older grandmasters

So I recently began playing chess "seriously" and am, of course, interested in improving my playing strength as much as is possible with the time I set aside for chess.

One of my concerns is that every world-class chess player I hear about was recognized very early in their life as being a strong player, and was winning championships well before puberty :P

Personally I don't believe some people are "gifted" in certain ways. I believe there is no reason anyone cannot achieve learning goals if they practice hard and frequently enough, but is chess the same way? Does anyone know of master strength players that started playing in their adult lives? Is anyone else concerned they may reach a ceiling in their strength and never be able to progess beyond it?

i am pretty sure that there is someone who reached master level twice..

(once before and once after a head injury -- if this counts)

Believe it or not, there are gifted people. Most grandmasters must be gifted people.

Oh, there are gifted people, dsachs, yes there are!  You have undoubtedly run across them in other areas if not in chess!  And gifted people who also work hard, these are the grandmasters.

yeah tonydal, that is exactly who i was thinking of.. age matters not!

dsachs wrote:

I believe there is no reason anyone cannot achieve learning goals if they practice hard and frequently enough, but is chess the same way? <snip> Is anyone else concerned they may reach a ceiling in their strength and never be able to progess beyond it?

While there certainly are gifted people, I agree with you that most people could achieve most things if they were willing to work hard enough. However, we also have to keep in mind that the formative childhood years are very important; if someone masters something as a child, it usually will be more deeply ingrained in their thought and more natural to them as a result.

For example: Tiger Woods started playing golf when he was 3 years old; Wayne Gretzky learned to skate before he learned to walk. People like that do have a huge head start on the rest of us.

As an adult, it is certainly possible to study chess and become a very good player. Becoming a master is not out of the question. However, I believe that someone who has never won (let alone participated in) a major tournament when they were young doesn't have a very realistic chance of becoming World Champion.