer is a matter of how fast you click and how good you are with pattern matching and some other training-related things, intelligence for example isn't that important, rote learning, time to practice, etc... that is.
Again, you could only say this if you had not made it to a competitive level. Intelligence is pattern-matching. And of course playing anything at a competitive level involves "training-related things," that's a kind of meaningless statement if I'm being honest. And I can't speak for StarCraft, but in AoE2 APM is not essential. To prove the point, the top-rated player has beaten other top 200 players without using his keyboard. It's about decision-making. Even at my level, I can beat other players rated a couple hundred points beneath me without using keyboard shortcuts just because my decision-making is better.
For less experienced players, rushes like these tend to end the game early rather than begin it in an interesting way. Either the defender knows how to hold the strategy and shuts it down, or hasn't seen it before and gets destroyed. While these strategies are certainly part of the game and make high level competitive games far more interesting, it is often a frustrating experience for low/mid level players. Many of those players are looking for an experience where they build their army for a while and attack once they're satisfied with what they've built. Certainly not strategically optimal, but that's often what they find fun.
I'm just saying that rushing isn't a flaw or a problem, rather it's a matter of perspective. Players who want to build up for a while nearly always want to do that because they haven't learned any other way to play. And they're not under any obligation to do so, either-- but it's not fair to say the game is flawed on that basis.
I've since cut back significantly on my Hearthstone playing and been able to apply similar thinking to other games I've picked up (for example Magic The Gathering: Arena). Games are for having fun not for endlessly trying to get better. That was probably a mentality that I picked up from years of MMORPG (Runescape) addiction.
The biggest differences I see is that AoE2 is not a perfect information game, and that it needs micromanagement.
What does MS market position have to do with the design of the game, it's not like it has any sort of monetization within the game mechanics at all.
You are conflating so much BS that it shows a profound lack of understand of both game mechanics and dare i say market economics.
It appears that you've rapped yourself up in some anti market bubble of cognitive disonance and can not longer think straight, I'm sorry for your pain.
I actually tried to get into chess after quitting AoE2, to fill that strategic urge, but found the same thing - if I wasn't dedicating time and thought to it regularly I couldn't retain the advances I'd made in skill without going through a "warm up" period all over again (usually of losses).
Nowadays, I'm not a PC gamer anymore, I have Chess.com, Hearthstone and Civilization on my iPad, it is amazing how a tablet can be a very good medium for turn-based gaming.
I understood the game for the most part, but my execution was never good enough. Too much semi precise timings required and I could never get my APM high enough.
It's interesting you compare your time spent in a game to time spent productively outside the game. One of the things driving the 'investments' in those style of games(MMO's) is that you get this feeling of progress and can compare your progress to your friends 'skills'. I've been writing alot in my personal journal on how to turn runescape skills into real life skills with achievements.
Ruby on rails would be a 'skill' and based on time spent doing pomodoros to earn xp for a 'Ruby on Rails' Skill, combined with certain projects awarding XP and achievements would turn real life into a game. Think like a self defined 'Khan Academy meets Facebook'.
You could see your friends skills and see what they are working on. Maybe a bulletin board/ social media style GUI that would say ' x just completed a pomodoro in Piano'. You could post to your linkedin account all the 'skills' you've obtained to show your various interests.
Unlike many MMOs the grind is not heavily stat-focused either: while you can get unlocks and upgrades, most of them constitute "sidegrades" into a specialty role. On the field, your effectiveness still comes down to knowing the ins and outs of the gameplay. And there are leaderboards to motivate competitive players, but it's widely acknowledged that playstyles are not represented equally on these boards: it is straightforward to get a very high K/D by learning one of the various kill-farming techniques, and to get a lot of experience points with a support role around a meatgrinder battle. But those things don't necessarily contribute the most to your faction.
It's things like that that suggest where the model breaks down on application to real world skills. Generally, once a person is aware of the things they need to focus on, through good feedback, they can stay on the task. But if you look at a thing like programming, it's like, "where's the feedback?" It's not the butt-in-chair hours that are doing the lifting here. And it isn't reducable to lines compiled or issues cleared or other single-number metrics either. "Speedcoding" is only good in rare circumstances. It's more like a finished project is a series of quests that build on each other, with each quest having some checklist pass/fail requirements. But each one is bespoke, and hard to compare to others even if it's applying the same skills.
Indeed I actually do write down pass/fails conditions as a checklist in the comments to start with a complex implementation, and to create a kernel of documentation. Having tools helps, but it's that early conceptual/goal-setting where I put down boundaries that seems to make the biggest difference.
Good luck!
My colleague from another time zone struggled to recommend a book for my level and kinda laughed (albeit politely). But now we can play a quick game in our work breaks online. Thank You Lichess! canned applause
Edit: DO THE PUZZLES!!! (sorry, tired)
The rating of the computer on Lichess is also kinda weird, you can't really rely on those. I'm a pretty weak player (I have only played a bit online recently), I did beat the level 3 computer on Lichess when I concentrated well enough on a game, but I'm certainly not 1400 against real humans.
