This Website Sucks For Beginners

Habits you develop when you are young are much harder to break when you get older.  That is true.  That does not mean they are impossible to break, however.  You are assuming that the only reason kids progress fast is because their minds are sponges.  While that is certainly part of it (and the fact that they have not had years of bad habits they must break in order to improve), the massive amount of idle time they can devote to a skill is far more important.

Take learning a new language as an example.  It is much easier to teach kids a new language when they are young.  Does that mean that it is impossible for an adult to become fluent in a new language?  Not at all - it happens all the time.

There is this nihilistic attitude that if you didn't learn something as a kid you are doomed.  That is simply nonsense.  Are you going to get a Nobel Prize in Physics if you just learned Calculus at 35 years old?  The odds are not at all in your favor.  Does that mean you cannot become good at Calculus?  Not at all.  It may take you longer than a 15-year-old who is studying it all day, but you can get there.  The same goes with chess.

The best blitz players on the planet all learned chess by playing classical chess.  You can get better at blitz by playing blitz.  You cannot get better at chess by playing blitz.  You are simply reinforcing your bad habits by doing so.  The irony being that you still think you know what it takes to improve at any time control despite not doing so at any time control.  You are like the guy who just passed algebra walking up to Einstein and telling him General Relativity is wrong.  Good luck with that.

His OTB rating is in the mid-1900s.  His peak online rapid and online blitz ratings are in the mid-2000s.  His peak bullet rating is over 2100.

But yes, rapid online is a "joke" because you are bad at it and get smacked around.  Same with over the board chess.  You know what, you should go down to Washington Park and tell those guys that OTB chess is a joke.

No comment on how your previous stance on "money maketh master" would crash with "masters are born"? Okay then.

1. I don't think I qualified your statement in the first part of my argument, only in my counter hypothesis. Your argument that less than 50% of population could get over 200 point on chess.com. My argument would be that you should be able to show that from available statistics. I can find the mean, median and quartiles values for chess.com but they do exist and from what i remember 600 - 1000 is median in most time controls here. I don't even know how many players are <=200 right now. And that would mean that almost every new player from general population would be worse at both playing and learning than todays bottom players.
   
   I add qualifiers for my previous statement just to make sure that we avoid "but what about mentally disabled or coma patients" kind of answer. I forgot that average intelligence, right after borderline cognitive disability, starts at 85 and not 90 iq. Sorry, that was my fault. But I am pretty sure that roughly 84% of population is >= 85 iq according to classical bell curve: 
   

   

2. Maybe when we talk about work and even then some people prefer to do things they like instead of things they are better at. I would agree that there is an overlap between things we like and things we are good at but when talking about hobbies, which chess is for majority of people, then I would say that many prefer to do things they are objectively worse as long as it is fun. And I would hate to live in a society where we only do things which we have predisposition for. Sound like a very boring dystopia.
   
   
3. But why would you assume that average players in 1980 didn't reach their biological peak and yet 50% of population can't reach higher than 200? Also, we have a problem here with definition of average player: today almost anybody who wants to play chess, can play online. In 1980 most who played were either in clubs or at best played a bit with their friends and family. I would assume that average chess player would have rating in 1980 because the less gifted players would drop out faster, since they wouldn't have anybody to play with.
   
   
4. No no, I quoted movements but just removed it in my answer since it is the idea of "Nurture > Nature" which make the movement "anti-progress" and therefore must have "anti-progress" value. I just disagree that this idea is especially youthful or "anti-progress".
   
   Reason for the first part is that I have heard many more youth movements and ideas today which focus on "we are who we are born as" in regard to once body or abilities in school. And while I like that we are aware that everybody have both upper limits and lower starting points in different domains but often the arguments are turning more and more fatalistic. 
   
   Reason for the second part is that I think more progress can be done in a society where we strive to become better even in areas where we don't have natural talent instead of just following are biological programming like meat machines. After all, Gattaca wasn't a manual for good and humane society.
   
   

Meh, good read probably but I have a feeling that I have either seen his lectures or lectures in evolbio which talked about the book. And sure, I do agree that we have both ceiling and floor on different skills and abilities set by our biology. Given how our genes express differently given different external and internal environment, epigenetics, I would be careful to talk about hard caps and focus more on soft caps and ranges instead. 

You absolute mad lad, this is why I 100% believe that you are real and not just roleplaying a village special person. Who would even come up with idea that I was talking to you or was addressing you in this post, where I clearly quote another user and answered their post point for point. I even quoted their post in another thread and used a small summary what it was about and why I think it was relevant when talking about limiting factors for success in chess. 

