It's really easy-peasy. Just put a "GM" in front of your name.
A Study Plan to get me from 1000-GM in 2 years?
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Back to the topic, just wondering can I actually achieve that if I put in enough work? I'm 15 years old, just started playing seriously a few months ago but I have 3-4 hours of free time every schoolday, and more on holidays. Chess is my passion right now, even at school I'm dreaming about chess, imagining various positions, waiting to be able to head home and play.
With the right study plan, how fast can I improve?
With the right study plan, how fast can I improve?
At 15, I'd be concentrating that time on my school work. That's what's going to get you a job and money.
1 hour per day - 100 years
2 hours per day - 50 years
5 hours per day - 20 years
10 hours per day - 10 years
20 hours per day - 5 years
sleepless nights - less than 4 years.
Oct 29, 2017
0
#6
Lyudmil_Tsvetkov wrote:
1 hour per day - 100 years
2 hours per day - 50 years
5 hours per day - 20 years
10 hours per day - 10 years
20 hours per day - 5 years
sleepless nights - less than 4 years.
This can apply for any craft a person learns. To become a master one has to live and breathe his craft.
Oct 29, 2017
0
#7
If you are really serious about that, the chess.com forum is an absolute horrible place to ask this question. If you are dead serious about it, leave these forums permanently.
Oct 29, 2017
0
#8
Try to contact Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, I think they offer some GM crash courses for people with unrealistic expectations.
Possibly of interest:
"... the NM title is an honor that only one percent of USCF members attain. ..." - IM John Donaldson (2015)
http://www.jeremysilman.com/shop/pc/Reaching-the-Top-77p3905.htm
What It Takes to Become a Chess Master by Andrew Soltis
"... going from good at tactics to great at tactics ... doesn't translate into much greater strength. ... You need a relatively good memory to reach average strength. But a much better memory isn't going to make you a master. ... there's a powerful law of diminishing returns in chess calculation, ... Your rating may have been steadily rising when suddenly it stops. ... One explanation for the wall is that most players got to where they are by learning how to not lose. ... Mastering chess ... requires a new set of skills and traits. ... Many of these attributes are kinds of know-how, such as understanding when to change the pawn structure or what a positionally won game looks like and how to deal with it. Some are habits, like always looking for targets. Others are refined senses, like recognizing a critical middlegame moment or feeling when time is on your side and when it isn't. ..." - GM Andrew Soltis (2012)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708093409/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review857.pdf
100 Chess Master Trade Secrets by Andrew Soltis
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708094523/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review916.pdf
Reaching the Top?! by Peter Kurzdorfer
"... On the one hand, your play needs to be purposeful much of the time; the ability to navigate through many different types of positions needs to be yours; your ability to calculate variations and find candidate moves needs to be present in at least an embryonic stage. On the other hand, it will be heart-warming and perhaps inspiring to realize that you do not need to give up blunders or misconceptions or a poor memory or sloppy calculating habits; that you do not need to know all the latest opening variations, or even know what they are called. You do not have to memorize hundreds of endgame positions or instantly recognize the proper procedure in a variety of pawn structures.
[To play at a master level consistently] is not an easy task, to be sure ..., but it is a possible one. ..." - NM Peter Kurzdorfer (2015)
http://www.thechessmind.net/blog/2015/11/16/book-notice-kurzdorfers-reaching-the-top.html
http://www.jeremysilman.com/shop/pc/Reaching-the-Top-77p3905.htm
"Yes, you can easily become a master. All you need to do is some serious, focused work on your play.
That 'chess is 99% tactics and blah-blah' thing is crap. Chess is several things (opening, endgame, middlegame strategy, positional play, tactics, psychology, time management...) which should be treated properly as a whole. getting just one element of lay and working exclusively on it is of very doubtful value, and at worst it may well turn out being a waste of time." - IM pfren (August 21, 2017)
https://www.chess.com/article/view/can-anyone-be-an-im-or-gm
Train Like a Grandmaster by Kotov
Becoming a Grandmaster by Keene
What It Takes to Become a Grandmaster by GM Andrew Soltis
"BENJAMIN FINEGOLD (born Sep-06-1969 ...) ... Ben became a USCF Life Master at 15, USCF Senior Master at 16, an International Master in 1989, and achieved his final GM norm at the SPICE Cup B Section in September, 2009. ..."
http://www.chessgames.com/player/benjamin_finegold.html
"MARK IZRAILOVICH DVORETSKY (... died Sep-26-2016 ...) ... He was ... awarded the IM title in 1975. Dvoretsky was also a FIDE Senior Trainer and noted author. ... During the 1970s, Mark was widely regarded by the strongest IM in the world, ..."