I too have noticed the blunders. What is the first level where you estimate it plays consistently?
Playing against humans, even significantly stronger ones, is so much more fun and rewarding. It's just way more exciting when both sides can capitalize on smaller mistakes, so the game becomes about building and maintaining an advantage. Or setting up a tactic that feels great to pull off.
The computers will usually not yield any incremental advances at all (and they won't fall for tactics) until they make a dumb move that invalidates all the advantage they built up. Whether you win or lose depends mainly on how often the latter happens, and learning how to make that happen is both opaque/unfun and useless for playing against humans.
The computer will be able to find optimal plays that require looking ahead several turns ahead while blundering obvious moves (e.g. capturing a piece that's clearly hanging after you used that same piece to capture their piece). Or they'll constantly move the same piece over and over again.
I would compare it as: lichess - best move, best move, best move, completely random move that does absolutely nothing chess.com - best move, good move, best move, blunder that seems patronizing given previous moves
I've only played a handful of games against real people online, but those games weren't anything like either lichess or chess.com's computer players.
Some subjects in the 20 or 25 chapters are: Time management, the more time you spend at a move, the less merit there is, while that time might be important in the endgame. There is a chapter about chess as a game of chance, like, you play a tournament and make 5 out of 9. Next year at the same tournament, you make 4 out of 9. Did you play worse? You might think so and rationalize that thought to become some truth to you, but really, it is just one game that might have been decided by one move. The same for winning or losing rating points, which can be a plus or a minus based on just 1 game difference, that doesn't make your last 3 months bad or good.
Book recommendations are always welcome. I'll usually check out anything that's 200 or so pages. My days of reading 1000 page books of small print on cheap paper however are over.
Mostly it was not helping to improve at my level at all, they were sort of pointless exercises in my level. What helped were chess king exercises apps where you solve simple situations that are not even puzzles.
But they are common in game and made you start noticing opportunities and own mistakes in game. E.g. at super beginner level, you improve a lot.
Honestly the puzzles on chess.com are better than lichess. The lichess ones just seem to have limited scope, I'm not sure why.
That said the interface is good and if you're finding them too easy then your puzzle rating should be rising to the point where it's offering you puzzles you'll find more challenging.
I'm at 2100 puzzle and they seem to sort of level off.
Over the years I've been bitten for weeks at a time by a bug that fetches a batch of puzzles at a time on mobile, and then loops through those 50 puzzles repeatedly instead of fetching more.
Even when not bugged, this behavior of 'fetch N puzzles at once' heavily encourages rating ping pong, you get a batch of easy puzzles, get them all right so your rating jumps more than it should, then a batch of hard puzzles and get crushed. I found I only ever progressed on lichess after grinding meaningful improvement slowly on chess.com, then coming back to lichess to 'catch up my rating'.
I also quite like Chess.com's Puzzle Rush.
It is good once in a while to get the feeling of getting better at a game by putting in some time and effort. Scrabble looks like just the thing for someone who finds chess too abstract and deterministic.
To each their own, though.
I really need to take a look at the source code, I'm sure I would learn a lot.
Could you point me to where/how I can do this? It is definitely something I'd like to see! Thanks
https://lichess.org/insights/atabotix/acpl/variant ^^^^^^^^ user name
As an adult, chess is a time sink with very little upside if you want to be at least decent, especially at longer time controls. I've been playing chess for more than a couple of decades, but recently decided to stop partly because of the pandemic, but mainly because it just takes too much time.
Chess at its core is a battle of intellects. It's not a relaxing thing like watching a movie, or cooking or even kicking a ball. It's a competition and at the end of each match there will be a winner and a loser. Unlike other sports it only requires mental effort without the benefit of working out the body.
Learning to weigh the odds, exercising patience, taking calculated risks in the face of incomplete information, making allowance for the vagaries/emotions of your opponent all seem like great skills that would help one in life.
However, people often voice indignation at teaching kids the "vice" of gambling.
Winning or losing in the short term is insignificant when compared to consistently making the best decisions possible with the information you have.
If those decisions have a positive expected value, you will end up a winner in the long term despite any short term variance.
Say I can dedicate about 3 hrs / week to this, what is the most efficient way to spend that time?
Following that I picked up some more formalism from the book by David Sklansky that features prominently in the other comment in response to your question.
However, the person I mentioned before had already given me a head start on most of the practical aspects mentioned in the book. I also benefited from having him to practice against and learn from.
You will be a top 20% poker player if you can do two things right. 1) Play the hands you should preflop. This is the poker equivalent of learning blackjack strategy. "Starting hand ranges poker" will start you down that rabbit hole. 2) Figure out pot odds. If you have a straight draw, how often will it hit and is that worth calling a bet? That takes a bit of math that seems hard at first, but gets a lot easier as you start to cache common scenarios. Google "Pot odds poker" to go down that rabbit hole. Review interesting hands and share them online. twoplustwo is the "main" poker forum. Good luck!
Repeatedly consider the concepts you've learned and try to apply them.
