Hacker News Reader

Comment by judofyr | Hacker News Reader

This is a very factual article explaining how to become a grandmaster, but I feel like it needs a disclaimer:

I know that Hacker News likes the idea that if you work hard enough then anything is possible [especially when there's so many easily available resources], but when it comes to becoming a grandmaster it has to be said that it's painstakingly hard. If you actually intend to become a grandmaster you'll essentially have to make your full life be devoted to chess for years. We're talking about making it your full-time job for at least 10 years. Yes, that's how hard it is. Today there are countless of IMs (the title just below GM) that has played since they were small kids, won a bunch of tournaments when they were teenagers and yet they realize that becoming a GM is so much work that it's not worth it.

If you like chess, then play chess! It's a fun game with an amazing depth and a huge player base. But if you're just starting out: Please forget about having "becoming a grandmaster" as a goal.

View on HN

There is a great quote of Paul Morphy

"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life."

Only with age I can appreciate how true that quote is. There was an article that came up not long ago about GMs selling games for others to earn their GM norms. And the sad truth is being GM in chess doesn't put a food on the table.

The very peak of the players can make a living some as coaches or streamers but not everyone can be a 'winner'.

>> make a living some as coaches or streamers

And in those jobs being good at chess is only part of the equation. You have to be personable, someone that people aspire to. Physical attractiveness is also never a bad thing in the world of streaming. I once chatted with concert violinist. She was not happy about trends in the soloist community. "The moment I saw an exposed midrift in a concert hall, I knew I would never be a soloist."

> Physical attractiveness is also never a bad thing in the world of streaming.

That's life in general. Even at my company when choosing photos of people to profile to for recruitment posts on LinkedIn, it's pretty clear they lean towards attractive people.

I also notice that with Company Profile page, where who they show is not really indicative of who comprises the company.

>That's life in general. Even at my company when choosing photos of people to profile to for recruitment posts on LinkedIn, it's pretty clear they lean towards attractive people.

There have been several studies on this. Apparently being an attractive woman is a net negative when it comes to being hired by other women (6% fewer callbacks than the same resume with less attractive photo attached in one particular study).

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1705244

> Physical attractiveness is also never a bad thing

I used to work with an ex-military guy (extremely bright, hard working, excellent leader, etc. etc.).

He was about 64 inches (1.63 meters) tall, balding, and not the handsomest fella. He told me point blank: "I was never going to become a general or achieve any other extremely high rank simply because I didn't have 'the look' or physical stature of a general."

Photos have been a big part of promotions in the US armed forces. There has been pushback in recent years, iirc the marines abandoned photos last year, but you still have to "look the part" and attach headshots to many promotion applications. I've seen people pay actual money ($$$) for professional photographers to get an edge over their peers.

Compare Canada where, beyond not having photos, even gender-based pronouns have been removed from performance reports in order that reviewers not risk gender bias.

How do descriptions of physical attributes work? Possibly by just giving the candidate's percentile rank by sex?

That would be gender-blind but also ignores the fact that absolute scale actually matters in war sometimes - running speed, ability to lift and load heavy tank shells for a few hours etc.

One might argue that actual physical strength doesn't matter much. One way to check this claim would be to look at recently granted medals for valor, and see how many of them are related to absolute (not relative) physical prowess.

Physical attributes are not particularly important wrt promotions in the military; you just need to pass that baseline fitness bar to not be flunked out on medical.

Indeed, the higher up you go, the more your job becomes about leading and the less it becomes about individual feats of strength. I think you're thinking about the military a little bit wrong here -- this isn't the Roman era (when centurions led from the front and had to be legitimate physical badasses). Being higher up in the military nowadays is a lot more akin to being a paper pusher director at a company.

>> baseline fitness bar to not be flunked out on medical.

Medical and fitness are different things. Lots of people can pass the fitness tests but still flunk out for medical reasons. Diabetics. People who get cancer. Failing eyesight. Sever allergies. It is very possible to ace the fitness tests while still failing the medical.

When I was a contractor (Air Force) in 2000s, I certainly didn't notice a looks difference.

If there was one, there was at least a ton of exceptions to the rule, male and female.

EDIT: Though I didn't work with any generals. There are only several hundred U.S. generals, and that number is capped.

I'm not so sure. Attractiveness is a good quality if you want a claim to power through networking, but it's not the only way.

Take Thatcher or Merkel. Both women for whom this arguably matters even more, not attractive, and not even coming from a background that lends itself naturally to climbing hierarchies. Kohl, Merkel's mentor used to often refer to her as his "Mädchen", ('girl', but diminutive, only used for children) and she basically back-stabbed him and took control of the entire party.

There's definitely ways for unattractive or more generally, people who nobody expects to rise to power to do exactly that.

What's the general story about Merkel's rise?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/01/quiet-german

This New Yorker profile from a few years ago is a long read but very much worth it if you want to get a overview. The beginning recapitulates a lot about her childhood so you might want to skip that part if you're only interested in her career.

I think Alexandra Botez manages this kind of thing well— obviously she's young and attractive, and there's a certain amount of goofing around that goes on (her younger sister is a co-host), but overall the channel is pretty tightly focused on chess games, commentary, etc. And she's certainly a very serious player herself and has specifically spoken out on sexism issues in tournaments and the larger chess community, eg:

https://www.insider.com/how-chess-was-more-sexist-than-its-p...

There is certainly sexism built into the rating system, as woman titles require 200 less Elo points to achieve. https://www.chess.com/article/view/how-to-become-a-chess-gra...

If the titles required the same Elo to achieve then there wouldn't be a point to have separate titles. The female-only titles are useful to encourage women to compete imo.

They're different titles though. Grandmaster (GM) != Woman Grandmaster (WGM). Judit Polgár, for example, peaked at an Elo of over 2,700, so she easily qualified for Grandmaster (requirement of 2,500).

Similarly, a Brigadier General is not the same rank as a General, despite some commonality in word choice between the two ranks.

Well OK, but it doesn’t explain why there’s a WGM. There isn’t a “woman sergeant” position, and we’d definitely take offense at a company defining separate “senior engineer” and “woman senior engineer” positions.. so why accept the condescension of WGM?

Not all female players do:

"These titles are sometimes criticized and some female players elect not to take them, preferring to compete for open titles. For example, Grandmaster Judit Polgár, in keeping with her policy of playing only open competitions, never took a women's title."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIDE_titles#Women's_titles

I'm curious what would constitute managing well or not well in your opinion. She certainly uses it to her advantage, while nonetheless being a very strong player.

I'm not a regular follower so I don't have a lot of history to base it on, but based on the streams I've caught, it just seems well balanced— like the presentation is definitely not "sexy" in the way of, like, a hot tub streamer, but it's also not completely locked down and soulless— there's personality and shenanigans in the way of a radio host or commentator, and also a lot of great chess-playing.

Another good example is Xyla Foxlin, who walks a similar line with a YouTube engineering/maker channel and has been very explicit about her approach: "I refuse to “act more like a man” in order to achieve legitimate and respectable success in the professional world. I happen to be someone who embraces her femininity and feels powerful in cute shoes and sparkly makeup, and I don’t see how any of that makes me less of an engineer." [0]

[0]: https://medium.com/1517/beauty-and-the-invisible-beast-c2a8d...

> Physical attractiveness is also never a bad thing in the world of streaming

You mean like this? https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/715141

This is why my grandfather never played chess with me and actively discouraged it - "too many great minds are wasted on chess".

We always instead played checkers, for real - always encouraging and teaching, but no patronizing wins for me - it was a long time until I could actually take a few games. Great memories, and he was gone too soon.

I did play some in HS & college, very much enjoyed some intense games, and still think it was good advice.

