How good is one's likelihood of becoming a GM?

Let's say one has all the recipe for becoming a GM:

High IQ, love of the game and the desire and determination to win.

How many games do I have to play for me to be able to tell if I could reach GM level ?

I see some players with a rating of greater than 1800 after only a few hundred games.

If after having played over 2000 games, my rating still stagnate around 1600, should I  kiss ny chances good-bye of ever becoming a GM who can actually win 1st place in a real tournament?

You don't give much relevant information.  How old are you? Do you play in OTB tournaments? Do you take lessons and study your losses? How much do you really study? 

If you have "love for the game and a determination to win", you are stuck with us, regardless of whether or not your rating ever gets much higher . You might as well make the best of it and study hard.

Train according to your level and you will soon hit 1800 etc GM? 10.000 hours of training should do the trick. No joke. It takes some serious commitment and of course playing OTB is critical imo. 

A hell of threads about "becoming a grandmaster or something like that" - actually, the number of said threads is far greater than the number of possible chess games ... so go study, you have plenty of material. Time and dedication are another matter, and talent is the x of the whole equation.

You may think that you have all the recipe for becoming a GM. But you actually don't have the two million things required for becoming a GM!

Chess tournaments usually have class prizes, nothing wrong with winning first to third in your section and getting a little bit of prize money

Plus aim for lower first, even FMs are rather rare and are terribly strong players.

I like this game.

Assuming you can drive real fast and watch NASCAR, how long until you win the grand prix?

                I read someplace where you have to spend about 10,000 hrs to master anything in life. I can add from personal experience that, THAT doesn't work for drums. But try it, go for it. You never know. I DO know that God plays dice.

Assuming you can hit the drums real good and love music, how long until you become Buddy Rich?

Assuming you have stage presence and love movies, how long until you become Tom Hanks?

              BLASPHEMY!  bite your tongue Dr.  I spent 40,000 hrs studiying and I still suck.     You only speak the name of Buddy Rich in hushed wispers.    movies, NASCAR, and Buddy Rich??  How do I send you a friend request??

Assuming you know how to indent your forum responses, how long until you become RonaldJosephCote?

                Thank you Dr. We'll talk, but not here. I don't want to de-rail the thread.

Thanks for all the responses.

I enjoyed reading them.

I posed the question as "I" , more as in a general sense.

I should have used "one" instead of I -- but after I wrote the question using the neutral third person "one" - it just wasn't fluid communication so I used "I".

Where my own person is concerned - I don't know if I can ever be GM....I got some real blind spots issue - I can never see those knights - I end up losing my queen, rook from blunders

Plus, I suck at end games...

But one can dream

I do agree with YANQUI EXO's response:

Time and dedication are another matter, and talent is the x of the whole equation.

------------------------------------

@with_every_step

"Use EQ to convince everybody that chess is actually Concentration."

I don't know that you can even play chess without concentration...I would think that concentration is sine qua non for playing chess.

I played for a year when I was 14...made it to High School State Championship..then haven't played since in over 3 decades...

I suffered brain injury in my 20s...concentrating is a real challenge for me now.

I just started playing again here on chess.com. A few hundred games now ... I don't know if I can ever break the 2000 rating level or even 1800...am giving myself 2000 more games to play....if I appear to stagnate at some "permanent" level - I will give up playing and move on to something else.

Edit:

I say this because the first time I started playing chess at age 14, I pretty much beat every single player I came across after I learned how to play the game. That's how I made it to State Championship.

But the last 400 games I played here on chess.com reveals that I'm really sucking at it....I can't draw on my powers of concentration anymore like I did when I was 14.

I dont understand why they allow the use of computers during correspondance chess games. I thought the to whole point of correspondence chess was to play a game using postcards or email. Then you get two or three days to ponder and think about your next move and then send it back. But.i read they allow the use of computers in international correspondence chess games. So aren't people just using.their computers to come up with moves. I dont see the point of.being a correspondence chess GM when your rating is just based upon how strong of a chess engine.tjat you are using.

there are times when I do think someone is using a computer...

In live chess for example...SOMETIMES as soon as I got my opponent in a sticky situation, he/she disconnects and comes back later within that 5 minutes limit...

but I may be just imagining things...

anyways, that really doesn't matter...the goal is to win..

if I can't beat a computer or a human - it's all the same - my level of playing is the same.

                   No, your not imagining.  

I see I'm not alone in thinking that then