Teach your kids Backgammon instead.
I found this section on the Backgammon Wikipedia page relevant to this discussion:
And no, the doubling cube does not make it similar to poker. The doubling cube is just a way to add another element of risk/reward to the game. In poker, you literally have (fake or real) money in front of you and the entire point of the game is moving that money into the pot and trying to win the pot to gain more money. There's nothing comparable in backgammon.
As for the section on that page, you could make the same arguments about monopoly, or any game that uses dice. Backgammon can be played for money like any game, but it's not the usual way to play it, and it's not integral to how it functions. Indeed, the conclusion of the judge in that case was that it was NOT gambling, but a game of skill.
Add to the fact it doesn't have to be mutually exclusive. You can make shit and play games too.
There have been similar threads actually about reading, e.g. "don't waste so much time on literature, it's overrated, do other rewarding things". You can extend the argument to anything you want.
The question of "value" seems personal.
But, with a new daughter, I wonder if it makes sense as maybe something I can teach her in the future. As a way of teaching those concepts. Especially slowing down, and being on a screen less (something I am already a horrible influence on). I would like to teach her 'right' vs just some random horrible ideas I have (but also not crush her and discourage her)
Do you have any thoughts on that?
They are both taking very well to Catan and Ticket to Ride (with some handicaps).
Board games or card games can also be a great place to put time in if chess doesn’t catch!
In my opinion, going deep into it like this into chess specifically has rapidly diminishing returns once you understand that concept.
However, there is also arguably some value in just putting in the effort to learn anything to that skill level, and childhood/teenage years are a good time to do it because you have the time (witness those in this very conversation talking about trying to combine it with the university time of their life... many people have learned how bad an idea that is the hard way....); chess is merely one of a panoply of possible options. It's probably not my personal first choice, I'd tend to suggest musical instrument mastery or language mastery or something else a bit more generally applicable, but if it floats you or your child's boat, that's fine. It's a lot easier if you have some buy-in.
I would just make sure to include an out; it's really easy for parents to encourage something and neglect to inform their child that it is a valid option to put a reasonable amount of effort into something and then move on when they're ready. My parents, 100% accidentally, did this to me with community youth baseball. In hindsight, they basically did nothing wrong, they were trying to be encouraging and supportive and everything else, and it just never crossed my mind to say that I didn't really want to do it, and I mean no criticism of them. But it was a blinding revelation one day when I realized that I could just not do that anymore.
One other nice thing about chess versus other board or computer games is that whatever you put into it will still be useful twenty years from now. The game isn't going to change between now and then.
It's a great excuse to spend a couple of evenings a month going out, meeting new people, and considering interesting positions in interesting games. We normally played 80+20 time control (each player has 80 minutes for the game, with an additional 20 seconds added to their clock after each move), which gives way more time for in-depth analysis of the positions that you can get with the default time controls on lichess.
Chess becomes a negative experience if you put too much importance on winning, which I have done a couple of times. If you can make winning important enough that you try hard, but not so important that losing is crushing, then I think it's a great hobby.
I love solving the odd chess problem here and there, and I whole-heatedly recommend lichess.org for that. The website and app are both great and the problem database is huge and varied. All free, too.
Many ordinary people spend more time every day watching TV.
It is just not the same. You play chess at your mental prime-time basically, to challenge and tire the brain. You watch tv/youtube to get rest.
It's quite draining, and nothing like watching TV.
Why? Even full-employed Americans spend 4 hours per day on average on leisure and sport. (https://www.bls.gov/charts/american-time-use/activity-by-emp...)
I also play chess but I don't think of chess as time to unwind. It's definitely fun, but requires a lot of focus and I have to stop playing a few hours before bed so I can actually unwind.
I've found it one of the best outlets from work quite frankly, to have another committed side interest that requires dedication and commitment. You should try it :-)
After I graduated and got a programming job, I found that my hobbies took a big hit, as they all mostly required similar mental focus as work. So these days I generally do a lot less mentally taxing things. Sure I'll have bursts of creativity, but most days my brain is spent when I'm done at work and I'll go for a bike ride or watch a movie.
Playing a sport is completely different from playing chess, the physicality of a sport is at least different type of challenge.
So for me, intellectual hobbies correlate with when project in work are boring or unmotivating (there are such periods).
Is this how far we've regressed? I'm sure most humans through history have had more free time than you.
Two hours a day, every day, is a lot of time. I barely watch television and still, if you asked me to find two more hours every day I'd tell you that you were crazy.
I already have hobbies. I relax. I spend time with my partner. I sleep, I cook, I work, I walk.
I do not find myself with two hours that I don't know what to do with, and I'd challenge you to find someone that does.
Before kids? Sure. After the kids are old enough to basically be on cruise control? Likely. But now? Not even close.
Are you literally scheduling everything you do? Are you sleeping less than 6 hours? Obviously, there's probably 2 hours per day in small intervals where I'm not maximizing my day.