But you ignored all that and just assumed that my post was somehow addressed to you. And then you answered it without knowing what you were even trying to answer. I love the irony where you accuse me of broken english while your own reading comprehension in your own native language is lacking.

But you are, in a way, a great argument against fact that anybody can learn. No, not chess specifically, just learn in general. Looks like this blog post about literacy is true after all, 50% of adults are barely literate enough to function well in todays digital society. And you wonder why I don't trust anytime you try to explain what you have heard or read about chess.

Again, reading comprehension is important here.  I said, "You are assuming that the only reason kids progress fast is because their minds are sponges." (bold added for emphasis).  The problem you have is your mind is filled with too much nonsense, making it impossible for you to learn.

Talk about moving the goal-posts.  I have never made a claim that an adult beginner could become a Super-GM, or even a GM.  Yes, there are a couple exceptional cases where someone has learned the game in their late teens or 20s and became a GM (and there was an article about a guy who learned in his 30s and became a GM in his late 50s).  Is that the norm?  Not at all and I do not think people should expect that kind of progress.  On that much, I agree with you.  My assertion, which is backed up by actually working with coaches for many years, is that most people, with proper training and dedication, have the capacity to reach the strength of a ~2000 player.  To borrow my math analogy:  Most people with proper training and dedication can master algebra.  That does not mean they could also master Calculus, nor be nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics.  No one has claimed anything of the sort in this discussion.

Me pointing out that you are wrong and that you are selling yourself short by saying things like "I'll probably always be an 800 player" feeds my ego?  Really?  Do you not understand that I think you are a complete idiot so telling you that you are selling yourself short is anything but feeding my ego.

You've played chess for what, 2 years?  Probably less.

"Blitz kills your ideas" - Fischer

"Yes, I have played a blitz game once. It was on a train, in 1929." - Mikail Botvinnik when responding to if he ever played blitz.

If you notice, the top rapid and blitz players in the world also happen to be among the best classical players in the world.

You play classical chess to get better at chess.  When you get better at chess, you naturally get better at blitz.  It is possible to get better at blitz and bullet and still be terrible at chess.  There is another thread with a guy who is over 2400 in bullet, but is around 1000 in rapid/blitz.  How is that possible, you might ask?  He plays 10s games and flags people by premoving nonsense moves.  In that regard, he isn't getting better at chess, despite pushing up the rating ladder in bullet.

Is it possible to get better (results at least) at blitz without getting better at chess?  Sure, you can play 3+0, make nonsense moves quickly and try to win on time.  There are a ton of kids who do exactly that.  When people ask about improvement, that isn't the kind of nonsense they are talking about.

Again, you try to use him as an example when literally his peak ratings in every single time control (both OTB and online) are close to or over 2000.  The fact that he is off his peak right now means nothing.  He could have had a couple off days ... he could just be getting old ... he could have been trying some new things.  Any number of reasons why someone can drop 300 rating points online in a short period of time.  Hell, a few months ago I was playing around with a different opening setup and dropped from 1880 to 1550 in the span of 2 days.  Rating fluxuates on performance.  There are many reasons why performance can take a hit in the short term.

800 rapid vs 600 blitz is not "much higher".

Beginners should play slower time controls as they need to learn to play chess.  You cannot learn to play chess when you give yourself no time to think.  Now, when you lack a brain, that may not matter, but for most people they are looking to improve at chess, not just get a high online blitz/bullet rating.

But you know what, keep playing blitz and let me know how that works for you.  For anyone else looking to improve their chess, that is not the way to go.

I only play rapid for that very reason. I want to give myself time to think and learn. If that means I only play one game a day, so be it.
Thanks for validating that.

Now let me get in this topic without having any sources or real knowledge about it. But before this, please tell this pleb how you can split quote like this? If I mark->copy->paste the correct formatting will be gone and all I have is raw text. I get how it works with html or bb code where we can have code-view and just use correct tags but this invisible automagic is just beyond me.

Oh, right sponge bob chess kid. So, I am going of what I remember about how and why kids learn faster in similar topics like language and so on. I could and am probably wrong on one or more points, and miss other points. Oh well, here we go. And just to be safe i will warn, this will contain a lot of generalizations.

