I started playing chess when I was four. Now I am twelve, I still suck butts. But I practice every single day. So I am wondering if it is talent that brings unknowns to pros or just practice. Is there a chess bug in their head telling them ho to go move from move or were they just purely fixated on chess? But my main problem is i have practiced every day since I was four, yet have not gotten any better. Correct me if I am wrong, but kasparov started playing chess when he was older than I am right now. And possibly didnt practice as mutch. So it is talent? Is there a chess bug in every player's head? Or does it just take lots of practice?

I think to be one of the best in the world you need a lot of natural talent.  But every top player, even Kasparov, has to practice for many, many years to get to be a really good chess player.  I'm sure Kasparov practised as hard as you do every day and he had great chess coaches to help him. 

 

It says in his Wikipedia entry that by the age of 8 he was training at the Mikhail Botvinnik chess school and won the Soviet Junior Championship when he was 13!

 

How do you practice chess?  Do you play in a club or in tournaments and do you read chess books? 

Yes I read the books and go to a club to practice, yet I am awaiting my first tournament.

I think I read somewhere about a Research Article claiming that the only proven difference between "Masters and woodpushers" was passsion for the game.

 I am sorry I cannot be more precise about the article but it is an interesting claim.

 

There is an item from the scientific american at this link.  It says that what you need is effortful study - i.e. tackling problems that are not too easy (which would take no effort) and not to hard (which would just get you nowhere). 

 

It's a long article, but an interesting read.

maybe my mind is just too premature for learning chess well.

Do you study grandmaster games?

I think a lot can be said for all the anecdotal or circumstantial evidence that suggests there is some atitude involved.

 

How else could anyone explain such people as Joseph Blackburne who learned the moves at 19, joined the Manchester Chess Club at 20 and promplty lost a 5 game match (0-5) against the club champion (and one of the better players in the world at that time) Edward Pindar. One year later, he played a second match of 8 games against Pindar, winning 5, drawing 2 and losing only 1.  Pindar, evidently had the drive to become a master, but Blackburn had something more than drive.

 

Paul Morphy, who, as a child, only played chess on Sunday afternoons against local players, at age 12 (May, 1850) beat one of the best players in the world (according to chessmetrics, ranked 4th in the world in April 1851 ), János Jakab Löwenthal, 3-0. 

 

This isn't to say that people without some special aptitude can't improve or achieve great things, but it does suggest, to me at least, that what requires a great deal of work for most of us, is, in fact, child's play for certain others.

 

I believe that those with the natural talent in the long run have a disadvantage when the hit their wall.

i believe it is alot of natural talent but also lots of practice