How to Know If You Have What It Takes to Reach Mastery in Chess
"Never let anyone say you can´t do something.
You get a dream, you got to protect it. People can´t do something themselves, they want to tell you you can´t do it. If you want something, go get it."
- Chis Gardner, played by Will Smith in the movie The Pursuit of Happyness.
Hi, everyone. Hope you are doing fine. If not, I hope things get better as soon as possible.
Well, I guess the title of this article caught your curiosity. You can relax, it´s not clickbait =).
Actually, it´s very easy to assess if you have the potential to reach your desired level of chess mastery, you just need to answer one question. I will soon reveal it.
The Concept of Mastery in Chess
First, I would like to clarify the concept of mastery in chess, which is very subjective and varies from one person to another.
It´s true, most people consider a master someone who has an official title with the word “master” in it. Other people, on the other hand, consider only Grandmasters to have reached chess mastery.
GM Magnus Carlsen (NOR) facing GM Alexander Grischuk (RUS)
I, for my part, consider true masters the ones who have a sufficient amount of knowledge of chess as a Grandmaster does, but they don’t necessarily need to have the Grandmaster title.
Some people don’t care about being a Grandmaster because maybe they aren´t interested in playing official tournaments, others decide to be trainers instead of players, or they may have some psychological or health conditions that don´t permit them to play in accordance with their chess understanding. But that’s just my personal opinion.
Okay, now that we’ve clarified these initial points, let´s go to the main topic.
The question whose answer will make clear to you if you have chess potential or not
Question: To which species do you belong? I mean, in a biological way?
The answer can´t be more obvious: you are a “homo sapiens”, in other words, a human being.
If you are a human being and don´t have any mental deficit related to learning something, you can reach chess mastery! You can do it!
This affirmation might look ridiculous at first because it is obvious., But it’s true, and some obvious truths need to be said and even repeated.
Now, permit me to prove my point to you.
Recently, I watched a vídeo of professor Enéas Carneiro (1938 – 2007), a famous Brazilian doctor (cardiologist), writer, politician, and other things as well, where he explained some genetics. He made a comparison of the quantity of information (“bits”) one our chromosomes have, with the quantity contained in books. He comes up to the conclusion that we have 4,000 books of 500 pages each in a single chromosome (you can find the scientific explanation is in the article below)!
Considering that each one of us has 46 chromosomes, we are all marvelous machines.
It´s not an exaggeration to say that “every human being is a universe in miniature” (another of the professor Enéas quotes), and, consequently, we can surely say that we have a lot of potentials inside of ourselves.
Professor Enéas Carneiro
Maybe some of us learn chess more quickly than others because we are able to more easily understand concepts, assimilate and recognize patterns, etc. Or, maybe your friend finds solutions for tactical exercises quicker than you.
This is all true and very common things. But if every one of us has the discipline and works hard (this is not a short journey, but one that you continue for our entire lives), we can reach our own level of mastery, not only in chess but in everything we set out to make.
Lázló Polgar, the father of the legendary Polgar sisters, believed that any child had the capacity to achieve geniality and exceed in any chosen field, something that could be built. Well, he proved his point, as his three daughters achieved titles and amazing accomplishments.
For instance, Judit, the younger one, became the World´s number one all-time ranked woman and, when active, was ranked between the top ten chess players overall.
The Polgar sisters: From the left to the right - IM Zsofia Polgar; GM Zsuza Polgar; and GM Judit Polgar
We just need to find the right path to reach our goals, which isn´t the easiest thing to do, but if we persist, it´s possible. Even if we don´t find the ideal path, we can achieve them by correcting course as we go toward our goals, which will require even more effort and is more difficult, but not impossible.
Besides, I would like to add that everyone has their own timing. We see prodigies reaching GM titles at the age of 13, and this is outstanding. But the fact is that every human being has their own speed of progress.
Sometimes we come across some invisible walls, and we think we can´t go on. On these occasions, believe in yourself, and continue studying. Suddenly, without you even noticing it, you will improve a lot.
As GM Ruslan Ponomariov (@R-Ponomariov) once said:
“I’ve had situations where I seemed to be studying chess a lot, but without seeing any results. Then at a certain moment something clicks, and the quantity is transformed into quality.”
Chess in Translation (2011)
GM Ruslan Ponomariov (@R-Ponomariov)
So when you see a goal and have difficulties in achieving it, don´t give up easily. Try your best, use resilience. Trust in your potential, but, at the same time, be cautious with your thoughts, because our worst enemy, the one who actually prevents us from achieving our maximum, is ourselves.
Of course, I´m taking into account that we all don´t have the same opportunities. Some people have many more difficulties in life than others, but, even then, if you can find some time to train, it´s possible to improve.
In conclusion, using the most popular concept of mastery in chess ("having an official title"), I can guarantee that you have what is needed to reach it.
Scientific Explanation
According to the professor, one of our chromosomes has 5 billion nucleotides, and the nucletíodes themselves contain 4 bases: adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. So we can say that each human chromosome has 20 billion (4 x 5 = 20) units of information inside of it. Each unit of information is called a “bit”.
The professor continues by saying that it´s possible to prove that any letter of an alphabet can be identified with 6 bits.
So if we want to make a comparison and transform one of our chromosomes into letters, we need to divide 20,000,000,000 (number of bits it contains) by 6 (number of bits a letter contains). The result is 3,333,333,333,33. So we have around 3 billion letters in just one chromosome!
A word has around 6 letters. If we divide 3 billion (the approximate number of letters one chromosome contains) by 6, we would reach 500,000,000 words.
A page of a book has an average of 300 words. If we divide 500 million by 300, we reach approximately 1,700,000. As this is an illustration, let´s not work with fractions here. So let´s transform this 1,7 million into 2 million. We have reached the same information contained in 2,000,000 pages in just one chromosome.
If you take a book with an average of 500 pages, and we divide 2 million by 500, we reach an amount of 4.000 books.
In a nutshell: i) in a chromosome, we have 5 billion nucleotides, and each one contains 20 billion bits, ii) which approximately corresponds to 3 billion letters (considering that each letter itself has 6 bits each), iii) this corresponds to 500 million words (considering that each word has an average of 6 letters), and finally, iv) if we consider that a page of a book has an average of 300 words, a human chromosome would correspond to 4,000 books of 500 pages each.
So, we have 4,000 books of 500 pages each written in just each human chromosome, and we have 46 chromosomes in our body.
That´s it, hope you have enjoyed it!
Cheers,
BKB99 (Hear me roar).
References
- Professor Enéias vídeo (content in Portuguese): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OQGUL9ZE0I
Special Thanks
A special thanks to Mr. @Copernicus9 for giving me some important tips and corrections about English writing.