The Paul Morphy quote is spot on, save maybe for great champions like Garry Kasparov, who also went to to greater things. I suppose the same could be said about many pursuits where only a few get to truly earn a living, such as acting, music, sports - it becomes what you make of it but perhaps chess is a bit more extremely consuming?

Learning and playing chess is great for you, but probably only up to the point of being competitive.

Mid/high level players to progress up are in large degree forced to study positions memorise lines etc. To large extend its a competitive memorisation game.

This is natural step in high level chess, its like a precopmutated hash table, the more upfront work you can precomputate the less time you need to spend over the board on that move.

I play chess for fun and as casual hobby, and i think its a great way to exercise your brain. Thinking about board and evaluation positions. It translates into real world too.

Its also one of the last few things i can do and not get distracted by anything else.

> but not probably only up to the point

I'm really struggling to parse this. Can you reword it?

my bad, the 'not' was an accident.

I suspect you are right about the strategy and point at which it reaches a point of diminishing returns. Your likening the memorization of huge numbers of opening and mid-game sequences to precomputed hash tables seems spot-on...

This phrase from Morphy and your story about your grandfather reminds me of this "Maybe I can win a pawn" scene: https://youtu.be/pOzaIcZwpwQ?t=60

This is what the mentor in the movie means: some become good, some foolishly pursue nothing. The game can be addictive. But to be great is the rarest thing.

This reminds me of a quote from Raymond Chandler, describing a chess game:

> ..seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armor, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.

He must not have had much experience with quant desks at trading firms.

Chandler did not. He died in 1959.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Chandler

I thought "advertising agency" was referencing that the best minds of our generation are thinking about how to make people click ads at google/facebook.

I guess it was always a thing even back then?

Possible. But I think more likely is that it was a good frame of reference for him as he was an executive at an advertising agency for quite some time.

I don't think that's correct. Outside of writing, his career was spent in an oil company.

I think he meant that the best minds of his generation were devising advertising campaigns and writing advertising copy for laundry soap and canned vegetables. Advertising was more text-centric then, and talented writers like Chandler could make more money writing ads than books.

The quote is from 1940.

> elaborate a waste of human intelligence

Hmm… any way we can turn chess into a proof of work algorithm? xD

Yes, it proves humans work.

Chess is to humans as Bitcoin is to computers (Chess : Humans :: Bitcoin : Computers). Except humans stick up for the wastefulness of both, and computers stay silent on the matter.

You know little about either chess or bitcoin. The first enables self knowledge, molds character, and helps develop a mental model transferable to other pursuits; the second is the first iteration of computer money.

>The first enables self knowledge, molds character, and helps develop a mental model transferable to other pursuits;

That's what quickly got me out of chess, when it was me playing with my brother as a kid it was about thinking really hard and trying to explore as many options as I could - it was really about who can think faster and outsmarting eachother since we only knew the rules.

When I decided to look into chess I found out it was about learning openings, recognising patterns, traps, etc. I didn't feel any smarter learning those, I just learned more about chess. You can draw up silly strategic methapores with any activity, but chess does seem to have that Sun Tzu status.

I kindly disagree. It may appear that chess is a memoization game, but when or if you want to become a master of the game , you'll notice that rote learning will not take you there.

You do need to understand phases of the game, set up strategy, estimate your position, know when to attack or to defend, and have confidence in your technique.

Mind you, that is only for the plain master title (FIDE or even a national master). Grandmasters are a whole new level in comparison, aliens.

But this wasn't my critique. Chess strategy is again chess specific, the things that translate are going to be superficial. You can draw parallels between many domains, like there are phases, strategy and coordination in many competitive online games, and I'd argue that the cooperative nature translates better to most real world than chess.

Chess has this poetic image of playing around with kings, queens and pawns that lets artist paint grandiose metaphors about real world, but at the end of the day spending a bunch of time on chess is going to make you good at chess, doubt it will do much better than any other similar hobby for transferable skills.

Kasparov wrote a book called „How Live Imitates Chess“ that tries to prove you wrong.

Agreed. Taleb coined this the “ludic fallacy”:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludic_fallacy

“… the focus on those pure, well-defined, and easily discernible objects like triangles, or more social notions like friendship or love, at the cost of ignoring those objects of seemingly messier and less tractable structures.”

Any hobby falls to the same criticism.

Which is exactly my point, chess is just another game but it has this social status where it's a sign of intelligence or whatnot. The whole thread is in response to OP making such claims.

Learning doesn't make you smart, but it can makes you wiser.

but studying hard topics can teach you thinking tactics for analyzing problems and looking for thr big picture.

>> the second is the first iteration of computer money.

I mean... I am charitably trying to find interpretation/context in which this is meaningfully true, and failing. In which way is bitcoin more "computer money" than any other money these days?

I purchase things, pay my bills, obtain payment, invest, and do all my transactions at least 95% digitally, with "computer money".

Uncharitably, I could call Bitcoin "that, but less practical / more wasteful". Charitably, I could say "There are specific goals/circumstances where Bitcoin has benefits".

But I feel it's decades late to be "first iteration of computer money", unless there's some squinting and extremely specific ad-hoc defining that I haven't imagined. Even the "Money" part (as practical transactional currency) is these days increasingly less relevant,by proponents and pundits alike, as opposed to "investment vehicle" or "storage of value".

(as for chess, I don't know; I gave up when I realized how much memorization, as opposed to developing of understanding, was involved to get much better; it may indeed enable self-knowledge and mold character at some level beyond the ones I've achieved. Therefore, I cannot contribute to discussion on whether Chess is practical/efficient/meaningful way to grow those characteristics - i.e. hammering rocks for 5,000hrs probably grows character at some level but may not be sufficiently practical/efficient to matter. I respect it like a do Golf - it takes immense skill, dedication, and investment to develop it to a high level, and world-class players are incredibly good at it; but it's not a skill I desire to grow myself anymore).

"Computer money" isn't a great term to describe the difference indeed. Rather, some call it the first digital scarcity, or sound money.

Emphasis is on how minting, the creation of new money, is strictly enforced by the protocol (software), and decentralized. Further, it is hard-capped.

As such, it's money that is born digitally, natively. This extends to ownership, which is just a bunch of private keys.

Digital scarcity and sound money cannot be the same, as scarcity and money are at odds with each other.

No they're not. Money is supposed to be scarce and has been for the vast majority of the history of civilization.

But let's agree to disagree there. Even then, money has multiple roles: unit of account, store of value.

Currently, Bitcoin plays the role of storing value. Like a savings account, or "digital gold". Not for payments. It might play a payment role in the future on layer 2, or it might not. Too soon to tell.

> the second is the first iteration of computer money.

The first iteration of computer money is called 'regular money'. Nobody uses cash anymore, we all use computer money.

> computers stay silent on the matter.

I don’t know, their fans complain quite loudly.

What an utterly moronic take

Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments, and start following the site guidelines? You've been doing this kind of thing repeatedly and we ban that sort of account. It's not what this site is for, as you'll see if you review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Funny part about the Morphy quote is that he would probably waste less of his life had he actually stick to chess.

Eh, there was nothing really for him to do in the Chess world. At that time period there wasn't really professional chess like there is today, he could have made a living gambling at it essentially but he would have considered that wasting his life.

Become a history teacher and open up a chess club. Organize tournaments and write books. There’s a lot he could do beyond “professional chess” as it’s known now.

Paul Morphy lived in the 19th century.

There weren't really academic chess clubs around, and he became an attorney so he could have done that rather than being a history teacher. Likewise tournaments and demand for books wasn't really a thing in his lifetime.

