Can a person below 1000 become a top grandmaster?

Most grandmasters and other relatively weaker top masters believe players don't need to be very talented to reach 2200+ all the way up to IM if they work hard enough and fully concentrate. However, they also think in order to become a GM, extreme talent is needed, in addition to extreme hard work. That means, no matter how hard a player works, if he doesn't have enough talent for the game, they will reach no further than IM (in most cases no further than NM or FM). Go search any GM, all of them at least achieve NM title before 18 or no later than 20.

I don't know if you'll ever be able to make it to GM. If your super dedicated you probably could.  This might sound hopeful but I don't mean it to.  Very very few people actually have the dedication, passion and intelligence to make it.  You might think you want to put in all the time and effort and become a GM right now but, eventually in almost all high level sports once you hit a certain plateau and understand enough about the game that it becomes stale.  At this point people lose their dedication and turn to other interests they have.  Sometimes it's not even something seperate but they simply focus on the parts of chess they enjoy more than the parts that they need to practice to improve.

I see threads with posts like this all the time.  People asking if it would be possible to make it to GM or world champion. Most posters shout them down and tell them it's unrealistic or they could never make it or it's too late.  Im always somewhat depressed by it, to see peoples dreams laughed at by others.  I understand it's a long shot of course for any of us to ever make it that far but I also think a lot of us think this way as an excuse.  A way to not have to work and try to make it, as a way to assure themselves that they don't have to try because they never would have made it anyway.

I agree with what many have said already about setting small goals and focusing on those first.  I think this is a very useful technique to not get overwhelmed with any large goal your working towards.  (In the morning when I don't want to get up I tend to plan out my day step by step and then just try to do the first part.) Just make sure your always working hard and doing what needs to be done. In the end the only real advice I can give you is this: "Don't let anyone tell you what you can and cannot do."

any fm or im can only tell in chess.com

didnt radjabov start with 14?

I think more realistic is becomming an FM but I doubt even that. I find the question almost laughable if it weren't serious. I feel that someone that still blunders horrendously and has an "established" rating of under 1000 simply lacks the required talent.

I did an IQ test on free-iqtest.net and found that my IQ was 155. I'm also about to create a post discussing what IQ you have to have to be a grandmaster soon in a few minutes.

Well, I would say that the correlation between IQ and the ability to become a GM probably isn't as strong as you think. If we assume that IQ is a measure of overall mental capacity (which could be disputed, but I'll just assume that for now), then it is possible that someone with a relatively low IQ is actually quite strong mentally in areas that have to do with the ability to play chess, and weak in other areas, which drag his IQ score down. And of course, the opposite is also true - a person with high IQ might still lack the mental skills to play chess well, but is very strong mentally in other areas.

Also, I wouldn't trust the accuracy of online IQ tests. Pretty much everybody who takes one of those tests online gets a score of at least over 100, when, of course, in reality that's impossible.

It depends on your attitude towards chess, and why you want to achieve GM, or even a very high rating/title.  If it's so you can be loved and be known as a 'beast' every time you log into chess.com, then you're probably not going to go anywhere.  If you really enjoy playing the game, and love spending/wasting hours of your life on it, then one day you may just find yourself a very strong player.  It's a personal thing, ya know?

Honestly, I believe that's the motivation for 90% of people who post threads like this.

Of course, it's a bad reason to spend/waste your life on chess.

Why not.... Mikhail Botvinnik started PLAYING chess at age 12 and he was later a world chess champion and not so suprisingly was known to be great at learning chess and preparing. What you should get from that was that Botvinnik started at an age people would call late and he still became world champion..... and was known to be a great learner so if you can find a great easy way to improve at chess more than the average person than yes you can become a Grandmaster...

Yes, if you ever travel back in time 90 years, to a time when information on chess was scarce except for in your country, then starting at 12 is no problem.

Good to know.

Exactly. The competition has become a lot stronger overall, since Botvinnik's time.

No, unless the person under 1000 is either less than 10 years old or very new to the game.

Now becoming a master? Eh, some people say that anyone can become a master, and maybe so, but it's much easier for younger players to improve than older ones, so if you've been rated below 1000 for many years, the odds are very much stacked against you. But I suppose if you dedicated your entire life to chess it may be possible. Just extremely unrealistic.