Because of this, I recently picked up guitar, and this is nice for the random periods I'm free, because I feel like picking it up 4 or 5 times a day for 5-10 minutes still allows me to make a lot of progress, be creative, and learn a lot about (and appreciate) music.
Chess is also something you could do this with, but I feel like at that time scale it would be harder and less rewarding, and this is still about 1/4th of the two hours mentioned.
Edit:
I probably spend 30 minutes on HN per day, which is mostly a waste. But this is also in small intervals.
The downside is of course that sometimes the other important things are hard to maintain. But this is how you do it.
Admittedly, level of challenge in games can vary tremendously. I always like to have one on rotation that is difficult.
> Some day, I want to become a titled player. A candidate master needs an ELO of 2200
2000 and 2200 are completely different skill levels. I have some friends who play chess for more than 10 years in a chess club, starting as a kid, but haven't reached titled skill level yet and probably never will.
My personal advice is: focus on the fun part of chess, there will always be a stronger player, but that doesn't matter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system#Ratings_infl...
Despite this, due to the size of the pools of individuals and relative seriousness of players who belong to official tournament organisations, the ratings have been fairly stable. Yes, there's been some inflation, but I'd say it's somewhat been in line with the increase in knowledge and training methods. While the system has all kinds of minor issues, it's still "quite good", especially when we compare it to other sports or activities with a more variable pool and quality.
In this sense, most people know what 1600, 1800, 2000, etc, mean to fairly precise degree.
I went to check rating to prove how unlikely this is. Sure enough, that would put you just outside the top 100 players in Australia.
But then I noticed the guy who played one board above me at school when we played is rated above 2000, and he wasn't really much better than me.
So yeah maybe it is possible!
I think you are massively underestimating the natural range of human intelligence.
I don't think the average IQ 100 individual could ever reach an ELO of 2000 regardless of how much they practice, and half the population has IQs of less than 100.
The correlation between chess ability and IQ is positive but not that high. not as high as it is with physics and math abiltiy.
So I would definitely think there is correlation between chess and memory. There was a really good documentary about memory called How Does Your Memory Work. Highly recommended, you get to see a glimpse of the workings of Susan Polgar's brain. I might also confuse it with My Brilliant Brain from National Geographic :)
I remember seeing a live post-mortem analysis by Anish Giri. It was just astonishing how fast he can see combinations, yet also how deep those combinations are. And then on top of that throw in a sentence like "Oh, it is not new, it was played in 2006 as well, in that game between him and him". So really, fast thinking, slow thinking, and picking deep into your memory, all at once, seemingly without any effort. That is 2760 ELO for you :)
If you pay attention to it you'll see how far removed from reality a lot of the readers here are. It's quite worrying really.
I'm curious about what you mean.
There are two broad patterns I often see:
The first is where they think everyone on the planet is somewhat like them. You'll see comments like "everyone should be able to program" or even "everyone should program". I've even seen people claim that ability to program should be considered a fundamental life skill. In general it's hugely overestimating not only the IQ but the interests and mindset of the general public. The comment I replied to here is an example of this type.
The other one is where their perception of a baseline standard of living is far higher than that of average people even within their own country. It's usually that they think some luxury item is absolutely essential despite people around the world living healthy and happy lives without it. They seem to be completely unaware that these other people exist.
My theory is that these people have been fed through schools in affluent areas, through university and straight into ridiculously high paying jobs and have simply never had (and probably never will have) any contact with people from other walks of life.
The parent comment is making the same point as you about IQ: "I don't think the average IQ 100 individual could ever reach an ELO of 2000 regardless of how much they practice, and half the population has IQs of less than 100."
While I'm sure a decent subset of users would fit your description, that's certainly not the case for every user.
> GM Hikaru Nakamura famously took the Mensa online IQ test and scored a very average 102
His elo peak rating is 2816. Just one example for an extraordinary strong player with average IQ (there are many other examples). I don't think that a high IQ is required to become a decent chess player (like 2000). It may help though.
2) intelligence does have some elasticity. When you think of intelligence has a culmination of pathways/heuristics/low-level-techniques, it’s easy to see how many pathways are self-reinforcing and not easily taught or measured. You can be predisposed to a particular kind of intelligence, and not everything is attainable by everyone, but what we call intelligence is close to what we call talent: seems like an innate quality, but actually reflects long-term hard practice with countless hours dedicated.
A lot of IQ test questions get easier the more mathematics you have studied.
Nowadays anyone bragging about their IQ should be considered a moron and left talking to themselves.
For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3oUqKUx2o0 (first thing that came off my head)
imperfect measures are not always useless, which is goof since all measures have some error.
A test trying to measure something we can't even properly define is kinda flawed in it's whole premise.
As such the best an IQ test can do is measure how well somebody prepared for a test like that, but it will struggle to properly catch any knowledge or skill domains not covered by the test, of which there are a lot.
You can say "There is this test, and people's scores on this test correlate with various things like, income, marital fidelity, religiosity, incarceration rates, job performance". We call this test the IQ test.
That said, I agree if you brag about your IQ you're a moron.