Reminds me of Michael Jordan abandoning basketball because he became too good at it, and realizing he wasn't that good at other sports.

> The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life

Wasted in what sense? Aren’t we all playing made up games and solving artificial problems at the end of the day? Most GMs probably aren’t doing it to make money, they get a similar thrill from it as, say, a mathematician gets from understanding and solving deep math problems.

> Most GMs probably aren’t doing it to make money, they get a similar thrill from it as, say, a mathematician gets from understanding and solving deep math problems.

Very apt analogy. Most math faculty members in my department stopped being productive in the last third of their career. After a while, it just gets old. Proving yet another theorem no longer excites them.

At least they collect a decent paycheck, though.

Most faculty also teach as well, their paychecks for most part are well earned.

The reason the contributions usually drop for mathematicans is less to do with losing interest and more that they simple don't have the mental capacity they did in their 20's and 30s into the 50s .

Maths is very tough field to do research in.

The comment is from the world champion of 1850s . Being professional back then was considered equivalent to gambling. Professional sports or hobbies wasn't thing till early to mid 20th century. The early Olympics even had amateur only rules.

There is more to life than being a chess player or a mathematican. His point is more to do focusing/obsessing on a single narrow subject, given morphy's own experience I would say he is more than qualified to make that comment.

I have to say I don't really like this quote. The first part smacks of superficiality i.e. learn chess enough to be able to show off in polite society. The second part I think simply denotes a misunderstanding of what playing chess well means. You can play chess well without being a GM.

In my family I had/have two people who plaid chess well (2000-2300 range) without wasting their lives in any way. They held full time jobs, had families and enjoyed the game at a pretty serious level. If anything chess helped them stay mentally active and engaged well into their 90's.

The point is it exponentially harder to break the 2500 / 2600/ 2700 barriers . It is hard work.

The reason it is hard work is because beyond a point the preparation is a lot about memorizing and remembering a lot of lines variations not improving on your understanding or theory. That's also why older you grow it is harder to be at the top, understanding is not diminished at 40+, however memorizing abilities are.

You will have to understand Paul morphy story to understand to why he said something like that.

He was the world best by a good distance and he quit playing at 22. He had struggles and was consumed by it. After spending most of your formative years and not finding the meaning in the life despite having won pretty much everything can be life altering. He is known as the pride and sorrow of chess with good reason.

It's true I didn't know about Morphy when I made my comment, I read on Wikipedia afterwards.

In context the quote has different connotations. However, having taken it at face value, I stand by my comment.

Nothing in the Morphy quote explicitly addresses the technicalities of becoming a world class chess player.

In general playing chess well means something else to the general public than to a GM level player. My comment was made having the former interpretation in mind - Morphy was obviously talking from his (very different) point of view.

You took a quote out of context, then admitted it later.

And yet you still claim that your point is correct if quote is taken out of context.

Its shifting goalpost fallacy.

I didn't take a quote out of context, the context was not provided. There is no a priori expectation that somebody should read a Wikipedia page to find out the missing context behind a quote.

> Its shifting goalpost fallacy.

There's no fallacy here. I have my opinion, I stand by it regardless of the quote's context. I understand that Morphy didn't mean what I thought he meant. It's just that my opinion on the usefulness of chess is still the same.

Yes, without knowing the world of chess or morphy it is difficult to understand the quote.

In his defense I don't think morphy intended for people outside the chess world as a general statement.

Indeed. I didn't mean to attack Morphy, I just interpreted the quote on its own, thinking it was made by some random person (in different places in the thread people had quoted various writers etc. not necessarily great chess players).

> That's also why older you grow it is harder to be at the top, understanding is not diminished at 40+, however memorizing abilities are.

I'd like to see some evidence of that.

However, what does decrease with age is physical stamina. And classical chess tournaments, oddly, take a lot more physical stamina than you might think.

Counterintuitively, the whole faster/blitz chess systems have been good for older chess players.

There is evidence of decreasing memory with age, many brain function related diseases like Alzheimer higher risk for older people. Senility and memory loss are commonly related.

Also certain types of information is more easier learnt when you are younger like multiple languages. I believe there is research on learning pedagogies for senior citizens having different approaches than children factoring in the ability to learn quickly.

Most mathematicans and many other scientists achieve the peek before 40, while there are exceptions like Euler or gauss it is not common.

Even in tech you find a lot more younger workers than other more stable technical fields as the learning curve is recurring and steeper than in other fields

I wouldn't disagree there is more physical stamina required for tournaments, however I doubt it so difficult for players in their 40s/50s cannot manage it without loosing competitive advantage.

Tangentially related but in physics, see Ettoe Majorana's case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Majorana (see also italian version for a complete bio)

From physics genius to dissapearing one day with no known fate.

> The second part I think simply denotes a misunderstanding of what playing chess well means.

The quote is from Paul Morphy, the best player of the 19th century. He practically invented playing chess well. And he hated it, he felt he should have become a lawyer and did something useful with his life.

He did; he never played chess competitively past his 20's and was a lawyer until he died.

+1, Paul Morphy might have been the most fascinating and influencing chess player of all time.

When he was still actively playing, he seemed almost unbeatable, and nobody understood why. Somehow Morphy intuitively knew when to start an attack and when he did, it magically always worked out, while other top players at that time often saw their attacks turn into nothing and would soon lose afterwards. It took a decade until an a dedicated studier of his game, Wilhelm Steinitz, figured out the logic behind it. His theory of positional play changed the way people looked at chess and meant the start of the modern chess era.

Morphy himself didn't live to see this, after quitting chess he became increasingly schizophrenic and eventually died penniless and alone.

> The quote is from Paul Morphy, the best player of the 19th century.

The point was taken, see my comment below. I didn't know the context behind the quote, I understand that Morphy didn't mean it the way I took it.

Nevertheless, I think that under the general interpretation of what it means to know chess well (which is surely different from Morphy's), I stand by my idea that knowing chess well can be a positive thing.

Sounds like the disagreement is just about what is required for "playing chess well". If we raise the bar to 2500+ maybe you will agree?

> Sounds like the disagreement is just about what is required for "playing chess well".

I think so. I'm getting a lot of flak over it though :-<

> If we raise the bar to 2500+ maybe you will agree?

I can't say. I do have an acquaintance who is at ~2600 level who is also a well adapted guy. He's not a full time player anymore, though.

I have no opinion on whether chess performance at a GM level is bad for you. All I wanted to say was that you can get pretty far with chess (I think a level of 2000-2300 qualifies as pretty far for the general population) without it affecting your life negatively.

There are currently only 267 players who have 2600+ Fide rating. That's extremely high bar. Are you sure your acquaintance is one of them?

2600 rating on sites like lichess or chess24 is much more plausible, it corresponds to roughly 2150-2300 fide rating.

> Are you sure your acquaintance is one of them?

Yes. He's a pretty well known Australian player, not sure how active he is anymore though. Now has a full time academic career.

Edit:

After verifying on the FIDE website, I see his ranking is around 2500 now. He is a GM though.

Hm, there seems to be just 2 Australian players with more than 2550 rating (3 if we take 2549!), and all of them have played rated games recently.

(Two of them are from exUSSR, and the last one has a surname that sounds Chinese)

See my edit. I just don't feel comfortable dropping his name here. I wanted to make a general point about my impression of the impact of playing chess on people, I don't want to turn this into some personal thing.

Well the pool of 2500+ players is significantly larger. It just immediately raised my attention because 2600 is superrare, and prior to 1990s only select few ever had a higher rating: it is really something special.