• Spongy brains: Kids, pre-teen up to late teen or young adults probably, have many unused connection between neurons. So instead of creating new pathways when learning new things, they just use and strengthen the existing one. How it works is beyond my one and half semester of intro biology. But as we get older, the more of this connection disappear in we need to creating new one when we learn. 
• Free time and lack of responsibility: The second most quoted factor is that kids just have so much more time they can spend on any activity and almost zero real long term responsibilities. They can just spend a whole summer learning how to ollie and kick flip and then never skate again, while adult would spend that summer trying to think if it would be a wise investment of effort and time. So they they both have time and they don't feel guilty about using it however they like.
• Brave and shameless: Now this one I've heard a lot in different language learning sites and lectures. While we have the period of learning to hear and differentiate sounds as well as plasticity of kids brain, another factor a lot of proponent of possibility for adult language learning are pointing at is that kids aren't afraid to make mistakes and learn from them. Instead of being afraid of pronouncing the word wrong, using wrong word or in the wrong order, kids will just try anyway and if they fail, oh well it's not a big deal. Pretty sure same can be seen in chess where kids can experiment more and don't feel bad for a long time when they fail. I can at least relate my Swedish language learning as a preteen - teen to how I learn Spanish today as an adult, even when I am aware that I should be more "brave and shameless" for better success as well as I am aware that most of worst or even bad case scenarios are only in my head.
• Everything is new and exciting: Now I don't know if this is one point or two separate, where we could have lack of experience in general and lack of over saturation for specific activity. But I have both heard and felt myself that some activities which were fun when I was young are just not as fun anymore or can bore me much faster. Strangely, chess became more fun now than playing completely new games or watching new movies. Saying that I have grown up is moot since I was as grown up five - ten years ago when I happily played those games. So maybe kids, who aren't over saturated with experience still perceive a lot of activities, even those with a lot of repetition, as fun while an adult would feel bored much faster because they even have more experience in general or more of similar experience in similar category of activities. So playing strategy game for someone who played chess all their life might be boring but a flight simulator would be fun and fresh. Maybe.

It is hard to tell which factors are more important but if we aren't talking about titled result, then I doubt we really have to go beyond time, money and motivation factors.

There was no comment, because you were taking something from one context and placing it in another. My 'money' comment related to the discussion of why children are able to improve faster than adults (I also mentioned that there were no other practical restrictions placed on chess learning for being a child). The comment under discussion related to the achievable abilities of the general population. 

I also think it is a bit off to expect statistical analysis when the poster clearly states they are guessing.  Aside from the likelihood that no such statistics have ever been collected where would we be if ALL had to adhere to your requirements?

However let me stick my oar in once again!

I was recently watching - on Youtube - Magus completing Chessables's 100 Best Puzzles Test. It's well worth the watch as he often struggles just as we mortals do with the puzzles, even getting a few wrong and coming up with lame excuses. However the interesting thing was that he wasn't recalling specific mating patterns in isolation but instead within master games from memory.  Often he seemed to be recalling the game the puzzle came from and only then remembering the solution. This does beg a few questions regarding the best way to improve one's chess talent - but I'll dodge that for now.

In this context, it's well known that World Champions can recall thousands of chess games, some have even been said to recall over a million. Indeed one could imagine a sliding scale all the way up to chess greatness.

So here is my point, what training do GMs or WCs do to recall chess games? Where are all the books, coaches and apps training us mere mortals to recall chess games? Why such a total absence?

Could it be that such a variant talent is innate from person to person and can't be altered to any great degree?

Is memory the limiting factor is achieving our very own greatness? Can everyone be trained to recall thousand of chess games? Or maybe just a few hundred, or lets say less than ten or just one our favourite - when be beat that GM with a back rank mate!

Clearly there is some sort of limiting factor that more than likely is governed by unknown and probably unknowable DNA characteristics. 

Ok doubling back, what if we've got it all wrong and that the best thing to do for chess improvement is to study master games in there entirety - for example, Botnivviks Best 100 Games. After all it's not as if this is a novel idea.  Just a thought!

Okay, first I would like to apologize if I come across rude, most of the time it’s not my intention. Second, I apologize for the length of my post.

But I was interested if your view on money as limiter is that it could offset the biologic limiter by using top level learning methods (coaches and mentors, all day spent on chess, perfect environment etc) or if you just think that biological peak is there no matter what, it’s just that without money most people will never reach their peak at all.