Nice clickbait. It you watched him take it on stream, you'd know that he was goofing around with his chat and ran out of time b/c he didn't know it was timed.
https://chess.stackexchange.com/a/24946
> The most comprehensive and recent publication I've found related to this question is The relationship between cognitive ability and chess skill: A comprehensive meta-analysis.
> The bottom line is that according to a meta-analysis of numerous studies, there is clearly a correlation between chess skill and cognitive ability, but cognitive ability explains only about 6% of the variance in chess skill (12% if you only consider numerical ability only). There must be other factors as well (e.g., training), some of which could be more important than cognitive ability.
From my personal observations I very much agree with 6%.
He streams them live, and then edited videos of the games on stream are uploaded on his YouTube channel. Here's the YT playlist for the series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytkf3qZTj74&list=PLT1F2nOxLH...
Another note, he seems to be 21. I do understand you are an adult by then, but really, there is so much youth in you when you are 21. I see other players at the club get so much better at that age. I started at 31 at maybe 1100, and got to a max of 1583 only 12 years later. My brain is not so spongy anymore :)
I don't think it's inflation. Lichess simply uses a different formula (Glicko-2) than either chess.com or FIDE.
Lichess ratings are inflated not because of Glicko but because of the player pool. New players start at 1500 ELO in both Lichess and FIDE, but Lichess's pool of "new players" is a lot wider and has a lot more amateurs than FIDE's new players. The amateurs' points ultimately get spread around the player pool while they descend from 1500 to a more realistic rating, inflating the ratings of other players on the way.
I've never played otb, but on the FIDE website, they have a initial rating calculator (https://ratings.fide.com/calc.phtml?page=initial) which seems to depend on your opponents' ratings and your performance, but not on the number 1500
It's a bit old so not sure if this is exactly true anymore or even if their analytics were correct.
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/fide-ratings-vs-che....
But this is rapid rating, not Blitz or bullet, and I only play 45 minutes matches with 45 seconds increment on chess.com (which I think is not actually classical and not rapid, but marked as rapid on chess.com).
I don't do puzzles, study cards or anything, I simply took a couple of opening video courses from Simon Williams on both white and black, and played those exclusively.
Initially I played 15 minutes/10 seconds increment games, several a day, until I felt that I was losing a lot of winning positions only due to time.
Then I increased to 30 minutes, and now 45/45 which is almost a classical format.
I don't think playing short time formats is ideal for learning, I like playing longer ones and really think the games through.
Then analyze each game thoroughly with chess.com post-game analysis.
I only play one game a day, almost every day. Most games end in well less than an hour, but some take close to almost two hours (due to the increment and long end games).
I think like in any game, if you continuously play with opponents of just about your skill level, and you analyze your games to make sure that you are not making the same mistakes again and again, you will improve over time just like with anything.
To minimize rating fluctuations and tilting, playing only one long and well thought out game a day works great and keeps it fun.
I think to keep it fun, it's important not to forget that rating fluctuations are normal and don't mean much. As long as you keep playing and analysing each game, improvement is possible.
i came to the relisation that it actually involes becoming good in a very very big search space by having a lot of experience and being fast in calculating and remembering chess moves.
Especially when i see how many people read up on grand masters, i came up with the theory:
The normal person is running behind or trying to 'just' learn the fast pre found and pre tested moves from a handfull of people who actually played/thought those moves through.
Like being a musician and only doing covers for 30 years while never playing/creating something themselfs.
AI became a tool by 1. no longer needing Grand Masters to find the next level and 2. being accessable to everyone which could create new pockets discovered by AI/through AI (compute power) and being learned individual.
How much real strategy is there for two really good players? Or is it more of an 'he is going for this move, i know this kind of moves and i need to intervine through moves so the opponent gets forced to play my moves'?
Also: Quite impressive the dedication, respect!
Quite the opposite, amateur players play a few moves from a standard opening, and then deviate hugely from the book variations and go into uncharted territory really fast.
And while pro's certainly spend an insane amount of time memorizing openings, chess is far more than rote memorization which you kinda seem to apply.
>i came to the relisation that it actually involes becoming good in a very very big search space by having a lot of experience and being fast in calculating and remembering chess moves.
I wish I was this confident. Remembering chess moves, why didn't I think of that?
Small world, thanks for mentioning it :).
- Castle very early
- Resist taking pieces for no reason. To take is a mistake
- Use your opponent's time to plan your next move
- If you stop hanging pieces you will automatically be >1200
- Save your bishops, bishops > knights in most endgames
- For every hour you spend analyzing your past games your rating will go up by 10
- You won't improve by playing blitz. Go for 15 + 10 time controls
That's funny because I found the opposite to be true if it's a single bishop / knight endgame.
> You won't improve by playing blitz.
It will just take longer. A single five minute game a day over coffee will work, if that's all the time you have for.
No matter what you found, it has been statistically proved that a Bishop (against a Knight), and especially a Bishop pair is stronger than a Knight/Knight or Knight/Bishop .