(Also, verifying the plausibility of statements by internet users is a personal hobby of mine, hope you understand)

Googling "Australian chess grandmasters" I get the following list: Walter Browne, Max Illingworth, Darryl Johansen, Temur Kuybokarov, Moulthun Ly, Ian Rogers, David Smerdon, Anton Smirnov. The guy I'm talking about is on the list, I won't give the exact name.

> verifying the plausibility of statements by internet users is a personal hobby of mine, hope you understand

https://xkcd.com/386/ not sure it's the healthiest hobby, but I guess I understand.

Can you recommend a biography on Morphy?

> In my family I had/have two people who plaid chess well (2000-2300 range) without wasting their lives in any way.

Although seemingly not so far away by sheer number, the 2000-2300 elo range is worlds apart from 2500+ (GM) levels, in terms of how much effort (and talent) is required.

The quote is attributed to Paul Morphy, World Champion of chess. Playing chess well meant grandmaster level for him.

The Wikipedia section about his abandonment of chess is tragic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Morphy#Abandonment_of_che...).

> Although seemingly not so far away by sheer number, the 2000-2300 elo range is worlds apart from 2500+ (GM) levels

I know that. My point was that a score of 2000-2300 can still qualify as knowing chess well. Didn't know Morphy was a top level player when I made the comment.

"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." - Paul Morphy

Frighteningly apropos

EDIT: After becoming the greatest chessmaster of his time, Morphy retired from chess at 22. He then had a rejected marriage proposal, failed legal practice, and died at age 47.

"After becoming the greatest chessmaster of his time, Morphy retired from chess at 22. He then had a rejected marriage proposal, failed legal practice, and died at age 47."

Put another way, after abandoning chess at 22, he lived another 25 years, fell in love, and was given wide latitude to live a life of comfort and pursuing his passions owing to his family's wealth. Unfortunately he developed something akin to paranoid schizophrenia before the world knew how to effectively treat it.

Really hard to sum up an entire lifetime in a couple sentences. Pointing out only a few bad things is just as misleading as only pointing out a few good ones.

Fair, just emphasizing the similarities to his quote.

You just bounced me back from a momentary bit of depression.

And apparently at his law practice "clients" would come in, but just ask to play chess.

How much of a life did you waste if you were "the greatest chessmaster of his time" at 22. I have heard worse tales of misspent youth.

> "The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life."

A long time ago, someone characterised chess as a DOS on the mind.

To put it more succinctly, "Good at chess, bad at life."

There are certainly some negative examples. But "The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." is way too harsh imo. You learn dozens of things that help you in life & business as well: -pushing yourself to the limit -how to learn best -how to get back on track after defeat and much more. For me, getting the GM title was sort of a life school. I'll profit from the journey my whole life.

The oppurtunity cost is huge though. That level of dedication, focus, and intellect applied to a productive endeavor like science, technology, or business is likely to push science forward or create millions of dollars of value.

Hikaru says becoming a GM to like getting two PhDs.

If studying and playing tons of chess very well brings you joy, by all means go for it. The wasted life part seems very harsh and judgy.

Sure, the oppurtunity cost is big. And I'm not saying it is the best way to put out value in the world.

Two PhDs sounds like a lot. After all, most GMs get the title before their twenties. But such comparisons are very hard anyway. But it is also possible to get the title while pursuing another career path, you don't have to focus 100% on chess.

As you say, the wasted life part is way too harsh and based on only some madly crazy examples in chess history.

Paul Morphy also played at a time when chess was much less respected than it is today. You couldn't make a living off chess and it was viewed similar to gambling.

Even if you’re willing to devote 10 years of your life to chess you will not become a grandmaster unless you’re starting out as a child. You might be some kind of Ramanujan level chess prodigy, but those are rare these days and in any case You would find out quickly if you had that degree of talent. The accessibility of chess databases and engines that even the world champions of yore did not have means that anyone with a smartphone can train at the highest level. The best Ballerinas start dancing quite young, the greatest Chess Players have to start even younger. The case of the Polgar Sisters [1]is quite instructive. So even if your ambitions to become a GM might be doomed, you’re Children might just realize what you never will. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/László_Polgár

On "The Man vs. The Machine"

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-man-vs-the-machine-...

I really admire Laszlo Polgar, and I agree that everybody can be raised a genius, but there is a caveat in it too - it takes a lot of effort on part of parents to groom children that way. Maybe it's easier than to become a chess GM, but in practice, lot more effort than most people are willing to (or even can) afford.

With Olympics going on, this is very relevant. China has a training camp to dominate all aspects of the Olympics and training at young age is absolutely crucial.

https://youtu.be/8-OGKGmxSbw

Thank you so much for sharing László Polgár! I have not heard of him before - I love his work now!

I believe his claim: if we tried, we could turn "any healthy newborn" into "a genius".

László Polgár raised his children focusing on chess. His two daughters became the best and second-best female chess players in the world.

He had three daughters, the youngest was "only" an IM, but one of her tournament results was so astonishing people still refer to it as "the sack of Rome". ( https://www.chess.com/blog/damafe/the-sack-of-rome-magistral...).

Sofia is the middle daughter - reportedly the most talented.

Judith being the youngest had that kill instinct at an early age.

The sibling dynamic is something I did not appreciate until I had kids of my own.

I feel like there's a bit of irony in using the word "talent" in light of what László Polgár's work was attempting to demonstrate.

Curious about what sibling dynamics you've observer.

I'm the oldest child, and my youngest sibling definitely doesn't have, "that kill instinct".

> I believe his claim: if we tried, we could turn "any healthy newborn" into "a genius".

I don't. Intelligence is partially heritable, which is also the problem with his experiment. He was himself a leading intellectual, the probability that his daughters will inherit his high intelligence is pretty good. (it's not that much known about the mother, but I assume he married someone with above average intelligence as well).

I agree that intelligence is partially heritable. But there is also "regression to the mean" - where, for example, we should expect children of taller parents to be taller than average, but often not as tall as their parents.

There is likely tremendous potential that we as a society waste by not providing resources and opportunities for and and encouragement of better education at earlier stages of life.

Personally, I learned to read by 3 years old, but not because I was a prodigy -- but because my mom spent numerous hours encouraging me and building in me a love of it. I am confident more than 50% of children can learn to read by age 5 - meanwhile in the US we don't expect that kind of success until after a few years of schooling.

Susan "merely" became women's world champion. Judit didn't bother playing in women's events, was at one time #7 in the world, and is considered by far the strongest female player of all time. No-one else has come anywhere near the top 10.

In comparison, Hou Yifan, the 2nd strongest female ever, women's world champion at the age of 16 (!), was #59 in the world at her peak rating in March 2015, and is now #81. (Although she's been busy with university studies the last few years)

Judit is still very involved in chess, and is an excellent online commentator. e.g.

Norway Chess 2020 with Kramnik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5h-lj6z8x0

2020/21 Candidates, Round 11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVsAfGhoeWk

See "Women's Highest Ever" rating table on the right: https://2700chess.com/women

> Even if you’re willing to devote 10 years of your life to chess you will not become a grandmaster unless you’re starting out as a child.

Well that's bullshit.

The main reasons adults don't start chess and reach grandmaster levels at the same rate as those starting as children is the lack of free time and the lack of desire to put in the effort. Those two things eliminates the vast vast vast vast majority of adults, but it's not a factor in your hypothetical.

If some adult wants to spend 10 years of their life mastering chess, and didn't have to worry about work, life, dating, children, etc, they'd have about the same chance as a child of becoming a Grandmaster eventually. The chance is still extremely low for each, of course.

Surely neuroplasticity is a factor as well.

Maybe. But it's not a significant enough factor to say "you will not become a grandmaster unless you’re starting out as a child".

I'd wager that free time (and overall lack of responsibilities) is the vast vast vast vast majority of what factors into children excelling at chess.

