Change in ability with age

Hi, I'm currently an 1800 (USCF) player. Since coming back to chess a year ago (I was about 1300), I've thrived mostly on tactics and without too much formal training, and didn't experience any major difficulties along the way. However, I'm still fairly young (18-20 years old), and from what I've heard this kind of jump sounds unlikely for someone much older, (and of course using the USCF-given floors are pretty common later in life); at least it seems harder to play at that point.

So I'm curious to hear firsthand (or secondhand, if you know someone) what specifically makes tournament chess harder for older people. Is it simply harder to calculate, concentrate, for example?

@tigerprowl5:

• I haven't claimed anything about what I'm asking about, so if you must know, no logic. :)
• Even if I thought tournaments were the cause, I don't see how that leads to Korchnoi vs. Carlsen example, considering Korchnoi is still worse than Carlsen anyway. Personally I wouldn't enjoy playing chess in a cave very much.
• I asked about age affecting older players, not tournaments affecting older players. I merely wanted to focus discussion on tournament chess, since there's obviously a lot more variance in casual play.
• The point about rating jumps was anecdotal (I guess mine isn't that relevant; apologies if it sounded like bragging/such - didn't mean it that way :P). Similar (usually slower, but still pretty rapid) jumps are not extremely uncommon among some of the younger players I know, but most older players seem (based on poking around too many USCF profiles) to stop gaining a lot later.

@chessmicky: Thanks for the input! Most of my games are 2-3 hours at most (somehow I doubt I have the patience to sit through anything longer against strong players more than once at a time!) so I don't have a lot of perspective on that. But it seems your points hold for the faster time controls anyway.

Korchnoi suffered a stroke and hasn't really played competitively since. I don't think he ever took half a point off Carlsen or we'd hear a lot about it. He did take a full point off Caruana however.

It's definitely very interesting to know and understand what we can expect as we get older. What can we hold onto, what will happen to us at all. I hope I go quickly when I still have most of my mental faculties intact, at least to a decent standard.   

I suffered a knee injury a while back, and it's amazing how much it got me down. It takes up your attention. Also how inconvenient it is when you just want to rush and do something. Don't underestimate the physical. 

I have a few 2nd hand accounts. One said calculation gets "foggy" faster and more often. So while young you might calculate a line and even if it was fairly long by your standards, you can see the end positions, and trust your calculation was correct and move on. When older you can be unsure and have to re-calculate more often and the end position can take more work to see.

Also with so called "working memory." So say you've calculated a line, seen the position, and rendered ______ conclusions. Not just the eval, but winning chances and the type of position (attack, positional, unclear, etc). So then you calculate another line and it's hard to compare conclusions because you might forget some specifics.

So basically as others have said. Slower and takes more energy.

I'm 50. I no longer play much chess in an OTB tournament setting, but when I do, I tend to play brilliantly in the first two games, pretty well in the third, and horribly for the remaining games. It's all about the stamina.

Robert Newshutz played chess in his teens and dropped it as a ~1500 player. He returned to the game in his fifties, got very serious and made some spectacular leaps until bumped his head just shy of 2000. An inspiring story!

http://main.uschess.org/datapage/ratings_graph.php?memid=11020631

He has a good chess blog: http://newshutzchess.blogspot.com/ . Unfortunately he's had to scale back his chess quest for income.

Speaking as a chess player and as a programmer, age affects my stamina and clarity. I can make up for those to an extent by gains in discipline and experience.

I believe I play chess better now than when I was young, but I don't play the same. I'm much smarter in how I study but I don't have the same focus. I don't know how I would hold up in a weekend tournament.

Then there's Rolf Wetzell, author of "Chess Master at any Age," who had topped out around 1800 when he was young, then returned to the game in his fifties determined to make master and did so, using a homebrew system of self-improvement.

He must be in his seventies now and he still plays tournaments. His most recent rating is 2065.

My OTB rating has not declined much for the last 15 years, which is a good thing. However, my calculational ability has drastically worsened- I am still able to see several moves deep with some accuracy, but when coming back to the board position I have to spend quite a bit of time to recall what I have calculated. Please, don't tell my opponents- will you?

What would you say has compensated for this decline?  Some other aspect of your game must have improved to offest, yes?

I'm messaging all of them right now!

Precisely another IM said me once the key to aging well in chess is to have an excellent technique.

That's a pretty nebulous statement, though.  What does "excellent technique" mean?  I suspect the key lies somewhere in positional play, but I'd love to hear from pfren.

I also think so. He was putting Karpov as an example. 

I find myself playing intuitively more and more often. One of my main problems (time pressure addiction) has certainly worsened- I lost a game a few months ago against an IM out of slightly better position as I was left with a couple of minutes after move 18 or so. This did not annoy me so much as my other loss, against a GM, where I had made some nice home cooking, and OTB I mixed the move order and lost a pawn for practically nothing. But my other problem (playing crap after 4 hours of play) is a non-issue with the modern short time controls.

Also, I play less than in the past, so my chances to lose rating points are somewhat limited... 

What does "excellent technique" mean?

I would guess it means having a large store of positions one knows, the plans to handle them, and the ability to execute those plans as the occasions arise.

This is opposed to meeting a new position and having to come up with a new plan.

It's also like knowing what to do and being able to form a plan to do it as opposed to meeting a new position and grinding out a calculation by testing huge branches of variations. The way you put it makes it sound like winning by technique is inferior to winning without technique. 

I'm convinced there must be a better term for it.  Perhaps something like deep positional understanding or experience.

I think could be related to the more "mathematical" aspects of chess, mainly endgames.