Bishop pair is clear, of course, but I literally would look for a single knight/bishop ending (where I would have the knight), thinking it gave me the advantage. Maybe it was a placebo effect. Ha! Thanks again!
Also Kaspy confirming here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3uvvA7dyoI (:30 in the video)
If you don't have a move that attacks your opponent and forces them to play defense, develop your least active piece.
Also, learn the King's Indian opening. You can use it as black or white, and it's one of the easiest openings. I also think it's a good opening against beginners, because they make a lot of mistakes against this. So, 1) you'll be able to beat beginners - and winning is always more fun than losing; and 2) you'll learn to watch for your opponents to make mistakes - and that will help you learn to avoid making common mistakes.
[1] Controlling the center of the board and making attacking moves - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5jTMqdYXWM&t=1100s
[2] King's Indian opening - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK0cq6UBt1Y
These two videos got me from ~700 to ~1000 in about a week. And they got me to the point where Chess was actually fun instead of a being a frustrating minefield I tried to navigate until I inevitably made a blunder and self-imploded.
As for realism when it comes to chess, as a (former - covid bleh) competitive league player they absolutely nailed the "feel" of the Chess world for me, better than anything else I've seen - yes they compressed the games and showed players moving far too quickly but that was a necessary compromise - hard to show a 7 hour game in real time as a TV show.
The camaraderie and eccentricities of the Chess world where displayed really well.
Also, using a woman character was a good idea in my opinion, since chess is such a man world.
It's like making a movie where the best 100m sprinter in the world is a Guatemalan woman. Nice story, 0 credibility.
As a tournament player myself (of course, a rather shoddy amateur) I felt the series got the details of tournament play right. The fact that the prodigy was a teenage girl was besides the point.
Their story demonstrates 2 things.
Within an specific limited discipline, "genius" can be manufactured if specialized long training and time is invested since childhood.
Individual variability still matters a lot. Out of all the 3 sisters, Judit was the only who went to become a truly world-class player.
Also, do you categorise the gulf between Polgar and Hou Yifan as a ridiculous margin (about 50 Elo)? Obviously Polgar was better at her peak, stayed there longer, and clearly had a dedication to the game than Hou never seemed interested in, but I think on the level of natural talent they'd actually be close.
Sorry I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
Are you saying that Americans should lose more in film directed at Americans? It's not that it doesn't happen. It's just that it's hard to do. An example that immediately came to mind is the ironically named (for this conversation) show, "The Americans", where the Russians definitely win more than they lose. From Wikipedia:
"The series's final season earned Rhys the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, while Weisberg and co-lead writer Joel Fields won Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series; it was also awarded the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Drama. Additionally, Margo Martindale won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series twice for her performance in the third and fourth seasons. It also became one of the rare drama shows to receive two Peabody Awards during its run."
It's easily my favorite show.
Looping back to Queens Gambit, I think the basic idea is that it's juuuust unrealistic enough without being too unreasonable to take you out of it. It's not unrealistic that Americans can be the best at chess. Hell, an American faced Magnus last world championship for the title and is still world #2. It's also not unrealistic that a Woman could get there as well. Hou Yifan is 84th right now.
But the combination is just unrealistic enough without taking you out of it, which makes it very entertaining.
A documentary about an orphan Russian or Chinese guy who ascends to the top? Might be more realistic, but not a good enough story for a Netflix #1 level of entertainment to a US audience.
[0] https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/11/queens-gambit-a...
Which is kind of weird considering the show did even the comparing the protagonist to Paul Morphy thing that also applied to Fischer.
The book also tackles themes like drug addiction and feminism, but I found the show's take on these mostly pointless and superficial. Her drug addiction is never depicted as a struggle, she performs well drugged as well as sober, more of a comedic air to it than serious affliction.
It's also slightly historically revisionist when claiming there were no female chess clubs in the US back then, when there actually were whole female national championships since the late 1930s. The show also claimed how in the USSR women would never play against men, completely ignoring the history of Nina Alexandrovna Bluket [1], who's life would probably have made for a way more interesting and authentic story than a gender-swapped Bobby Fischer.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Queen%27s_Gambit_(novel)
[1] https://www.chess.com/blog/Spektrowski/pioneers-of-soviet-wo...
To have more objective outlook at “chess prodigy” story it’s interesting to look story of Joshua Waitzkin. He is a great and talented chess player but not at the level of grandmasters. He explained that he didn’t really wanted to “sacrifice” other things in his life to become a grandmaster.
Generally agreed on your post but I don't think I agree with this. You aren't making it to GM without an extreme amount of talent. Training is likely to be required too, but I'd say it's much more likely that an extremely talented but untrained person could make GM vs an not-so-talented person with rigorous training. Basically I'm saying that the vast majority of people would never be able to become a GM regardless of training.
Highly recommended: "The Queen's Gambit", 7-episode miniseries on Netflix.
Anyways, if you're a newer player and want to improve your game fast, this is what I would focus on.
1. Tactics. The vast majority of games between newer players are decided by tactics...someone hanging a piece, falling into a trap, etc. Practice tactics by doing puzzles, reviewing games of strong players with tactical themes. Lichess and Chess.com both have decent collections of tactics puzzles.