Am I a bit off when I say "they'd have about the same chance as a child", all else the same? Maybe. But it's certainly closer to reality than the original post I responded to.

> I'd wager that free time (and overall lack of responsibilities) is the vast vast vast vast majority of what factors into children excelling at chess.

I don't agree, but I cannot prove my position. It's an interesting question that also applies to other fields (music etc.). My opinion is that when a child starts a certain activity at a young age, that activity "burns" its patterns into their brain like a language. I see that effect with one of my kids: although we started learning to play an instrument at the same time (and I can guarantee you with 100% certainty that he didn't practice more than I in terms of number of hours), his way how he handles the instrument and the music is completely different from mine: completely natural (like a mother tongue), recognizing patterns without needing to think about them,... I am certainly not the first who made this observation. The question is why chess should be different.

It certainly seems difficult to prove either side here :). I think I just trigger when someone says something so definitive like "you can't become a grandmaster if you start as an adult".

I'm one who has excelled in a handful of hobbies to pretty high levels while holding down a day job. Started golf at 23 and 4 years later I'm a low-single digit handicap. Started skiing around the same time and I'm working up do doing backflips off jumps, while already being able to do several tricks off jumps, slide rails, and drop moderate sized cliffs.

I'm not trying to brag, and I'm not saying that those are even extraordinary or comparable to anything professional. But I've had people legit tell me that the only chance I have of being a scratch golfer or do a backflip on skis was if I started as a kid. Which is obviously ridiculous to me, and I'll prove them wrong in the next few years.

MY POINT: Take a bunch of adults like me and give them the resources to practice golf or skiing all day every day? You'll eventually get someone who can go pro (which I'm saying is the equivalent of being a grandmaster for this conversation). At what rate would they go pro compared to kids? Who can say. I'd wager it's a lot closer than people in this thread are thinking.

> I'll prove them wrong in the next few years.

We will see :)

But, as I mentioned in my other comment, don't underestimate the physical impact of age on your body. A young body can tolerate and recover from a lot of physical self-inflicted abuse and overtraining. Take a child: starts training skiing at the age of 10, wins a gold medal at the age of 20, body starts to degrade at age 25 (joints, testosterone level,...). Try the same as an adult at the age of 30 or 40 with a body that has been already degrading for one decade. It's good that you have learned several tricks as an adult, but will your body tolerate the literal mistreatment that is necessary to go from "several tricks" or even backflips to "professional level"? A pro is not somebody who can do a complicated trick on a good day. A pro has must be able to reliably perform the trick dozens of times in a competition. This last step from 90% good to 100% perfect is the hard one.

Well if it’s bullshit you should have no trouble providing a counter example. There are tens of thousands of adults learning the rules of chess each and every day. Is there any Grandmaster among them ? I have worked with adults and children learning chess and regardless of how much time they invested the learning curves would invariably look very different.

> Well if it’s bullshit you should have no trouble providing a counter example.

That's logically not true. It's not like there's a huge pool to choose from. There are less than 1800 GMs right now in the entire world.

And it also depends on what we mean by all this. Learning the pieces? Most children learn the rules of the game at some point, I'd imagine. That takes a way too many people.

Actually starting to try? There are a few examples I can find of people being around ~1700 rating when aged 18+ and making it to GM (Jonathan Hawkins, Jacob Aagaard, John Shaw)

Ye Jiangchuan didn't learn the moves until they were 17. Still young, but not crazy young.

> There are tens of thousands of adults learning the rules of chess each and every day.

How many find they have a massive passion for chess, without having a job, a significant other (or pursuit of one), any worries about money/bills/etc, or have children or family to take care of? That, and they can't have found their passion for chess during their childhood.

Probably almost zero people fit that bill. You basically need a lottery winner or trust fund person who doesn't care about having an abnormal life of chess with minimal upside in the small chance they actually reach the GM level.

But those are all not related to the fact that they have an adult brain, which is my point.

There is no counter example because of the things they mentioned.

You're going to have real trouble finding an adult that is sufficiently motivated to become a chess GM, has an enormous amount of free time, willing to dedicate the next 10 years of their life purely to chess, etc.

> If some adult wants to spend 10 years of their life mastering chess, and didn't have to worry about work, life, dating, children, etc, they'd have about the same chance as a child of becoming a Grandmaster eventually

A friend of mine stopped playing chess competitively at the age of 50 because, as he said, he didn't have anymore the necessary physical stamina to learn and practice for hours and hours every day. Age /is/ a factor, even if the external conditions are identical.

Watch grandmasters. Especially playing bullet/blitz.

These are just a different species of human.

The "I'm intelligent and I know the rules" is rated 800.

The "I'm pretty good at chess" is rated 1200.

A 1600 player will beat a 1200 player 9/10 times.

A 2000 player will beat a 1600 player 9/10 times.

A 2400 player (grandmaster) will beat a 2000 player 9/10 times.

People like Eric Rosen and Levy Rozman base their entire career around studying, playing, and teaching chess on Twitch and Youtube. Hours and hours a day. They are really, really good and play in competitions.

But even they are not at the grandmaster level.

EDIT: To use an analogy, reaching grandmaster status is comparable to playing in the NBA.

A 2882 player (Magnus Carlsen) will beat a 2400 player 9/10 times.

A 3544 engine (Stockfish) will beat a 2882 player 10/10 times.

Maybe not fair to say "beat". Probably more fair to say "beat or draw"...

Why? At equal level, sure, but when so far above it'd be surprising not to win.

I think the context here is it's an average win rate across multiple games (i.e. playing both white/black an equal number of times per player).

A draw counts as "half beaten."

So 8 wins and 2 draws is winning 9/10.

---

A 660 point difference between Stockfish and Carlsen should be a 1 - 10^(-662/400) = 98% win rate for Stockfish.

More than likely, that's 96% win, 4% draw, 0% loss.

When I watch super grand-masters calculate tactics, or play simuls while blinded, I know that they are just built different in a way that I was either never built for, or would have had to begin my training early during development.

Even an IM (International Master) is blown away by the waya GM (Grandmaster) thinks/analyzes. Levy does a video with Hikaru and he looks like an amateur in comparison.

I was trying find that video.

I think Hikaru plays him at rook+knight odds or something.

The video where they analyze tricky positions on their own and then compare notes is pretty illuminating. Hikaru's thought process is just different from an IM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dQzTnvsNG4

To be fair to Levy, Hikaru is the best blitz player alive and one of the top 20 classical players. Hikaru is better than your typical grandmaster by about the same amount that a grandmaster is better than Levy (250 rating vs 150 rating points).

> Watch grandmasters. Especially playing bullet/blitz.

Or even Minefield: https://youtube.com/watch?v=EtKWLgOX60U (I don’t think Nakamura is playing optimally w.r.t. being in a guessing spot, but he’s fast)

This Neal Stephenson quote is relevant too, I think:

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

When you're young, to some degree, anything is possible. But everything isn't. You gotta pick how you spend your time and once that choice is made, the time doesn't come back.

So true. Professor. Husband. Father. Now I'm just trying to eek in GMing a tabletop adventure. That is the extent that my time+ability will allow...and I'm not sure I'm that good at any of them (impostor syndrome)

I used to play Scrabble daily and got pretty good. Memorized all of the two letter words, memorized a good number of the three letter words and thought about playing in a tournament.

Then someone gave me the book Word Freak and I lost any interest in playing in a tournament. The people that win Scrabble tournaments memorize dictionaries as their full-time job hoping to make $20,000 in tournament prize money per year. I can't compete with that.

It's still amazing to me though that the winner of the 2015 French Scrabble Tournament didn't speak French.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/21/424980378...