http://www.chessgames.com/player/mark_izrailovich_dvoretsky.html
https://www.chess.com/article/view/don-t-worry-about-your-rating
https://www.chess.com/article/view/am-i-too-old-for-chess
https://www.chess.com/blog/smurfo/book-review-insanity-passion-and-addiction
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/26/books/books-of-the-times-when-the-child-chess-genius-becomes-the-pawn.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2017/05/05/making-a-living-in-chess-is-tough-but-the-internet-is-making-it-easier/#4284e4814850
https://www.chess.com/news/view/is-there-good-money-in-chess-1838
"... Many aspiring young chess players dream of one day becoming a grandmaster and a professional. ... But ... a profession must bring in at least a certain regular income even if one is not too demanding. ... The usual prize money in Open tournaments is meagre. ... The higher the prizes, the greater the competition. ... With a possibly not very high and irregular income for several decades the amount of money one can save for old age remains really modest. ... Anyone who wants to reach his maximum must concentrate totally on chess. That involves important compromises with or giving up on his education. ... it is a question of personal life planning and when deciding it is necessary to be fully conscious of the various possibilities, limitations and risks. ... a future professional must really love chess and ... be prepared to work very hard for it. ... It is all too frequent that a wrong evaluation is made of what a talented player can achieve. ... Most players have the potential for a certain level; once they have reached it they can only make further progress with a great effort. ... anyone who is unlikely to attain a high playing strength should on no account turn professional. ... Anyone who does not meet these top criteria can only try to earn his living with public appearances, chess publishing or activity as a trainer. But there is a lack of offers and these are not particularly well paid. For jobs which involve appearing in public, moreover, certain non-chess qualities are required. ... a relevant 'stage presence' and required sociability. ... All these jobs and existences, moreover, have hanging above them the sword of Damocles of general economic conditions. ... around [age] 40 chess players ... find that their performances are noticeably tailing off. ..." - from a 12 page chapter on becoming a chess professional in the book, Luther's Chess Reformation by GM Thomas Luther (2016)
http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/ebooks/LuthersChessReformation-excerpt.pdf
5-8 yrs.
Another interesting question is how much time does one need to reach the
level of Stockfish?
Why should we strive to become grandmasters, maybe it is better to
outperform Stockfish.
I've heard it said many times that to become a master at anything requires 10,000 hours of practice. That's five years, eight hours a day, five days a week (American work week). I haven't seen anything in the chess world that would dispute that. Once the human brain reaches adulthood, learning becomes more difficult. Most grandmasters I have read about started around age 8 (give or take a few years) and were well on their way by mid-teens. If you get quality practice, take care of your brain (i.e. stay away from alcohol and drugs) and keep physically fit, I don't see why you can't achieve a GM rating in five years. Getting your norms is another battle to get into those types of tournaments and defeat GMs.
Oct 29, 2017
0
#13
A martial arts student went to his teacher and said earnestly "I am devoted to learning your martial system. How long will it take me to master it?" The teacher's reply was casual "Ten years." Impatiently the student answered "But I want to learn it faster than that. I will work very hard. I will practice everyday, ten or more hours a day if I have to. How long will it take then?" The teacher thought for a moment "Twenty years"
"... In a recently published issue of the journal 'Intelligence' there were numerous studies, analysis, and pieces on the 10,000hr rule. In particular, one study by David Hambrick and colleagues entitled “Deliberate practice: Is that all it takes to become an expert”, sought out to 'test Ericsson’s claim that "individual differences in ultimate performance can largely be accounted for by differential amounts of past and current levels of practice.' As a refresher, Ericsson was the original researcher who developed and then publicized the concepts, which then took off with Gladwell’s Outliers, Geoffrey Colvin’s Talent is Overrated, Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code, and numerous others who jumped on the bandwagon with their own spin.
In there research Hambrick reanalyzed 12 studies looking at expert performance in chess and music. Similar to Ericsson’s original work, they simply looked at hours of deliberate practice for each and compared it to performance levels along their development. In the chess studies, they found that deliberate practice explained 34% of the variance in performance, and therefore 66% unexplained. Looking at the individual numbers is even more staggering. There were some people who had over 20,000 hours of deliberate practice yet never went beyond Intermediate, the lowest of the three levels (intermediate, expert, and master). Perhaps most striking, was the range of “masters” was 832 hours to 24,284hrs to reach mastery.
When looking at Music, the results were very similar. 29.9% of the variance in performance was explained by amount of deliberate practice.
The whole study is worth a read as it delves into intelligence, personality, and other factors related to reaching 'expertise.' However, the take away to me is simply common sense. Does practice make you better? Of course it does, but it isn’t the be all end all. And you know what, neither is genetics. ..."
http://www.scienceofrunning.com/2014/03/why-gladwells-10000-rule-is-just-plain.html
I hear it does not take much work to achieve GM. If I employ the correct study plan, could I become a GM in 1 year? If that is unreasonable, how about 2 years? What kind of study plan should I make? Thank you!