And I didn’t expect you to prove your guess but if I am being honest, I was expecting that given such a specific claim about percent of population and such a low rating ceiling that you would have some kind of in depth explanation. Maybe comparing rating on this site before Queens Gambit and PogChamps with today and extrapolating that since median rating is dropping and everyone who care about chess even a little bit, and therefore would have some ability to play, would already be here. So the rest of population is worse than even bottom 25% today. Or maybe you had some theory that if everyone would start playing chess and improving at the same time, then elo rating would stil be the same because they would be on the same place relative to other players. It is just so specifically low ceiling for almost half population, I don’t know why you think so? And I am not complaining or accusing you, just find it very pessimistic view of our capabilities.

Now importance of memory and cognitive processing is probably an interesting point for determining once capabilities in chess. I would say that if you are sever lacking in both, at least when it comes to parse and remember positions on the board, then you won’t have a good time playing. But from what I remember, there is some debate about how good general memory experts (no title, probably A-B level players) and above have. They are very good at remembering correct, legal position but if given illegal or nonsensical position then their memory isn’t that much better. Can include some sources about that as well as the reverse where improvement in memory from chess or brain games are mostly relevant only in chess and brain games. So we can learn to remember things important to us in greater capacity than something less relevant.
Sources: 
https://theprint.in/pageturner/excerpt/chess-player-memory-a-myth-this-is-my-trick-writes-viswanathan-anand/333568/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-apes/201710/music-and-chess-do-not-enhance-cognitive-ability

Which brings me on some anecdote about memory: I have seen a couple of men who are obviously not that smart. No, I don’t mean they are street smart or people smart instead but just aren’t smart in general. Have trouble remembering how to update their pc or which parties are in the office now and who is their representative or other ”we already told you this just yesterday” kind of things. Wouldn’t say that their memory is anything special. Yet if you ask anything about football or hockey and they will tell you all important matches in WM, NM, local team and so on. Who played, who scored, when and how. They can’t remember your middle name but some dude who scored in 1980’s is forever in their mind. So, memory is a bit tricky.

But, maybe you are correct after all. I love bringing up the free course of "Learning how to learn" since it is a quick and good intro into how to learn faster. One part, which I personally rarely apply, is context learning and use of technics as mnemonics, scenarios and memory palace. Maybe if we put some meaning behind at least some general puzzle themes and solution/solving ideas like putting them in the context of some master game, it would be easier to visualize and recall. In theory, at least.

@CooloutAC, what you’ve just written is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever read. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this thread is now dumber for having read it.

Actually my thinking (or guess) on this matter wasn't coming from any statistical inference. Rather it was coming from the differences between the abilities of the general population to acquire Arithmetic and Mathematics skills. Whereas I believe coaching, training and effort etc can be used to increase the general populations skills in Arithmetic and don't think this is the case with Mathematics (for the whole population). This belief is contrary to current educational theory and practices - the so-called 'Little Mathematician Approach'.  Despite nearly three decades of flogging this approach on children I see little evidence of it's effectiveness in the adult population. I actually consider this harmful as the great efforts and resources put into educating the masses in Mathematics would be better directed into Arithmetic where the 'reward' to society and the individual would be greater - certainly when it come to finances!.

To me, the majority of the population find the first step on Mathematical learning to be so high that they get nowhere - other than regurgitation. Educationalists will argue that better teaching practices etc will overcome this first step, in short there can be no biological limitation for this first step. all learning is Nurture!  I think this 'Grand Experiment' has gone on long enough and that the evidence is there that the Educationalists are just plain wrong. 

Now back to chess, which I consider to be a formal system more akin to Mathematics than Arithmetic. If true then the majority of the general population are likely to be unable to develop any talent for chess, just like the majority are unable to develop any talent for Mathematics. Again if true, this means that any chess player with a rating of 200+ is likely to be far more talented than the the general population can ever be, and thereby represents a considerable achievement - albeit a relatively low one compared to the sub-group ALL chess players.

I happen to think there are a number of human activities - music?- that fall into the 'Mathematical' category and Educationalists by their denial of such categories are inflicting a lot of pain and suffering on children. Indeed one method of human selection for Mathematical Training would be the chess playing abilities of children over the age of 8+. Children don't develop abstract thought patterns till after ages 5 to 8, - this limitation alone maybe why Magus initially wasn't interested nor capable of impressive chess playing when under the age of 7.  

Also note, many of the world's greatest Mathematicians have been absolutely hopeless at Arithmetic and being a great numerical calculator doesn't correlate with mathematical talents (there is evidence of this from pre-computer days when people were employed as calculators).

And so back to chess: Can puzzles training alone truly drive one all the way up to classical GM status? 