All of his strategy tools and anagram skills would've helped him but he still had to memorize 386,000 French words that he didn't know the meaning of.

This reminds me of when I got front row tickets to see Michael Moschen, a world-class juggler, perform. I knew just enough to understand how much he outclassed ... everyone. And then I stopped trying for any of the harder tricks.

It's strange to me that so many of you seem to stop when you realize you're so far away from being at the top of the top of the top.

I know the chances of me being on the PGA tour or being an Olympic level skier are basically 0%, but that doesn't stop me from improving myself and even competing in golf tournaments sometimes (I'm not a good enough freestyle skier yet to compete, but that doesn't mean I think it's impossible).

It's not about winning the tournaments, it's about constantly improving myself and testing myself at the highest level I can qualify for.

It's so confusing to me when I see people completely write themselves off. "Oh I'm 30, there's no way I'll be [a scratch golfer, able to do a backflip on skis, etc]". Maybe it won't happen, but why completely write yourself off before you even try?

It depends why you're doing it. I have no illusions that I'll ever be anything close to an Olympic level skier, but I still find skiing fun, thus I do it. Similarly, I find Chess fun enough to the point that I will occasionally play a quick recreational game in situations where a Chess board is present.

But if improving oneself involves doing lots of practice that itself isn't fun, then that's exceeded the limit of what I'm willing to do recreationally. I'm only putting that level of effort in something I don't find fun into one thing in my life: work.

Sure, if you find the required work unfun, then so be it. I get it.

I was more talking about the attitude of the person I responded to. They saw someone world class perform and then "stopped trying for any of the harder tricks." I don't understand that attitude. It's basically "I don't think I'll ever be world class, so why try anything at all?"

Ah, you have not understood. It wasn't even "world class" I was trying for. I never set my sights that high, on anything, as I believe that statistically one is likely not to be rewarded. I just realized how vast the gap is between where I was and even "middling decent" and, based on my current status and effort expended, realized that I had not been spending my time wisely.

Sometimes, you can try hard and just be not very good at something, and it was witnessing his performance which made me understand that "middling decent" might need to be a lifetime pre-occupation to attain, for me.

This is really interesting to me. Back when I was a kid, I did a lot of programming for fun. I made small computer games, cracking and all sort of fun things.

Nowadays that I do it as my main job, it is nut as fun. Once you have to learn yet another framework or technology, it becomes "a chore" (that I am paid to do.)

I also play chess as a very light hobby. I am only ~1750 at Lichess and would be happy to be better, but apparently I am at the point that to improve I would have to dedicate a lot of time to read books and memorize openings/middle games etc. I decided not to do it because I would not enjoy it at that point.

> We're talking about making it your full-time job for at least 10 years

I played pretty high level scrabble and devoted 3 years of full-time effort to it (while holding down a menial job). I wasn’t particularly talented but I was willing to put the work in. Until one day I woke up and realized it was a total waste of time and moved on with my life.

During that time I heard it put even more pessimistically about chess. That 10 years of dedicated effort allowed you to maybe see most of the game.

There are people who devote their whole lives to Scrabble, poker, chess, backgammon, basketball etc. Many are horribly adjusted people and some of them end up incredibly skilled at a game. And a few of those people can end up making a living at it.

The average person just can’t comprehend the skill gap between the people who live their lives around a game and themselves.

There was an NBA benchwarmer named Brian Scalabrine who said about good YMCA basketball players, “I’m closer to LeBron James than you are to me.”

It’s nearly impossible to even fathom how good truly top-level game players are.

Years ago I watched a documentary on the World Series of Poker. They asked one of the top players if he was a gambling addict. His response was essentially, "To reach our level of play, you pretty much have to be." This is true to be the best in really anything. I've had the privilege to meet people who are considered the best in the world in a couple of different disciplines. They all see to have similar traits, bad home life, most of the alcoholics, obsessive. Losing everything else seems to be the price of greatness in a discipline.

For the most part I agree. But that said, there are definitely exceptions. Some truly world-class scrabble (and poker) players are well-adjusted, nice, friendly people, who seem otherwise normal.

No, you're absolutely right. There are a number of people who are phenomenal at what they do, and balance their personal lives as well.

edit: I would say some (not a lot) great people. I really do think it is an exception, but they are out there.

Scalabrine is very accessible and does regular interviews and has talked extensively about "The Scallenge" (where he challenged several high level non-professional players in one-on-one). One extremely insightful point he once made on Duncan Robinson's podcast is that part of the reason he's "closer to LeBron" is that he's played LeBron. He wouldn't be a good player if he hadn't played professionally against top-level talent. It might not be worth it to dedicate yourself like that, but that kind of dedication and commitment to competition is probably the only way you will achieve close to a high level and even then, you may end up only an also-ran.

Absolutely, and the gap is so deceptive - it doesn't look like there's that much of a gap when you watch the pros. Like I watch pro badminton players, and compared to the best guys at my club who've trained for 10+ years it looks like they both play the same. But the guys at my club have no hope of winning provincial level tournaments here - like they're lucky to even make the quarterfinals, 0% chance of beating the top few players in the province. And the guy that wins provincial level tournaments here has no hope of winning national level tournaments - he rarely makes it past the first round, 0% chance of beating the top 5 players in the country. And the guys that win national level tournaments here have no hope of winning high grade international level tournaments - they could maybe pull an upset on a top 10 player 5-10% of the time.

But from my position, it's easy to watch the pros play and think "wow, that looks doable in 10 years of hard work". Yet so many people have put in that much work and still are effectively as far away from those pros as I am.

> Absolutely, and the gap is so deceptive - it doesn't look like there's that much of a gap when you watch the pros.

It's the unknown unknown. I used to play a lot of ball and lucked into playing pick up with some good college players and even ex-pros who played over seas. Until I had that experience, I had no idea how much better they were.

There's also nuance in the sport that requires knowledge to see the difference between top players. For example, when I started training BJJ all black belts were the same - as in they easily kicked my ass. After a few years of training, they still easily kick my ass, but I can feel the difference and have some idea just from our rolling which ones are better than the others.

Your friendly neighborhood normal distribution curve and z score makes this pretty easy to fathom. The z score of a 50th percentile player is 0. A player who is 1 standard deviation above the mean is about 84th percentile. The z score of a 99th percentile player (let's say Brian) is ~2.4. The z score of a 99.99th percentile player (grandmaster or lebron james) is ~3.8

So with these hand waving assumptions, Brian's comment holds true if the ymca players are <= 84th percentile of basket ball players. Sounds reasonable to me.

I took my own crack at this, because I think your numbers - intended to show the big separation - still make it seem too easy! Lebron is NOT just a 99.99th percentile player!

There's fewer than 500 players in the NBA. There are hundreds of millions of people in the US (being US-centric initially to try to do the YMCA comparison), so probably a few million that play frequently as amateurs? One in a hundred? Let's call it 3 million out of 300,000,000, to work with relatively round numbers.

So being in the best 1 out of 100 - top 99% - is a z score of 2.3. Being in the best 500 is then much smaller even than THAT! 99.983%, z score of 3.481. The single best one? 99.99997%, z score of 4.991.

So if you define closer by z score, they "good amateur" YMCAer is closer to the worst in the NBA than that person is to Lebron, but I think it's more meaningful to define closer by "how many people stand in between you and them" - and the answer is millions for the amateur.

And I think that shows that work alone only gets you so far compared to talent. If you and a million other amateurs all start putting in ten hour days, the vast majority of you aren't getting to the NBA - it's just not big enough.