2. Don't try to learn a ton of openings. Pick one or two openings for white and black, and focus on them. Don't try to memorize lines, but rather become more familiar with the structures that result out of the openings, what typical objectives for white and black are, etc.
3. Familiarize yourself with endgame play. This is less important than #1 as a newer player, because all the endgame knowledge in the world means nothing if you hang a rook in the first 15 moves. But, it IS still important though, because you will get into endgames with a small advantage (or disadvantage) so you need to be familiar with how to convert that into a win (or hold your position). Rook endgames are especially important since they are generally the most common type of endgame. Lev Alburt has a good book called "Just the Facts" which covers endgame play. There are also puzzles and excercises on lichess and chess.com
4. Probably the fastest way to improve is to actually play games against stronger players than you and have them analyzed or annotated. You can either do this with a computer program, or a stronger human player if youre fortunate enough to know a strong player or have a coach. Lichess and Chess.com both have tools which will analyze your game and point out mistakes, missed opportunities etc. These are very helpful, they will instantly point out key moments in the game so you can see where you (or your opponent) went wrong.
Improvement in chess is really a volume game. The strongest players have played thousands of games and have a good sense and understanding of different positions because they have seen so many of them. They're able to quickly recognize patterns in these positions and devise a plan based on strengths/weaknesses. The best way to sort of develop this sixth sense is to put in the volume and play!
Majority of the games of new players are decided by some stupid blunder. Blitz games do not help improve this area much. Like you said game reviews and puzzles are best.
Thought I recognized that name. He's the kid on which Searching for Bobby Fischer is based.
I think he's spending way too much time on opening theory positional chess, when he'd probably get more bang for his buck drilling more tactics or playing some games with longer time controls.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-e...
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/oct/16/chesss-cheatin...
>> In one chess tournament, five of the top six were disqualified for cheating. In another, the doting parents of 10-year-old competitors furiously rejected evidence that their darlings were playing at the level of the world No 1. And in a third, an Armenian grandmaster booted out for suspicious play accused his opponent of “doing pipi in his Pampers”.
I would say 5% is pretty bad. Assuming there is an advantage to cheating, the higher up the ranks you get the greater the likelihood that you will face an undetected cheat.
I have a analog story that ended up burning my up with my hobby: playing music. I played guitar (acoustic and electric) since I was a teenager, and sometime after I was an adult, I decided to double down to really learn it (as a hobby, since I already had my main career). I set up several hours a week for deliberate practice, started a classic guitar class, tried some Brazilian MPB class. The endgame for me was that I got completely burned out.
After doing that for about 2 years, playing became a big chore for me. One day I just stopped and didn't touch a guitar again for almost 5 years.
It was still very interesting to see how you approached it.
For various reasons, online Elos are inflated by 100+ points if you go above 2500+ or below 1500. A progression from zero to 1750 rating is just as instructive if you assume he went from zero to 1650...
I had been using the game of 2048, but given the random element and how easy the game is, it's just not a great measure anymore. I have recently started a different diet and I want some measurable way of knowing how well my own brain is affected by it.
The only real problem with chess as a measurement is that if you do the online games for example you get cheaters, etc. Does this detriment your ranking or do people generally find this not to be a problem?
It is fun. For chess in contrast to Tetris, there is even a good chance for it to stay fun -- Tetris is a bit too simplistic for that, I think.
I am however missing that you can't start from higher levels than 9 (thus forcing you to replay boring bits) and it is missing the modern Tetris features like holding and hard-drops. Somewhat surprising nobody implemented modern Tetris for the classic GB yet.
The most useful resource for beginner I found was "Chess King Learn" series of apps. The ones with beginner tactics puzzles - capturing pieces were invaluable. Those are simple drills, but when you do them you will be able to "spot" opportunities without effort. That made massive difference in my play.
That and Magnus trainer. I did not paid for subscription, but there are exercises focused on training your imagination, pathfinding and other similar skills.
Lichess people recommend is great for online play, but the above are much better for learning.
An analogy: I started with 52 as regional table tennis player. In Saxony. I started with 1150 or so, and am now at 1300. We cannot play that many games, around 4 per month, so we cannot raise our points that much as in chess. But other countries do have a trick, and therefore have much higher ELO points. They added their self organized games in so-called "<sponsor>-pokal" leagues, which can be played daily around the district. You can easily organize your oiíwn tournament with the Swiss system, which guarantees time-bounded end times. You are sure that the tournament is finished by 10pm. And most countries honor these tournaments points, so you can easily raise up your ranking.
But my country saxony doesn't like this idea because there are folks who would cheat the system. They would loose on purpose in such tournaments to be able to stay in the official lower ranked leagues, where they will win more easily against lower ranked players. They would abuse the system. I'm pretty sure professional chess players in the lower ranks would also like to play for his club in much lower leagues, so that wins are easier. Only to get into international tournaments or the highest leagues you need the points. Many are also loosing on purpose at the end of the season to be able stay in the lower ranks, if the remaining games are not important anymore.