I certainly think with puzzles it's important to consciously think in terms of name tags of the various possible tactics, i.e. pin, skewer etc. This should aid pattern storage into the super fast memory recall of the unconscious mind when no thinking is done at all.

I was aware of the experiment mentioned. There have been experiments performed on animals to determine to what number they can count too. For example, a bird is given the choice between two stacks of seeds.  The bird has been trained to know that only one stack many be chosen.  It's in the interest of the bird to choose the larger stack.  By such means and a bit of statistical inference it's been determined that some birds can count to over 300 (Training/Practice makes no difference to the outcomes, the maximum varies with species tested in this way). No easy task when humans start off with 1, 2 many - in fact some human societies don't go much further.

There is also an experiment to infer mathematical ability. The person is placed in front of a screen, a picture of a number of randomly positioned dots is flashed - fractions of a second - then they are asked to recall how many dots were on the picture.  People with high mathematical abilities can accurately 'count' well above 100+ dots, mere mortals are lucky to get past 5 to 7. Training/Practice makes no difference to the outcomes.

Neither of these experiments are test of memory but they do suggest that some things are likely to be impervious to direct learning.

The details are in book called 'The Number Sense', I've have forgot the author.

A guy spends most of his time working when work is learning and teaching history, but also has an online blitz chess addiction, likes chess books, plays OTB, and spends a little time teaching chess to kids, and he becomes someone’s example of how it is not possible to reach 2000 in his chess rating. You gotta wonder if anyone knows what they are talking about. My favorite Ronald Reagan quote was deployed, so that’s something.

http://historynotebook.blogspot.com/2020/11/what-is-ignorance.html

The claim was sans “defects”. Blitz reinforces error. That is a defect. Too much blitz before you master fundamentals and mastery will elude you.

Is it just me I don’t get this argument at all 

Yes it's very interesting this. Looking at the data for LiChess, there is great individual consistency between ratings for Rapid and Classical and between Bullet and Blitz, but the later pair are far lower than the former the lower the skill level. It's only as you approach IM/GM skill levels that the play formats become consistent.

The possible reason for this is time constraints have a greater adverse affect on lower than higher skill players. Certainly no surprise if this was the case.

Shame about Levy giving up completive gameplay. I'll certainly miss this aspect of his streaming. 

Chess is not my life. Yes, I’ve played it for more than 50 years. I’ve played it almost every day since the mid-1990s. I’ve been an online blitz junkie since 1998. I have something over 400 chess books and I’ve spent a lot of time reading them. I’ve been coaching children for 22 years. I’ve written some chess books. I’ve spent more time on chess than most people. More time has been spent playing than teaching. More time has been spent teaching than learning. I learned the game before the age of 10, but improved my game substantially in my 40s. Now in my 60s, I’m still learning, but my skill overall is not improving much, if at all. My blitz ability suffers even more. In my 40s, I could play 120 moves in a one minute game using the touch pad on my laptop computer. I struggle to play half that many today.

As for my life: this is a chess site, so that’s the side you see. I prefer the river, the lake, the woods. I fish. I hunt. I shoot targets for fun. I bought an old gun just because it would be fun to work on it and to shoot it. I rebuilt some parts that were missing. It was manufactured as a military rifle, then drastically modified as a sporting arm. Might be getting a lead furnace so I can cast bullets for this antique, but in the meantime, Montana Bullet Works can sell me what I need.

I’m a history teacher. That’s my life.

If my life had been devoted to reaching a 2000 blitz rating on a chess site, I would have done it.

When what you think you know about Anders Ericsson’s work on the development of expertise has been filtered through Malcolm Gladwell, you need to forget it and start again. Gladwell failed catastrophically to understand and communicate the notion of deliberate practice. That idea is at the heart of Ericsson’s work, but everyone knows this 10,000 hours nonsense that Gladwell put forth.

Your point, however, is quite good. Study the right things in the right ways.

Look at MDM’s rapid rating before you trust his claims. He knows how to tell a story to sell a book. He had financial resources and no responsibilities, devoted two years to chess, briefly cracked 2000, and then quit. His book is a con.

I bought ChessBase when I was 1400 USCF. Six years later, I was over 1800.

The US Department of Education occasionally releases a study on how well people read. Twenty years ago, less than 15% of American adults could distinguish fact from opinion when reading an editorial. This number has declined in the years since. In other words, most Americans are marginally literate. That’s gonna have an impact on their ability to learn from books.