That is sort of interesting. Depending on how extremely good Lebron James is at basketball could make Brian's statement false. I think I disagree that number of people is a meaningful metric. The difference between you and I, assuming we're both near average competency, could be millions of people, while the difference between Lebron and Brian could be just hundreds or thousands of people but represent a substantially larger skill gap. Otherwise you're suggesting that the more skilled two players are, the less noteworthy differences in skill are because there's fewer people around them to measure with.

That's true, we could be separated by millions of people but at the same time only, say, a year's worth of two-hours-a-week practice.

But in the absence of a reliable way to measure absolute skill, the z score one does seem about as good as we can get, though it can't truly answer something like "Lebron vs Jordan" - and you also would get different numbers depending on which population you picked. Population of the world, population of the US, population of the basketball-playing world, population of people who play basketball at least once a month? That's gonna change the denominator for the percentiles for the Scalabrines and Lebrons both.

I like this but you might want to up the z score for LeBron. GM is 2500 plus norms. LeBron has 4 rings and 4 MVPs. He would be Magnus level or at least one of the few who hit 2800 (there have only been 13).

NB: I'm a huge LeBron fan and a huge Magnus fan.

“These Regular Guys Challenged An NBA Player And Instantly Regretted It” https://youtu.be/i93vF0WOX6w

Chess ratings make this point really strikingly.

A rating difference of 400 points means that the better player will score 0.9 on average (where 0=loss, 0.5=draw, 1=win).

A typical hobby player might have a rating of 1600. A good player at a chess club will have a rating of around 2000, meaning that they beat the hobby player around 90% of the time. A low-level grandmaster will have a rating around 2400, meaning that they beat the strong club player 90% of the time. The top few chess players in the world have ratings around 2800, meaning that they beat low-level grandmasters 90% of the time.

You might think the top human players are nearly perfect, but the top chess engines running on an average desktop computer are probably >800 Elo points above the top humans, and they're getting about 100 Elo points stronger every year, based purely on algorithmic improvements (not computing power).

It's more likely for the stronger player to have 8 wins and 2 draws in that line-up. If you're up against such a big divide you should play safe and aim for the draw, it's quite attainable.

I simplified a bit by saying the stronger player wins 90% of the time. They score 0.9 on average. That could be 9 wins and one loss, or as you say, 8 wins and 2 draws.

You would think that a low-level GM would be able to achieve more draws against the super GMs, but somehow the ratings indicate they don't. It may be that the super GMs deliberately avoid drawish lines against much weaker players and try to keep the game complicated.

I think it was Bill Murray that had a quote/idea that in the Olympics they should have a regular person compete in each sport for reference.

I've played NBA players a few times. I was a quite good YMCA level player. What you can't imagine is just how fast they are. But what most people really don't see on TV is how strong they are. My brother blocked a European pro player's shot at the rim and above the rim. That guy just brought his other hand up and dunked it through.

Scalabrine closer to LeBron James than the likes of me are to him? He's a lot closer. But I considered it an absolute privilege to be on the court with these guys. Fact is, they were actually really nice. I got a compliment on my rebounding. The second time I walked into the gym when this NBA player I'd played against was there, he came over and said hi. He came over to say hi.

What makes it even harder is that chess elo is a zero sum game. You not only have to reach a certain level of skill, you have to be better than other people and beat them. Those other people have also been training for 10 years since they were four years old. There has never been a person who became a GM who started chess older than 17; other than him it's almost exclusively under 14. If you aren't top 5% (~1900 FIDE) within the first year of starting to play, you don't have the talent.

I cannot stress enough how impossible it is for anyone as a late teen or older to decide to become a GM. It has never happened. You might as well be 22 and decide you're going to start training for the olympic ice skating team. It's just not going to happen.

A Croatian player named Stjepan Tomic is trying to do exactly what you are claiming is impossible: https://www.youtube.com/c/HangingPawns/videos The odds are clearly against him, but we'll see how it goes.

I know, I watch his channel a lot. He has been training hard for three years and is still only 19XX elo. He doesn't have a chance. He may get a FM title eventually though.

I just watched his most recent game (153) where he makes a mistake he says he "can't explain" (starting at 18 minutes) and that after having made it he immediately resigned (apparently not even waiting for his opponent to play). He also says at other moments in the video that he was "terrified" of this or that.

Isn't it possible that superior players simply have "better nerves" and self-confidence that let them stay calm in stressful situations, and avoid mistakes that other players make sooner or later?

> and that after having made it he immediately resigned

This is an absolute mistake and is a bigger reason that he won't become a GM than his age.

Most chess players should NEVER resign. Ever. I mean it.

1) Chess below grandmaster is a game of mistakes.

It's actually one of the things I hate about chess and why I don't regard it as so much of an intellectual pursuit as people think. You can be playing an amazing game and then suddenly one thing you missed will kill you.

GM Ben Feingold has a great quote (paraphrased): "The reason why you are rated 1900 is that you will play a bunch of moves, finally hang a piece and I will beat you. The reason why I am rated 2400 is that Magnus will play 80 moves that are all slightly better than mine and I will lose."

2) Your opponent has to be able to capitalize on the mistake

If you hang a piece, the opponent cannot disregard the fact that it is a trap. At 1400, it's probably a hung piece. At 1900 it has a 40/60 chance of being a trap. At 2100, it has a 60/40 chance of being a trap.

Your opponent doesn't know you made a mistake so don't tell them. Pull out your poker face and play on. I have won countless games that I should have lost because of this.

3) Playing down a piece actually makes you a stronger player

Okay, you're down a piece. Are you just going to sit there and lose? You might as well try something first. Maybe there's a positional upside, maybe the defense got weakened, etc. Sure, you're normally going to lose. However, being down a piece has a way of knocking you out of your normal play style.

4) Being unable to convert an advantage makes the opponent frustrated

The number of people who get complacent after taking a piece is quite large. Lots of people lose after being up a piece because they let down their guard. And then they lose.

And there is nothing more frustrating than being up a piece and playing someone who is mounting an excellent defense. Your instincts are screaming that you shouldn't be having to put in this much effort and you have to resist them.

5) People play computers so often that they forget that playing a human is a completely different game

People get tired. People get frustrated. People get inattentive. People want to go home already.

All of these things can lead to mistake.

Below Grandmaster, chess victories generally go the person who makes the second to last mistake. You're always the last mistake if you resign.

Never resign.

> I cannot stress enough how impossible it is for anyone as a late teen or older to decide to become a GM. It has never happened.

I have been a serious chess amateur for the past 20 years. I am now stronger than I ever have been (mainly because access to training materials has improved greatly in that time), I have no doubt that I could improve more if I devoted time and effort into more focused training like I have done during competitions. I know one or two people like me. I think the thing stopping me and the other people I mention from climbing the Elo ladder is lack of interest and motivation, not ability. You develop different vistas concerns and interests at 35 to 40 than you did at 12 to 20

My point is that with time, it is possible to improve and stating categorically that because no late teenager has ever become a grandmaster, none will sounds wrong. At one time we believed that ladies couldn't become grandmasters, the chinese could not beat westerners, grandmasters could not be minted before the age of 15 etc.

Unless we reach a truly post-scarcity society where people don't have to work, I doubt that someone who has picked up chess as an adult will be able to become a GM.

Neural pathways have to be formed while the brain is still malleable

> What makes it even harder is that chess elo is a zero sum game.

It's not zero-sum though, because as more Chess players enter the ranks the pie itself grows larger, meaning there will be more total players who can attain an Elo of 2,500+ and thus become a Grandmaster.

Zero-sum typically means that the entire pool is of fixed size, but that's not the case here. I'd say that Chess is win-lose but not zero-sum.

> If you aren't top 5% (~1900 FIDE) within the first year of starting to play, you don't have the talent

People will think this sounds insane, but it's so true. Honestly top 5% even sounds a bit low.