Eg when I played in the US I would beat the 1600 players. In Saxony no chance at all.
I wonder if this is because the opponents might have been drinking.
For me at least, I know that even two beers has a noticeable effect when I do lichess puzzles.
Path A is different from B in term of ratings progress for any given number of hours played/practiced. Playing Blitz. Playing Classic. Having a coach. Self coaching. Analyzing games. Tactics. Openings... Some combination of these will build skill more effectively than other. You can intentionally select an effective path, if you want/choose to.
Being just a game/hobby for most people, it's perfectly rational to choose a slower rate of improvement. I play mostly bullet... no analysis/study/etc. It's fun, but not much progress. That's a choice, conscious or otherwise.
I think a lot of people, in retrospect, might characterize the intentionally progressive path as too demanding on time. This is often illusionary. The X curve is hours dedicated, whether that's 10 per year or 1000. Skill progression is not more demanding of time, but it can demand more "energy".
This is important because we do dedicate our time to something, inevitably. We spend a lot of time on "skilled" activities in the sense that it's possible to improve at them.. How many hours do you spend writing emails? Writing is skilled work. Programming, obviously. etc. We cook. We have hobbies. If you spend 30m per day with your kids on homework, that's teaching. Teaching is a skilled task. Gardening. Home improvement. It is possible to intentionally get better at these skills, if we choose to. We're already spending the time.
Even passive activities can be (arguably) skilled. "Film appreciation" is also kind of skilled. You can learn to appreciate the shots, composition. Each movie you watch can extend your understanding of filmography.
There's something kind of magical about and elo rating. It's a nice objective number that changes every time we play. Imagine having an elo rating for your cooking/writing/programming/etc.
I have a paid Chess.com account (same username as my HN handle), but still lack the confidence to really engage a human opponent 1 on 1. Maybe next year, once I have really got opening books and endgame theory down pat. I still make too many blunders in those parts.
I've also set out to improve my chess, somewhat casually, over the last year. About an 1800 rapid player on Lichess (~1500 on Chess.com), their ratings differ.
As far as openings, I like the courses on chessable.com.
The only viable way to play that I can think of is to embrace that blunders will happen. For me that seems to be too hard, so I don't play anymore.
The other pastime I used to engage in is Go. It's a good alternative to chess because for a long while you can choose to improve on your high-level strategy vs detailed tactics and playouts. At some point, I suppose it becomes like playing a few chess games that leak into each other.
Discussed on HackerNews here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9300017
When talking about drilling with Anki, the author notes that they show the position where they made a mistake. When learning a game (Chess, Go, computer games) how do you identify where that mistake is? How do you develop the skill to recognize where the mistakes are?
A sudden swing from +1.4 to -4 means there was a blunder.
You set the ply shallow because no beginner is seeing more than 8 moves ahead, most masters can’t in most positions.
Fritz and scid etc also have mark tactical exercises modes that so the above automatically.
I read that kind of argument all over the place in the chess community, and that really strikes me as some kind of misplaced elitism.
ELO can be seen as a glorified indicator of where you stand in the distribution of a pool of players. Math aside, the ELO is a system that allows for the distribution of scores to evolve incrementally as matches are played.
All in all, if you want to interpret an ELO, you can always refer to the corresponding centile.
With an ELO of 1500 you are in the ~80 percentile of your pool (USCF). That places you as better than 80% of players (that are doing tournaments).
This requires a lot of work, and you would definitely not be a "regular amateur player".
The center of the distribution should be around 1200 ELO at the 50th centile.
Imagine what that would mean to be in the top 20% of all basket ball players that play tournaments.
I bet 2 years of daily effort and study would get most people to 1500.
How many people play for years without actual dedication, or join tournaments before they're at the 1500 level, or quit when they keep losing a lot to higher level people in tournaments, or whatever?
My definition of "dedicated" probably removes at least 50+% of the pool right away.
Bullies instinctively realize that there's an unusually smart person in their tribe who is wasting their gift on fruitless endeavors, thus reducing the survival chances of the tribe.
Of course, our modern society can afford to have smart people play chess. However, there is no evidence that chess skill transfers to other areas. Therefore, until proven otherwise, developing chess skill should be perceived as frivolous, just like developing skill in any other less prestigious game.
Chess can be used as a means of showing that any skill can be learned [1].
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200507/the-grand...
If bullying was simply dominating behavior, it should be generally directed at anyone, yet it more commonly affects the stereotypical nerd.
In any case, this isn't to give credit to bullies. There is no credit to be given for behavior that I consider innate.
> If bullying was simply dominating behavior, it should be generally directed at anyone, yet it more commonly affects the stereotypical nerd.
But then you risk a coalition that will shun you. A nerd is perceived as 'the weakest' of the tribe, this enables the rest of the tribe to bully the nerd by proxy, you give them somebody to look down on, without the risk of the nerd retaliating.
What makes you so certain about it? Is this not simply what you would like to believe, because you desire some form of cosmic justice?