Everything gets exponentially harder the higher up you get. If you're not dominating immediately you're quite literally never going to reach the very top (Like >0.1% kind of top).

The caveat to this is that it's a year of dedicating yourself to the thing, not doing it on and off casually for a year.

I suspect it's even harder than that. Chess GMs have a certain kind of mind, and no amount of training will give you that if you're not born with it.

I honestly don't understand the "If you work hard enough you can do anything" mindset.

To me it's clearly, obviously, objectively wrong - because otherwise you'd be able to take take absolutely any random child and turn them into a chess prodigy, a musical prodigy, an art prodigy, a literary prodigy, a sports prodigy or a STEM prodigy just by hot housing them.

There's no doubt a lot of talent is wasted by circumstance. But does anyone really believe that at the top levels, hard work will compensate for lack of aptitude?

Edit: Polgar experiment. Inconclusive without a bigger sample and a control group, surely.

I think the problem is that people interpret the "do anything" part as "become #1 at anything" (i.e., "prodigy" as per the parent post).

I would say something like "get to the 80th percentile at anything" (or even 95th) would be much more accurate, though, that doesn't sound as catchy. Heck, in many areas you don't even need to work _that_ much or hard to get to the top 20% or so, it's just a matter of a reasonably informed and structured approach, exercised over time.

Obligatory Dan Luu reference on how 95th percentile of anything is not that impressive https://danluu.com/p95-skill/

The article mentions that chess GM level is probably more like 99.9th percentile. At that level you need to be both very talented and practice very hard.

> I would say something like "get to the 80th percentile at anything" (or even 95th) would be much more accurate, though, that doesn't sound as catchy.

In many areas (sport, art etc.) being in the 80th or even 95th percentile means failure.

>I honestly don't understand the "If you work hard enough you can do anything" mindset.

I've encountered these people and it's always a case of being insulated from the reality of what the "anything" in question is.

Working hard to get 90% good at something is very valuable though. That’s how I pay my bills.

Polgar set out to turn their children into prodigies, but it could have been any field.

They all descibre chess as been what they were introduced and chose to pursue [1], but they were educated in many areas.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r

> We're talking about making it your full-time job for at least 10 years. Yes, that's how hard it is.

Very true

An uncle of mine is a state chess champion in India, has often reached national level, but finds it hard to compete for this reason.

He says most people who play and win at national level have sponsorships--so they practice chess full time.

So its hard to even become a national level player without doing this either full time, for for many many decades (decades, not years)

Something also to keep in mind is that even if you become a GM making a career out of playing chess tournaments is REALLY hard, it is sometimes hard to break even because you have to pay travel costs to go from tourney to tourney.

Hikaru made a really enlightening video about the economics of pro chess playing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hWlbsAVRN0

Out of playing tournaments, sure, but that's not the only source of income they have. Not even the main one. Tutoring is likely among the best options.

Great, a top comment that aims to discourage people from even trying. It's unclear where you got this stuff from (maybe you're a grandmaster too?!) but this is well beyond what the author says. He mentions 2 hours per day for 10 years and that it's about consistency, not total time spent.

> If you like chess, then play chess! It's a fun game with an amazing depth and a huge player base. But if you're just starting out: Please forget about having "becoming a grandmaster" as a goal.

I could not agree more. You can waste your entire life becoming excellent at chess and that's all you will gain, being excellent at chess. It is a myth that chess makes one smarter or more intelligent at other things in life. The skills are not transferable.

That said, sure, there's a lot to chess that does transfer, such as: learning to concentrate for an extended period of time, accepting losing, learning to consider multiple possible solutions and uncertainty, etc. However, I feel that if one just plays chess and nobody makes some of these connections to real life some of these skills simply don't translate.

My kids and I play almost every day. They love the game, try to win but I taught them not to care about winning or losing at all. It's much healthier that way. There have been cases when one of my kids might lose eight or more games in a day and not win a single one. Someone who is invested in this game could easily crumble and have a bad week because of something like that. In his case, he could not care less, he knows that sometimes you win and other times you do not. The following day he might have ten wins in a row, and that's fun enough.

The other problem is that, in order to ascend through the ranks you have no option but to become a human database. This is what can consume a lifetime of study. Just learning a few openings, counterattacks and end-game strategies can elevate someone in ranking. That isn't super hard and I still consider it fun "sport" chess learning.

To get much beyond that you are going to go up against people who devote every living minute to shoving a database of games and strategies into their brains. Which means you have to do the same. To what end?

I often say that if you are going to study that hard for nothing you might as well study something like medicine and actually get something of value in exchange.

> I know that Hacker News likes the idea that if you work hard enough then anything is possible [especially when there's so many easily available resources], but when it comes to becoming a grandmaster it has to be said that it's painstakingly hard

what do you have to say about this article? https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200507/the-grand...

The Polgar sisters are very well known. The more you learn, the more you will agree "painstakingly hard" is an apt description.

Hard work will get you there, and in their case, hard work meant they were literally born and raised as human chess-playing experiments.

That article agrees with what the parent poster said, based on my skimming it. That article documents the great lengths those women, and their parents, went through to achieve their mastery. It also indicates their may be cognitive differences between high-level chess players and good amateurs.

I know someone (a little) who is a grandmaster. He obtained the title maybe around age 17 (+/- 2y) after doing it basically full-time through his youth, with strong family support, after showing strong promise at age 3. I'm pretty sure he and his family are glad of it, and it was a lot of work. His brothers and father are also very good at chess and have taught (rated, but not IMs I think).

I'm very glad (AFAIK) he didn't have to abuse his body etc to get to that point. That doesn't seem worth it.

(update: it was age 16. And a correction: his dad & bros might be rated; I heard a # for one of them once)

Not just painstakingly hard, I think for many it is impossible. Many IM's do think it is worth the effort but just can't reach it.

Actually I think there are seperate titles for correspondence chess, and these might be easier to get.

That's a good suggestion!

Chess also has a very decent rating system (either the official FIDE rating or the ratings on online chess servers) so another way of setting yourself an achievable goal is to pick a rating (i.e. 1700 on Lichess) and then work towards that. Rinse and repeat!

I’d be happy with 1000. I keep getting close and then falling back into the 800s

It sounds a lot like playing professional sports, but without "Chess scholarships" in college.

There are inter-college Chess competition. A few US Universities are serious about it and they do have people getting scholarships to play on the chess team.

Source: Local (non-US) player got one of these.

so for people who likes chess: What level/rating is a good target for playing chess as a hobby, without trading away your life as would be needed for GM or other high statuses?

Your question has no answer. Different people have different aptitudes and desires and time to devote. There's no rating above which everyone should feel proud and below which everyone should feel ashamed. People should play chess for fun and if they want to set targets, it's likely most fun to set them on a personalized basis, a bit above wherever they are now. Hobbies are supposed to be fun. Each person should do what they judge is fun. :)

So basically same as becoming a hardcore nerd-level software engineer :-)

I’d say it’s easier to make money as an engineer. Hikaru is an amazing player but he has to stream to make good money

Hikaru was making six figures before he ever took up streaming. He was sponsored by Red Bull back then.

Well, no - if you'd become a "#100 ranked in the world" quality software engineer, you'd be making bank, and if you'd be in the top 10%, you'd still be very comfortable.

If you'd be a #100 chess player, you might support yourself with chess somehow (e.g. coaching), but you have to really be at the top and win tournaments to get any meaningful money just by playing; and if you're top 10% then you're likely spending money to play chess and need a different profession to afford that.

So unlike software engineers, you have to be among the few very best in order to make it your profession, that's a big difference.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com