I don't understand why I can't become a world class mathematician or pianist after just a few months of practice and a photographic memory.
Hmm, in that case it seems your knowledge of those areas and what it takes to gain skill in them is very close to zero.
It's also worth mentioning prodigies aren't prodigies because they have a great memory.
One way you could think of it, if you really don't understand chess at all, is to simply know it's nature is such that the human mind can improve upon it's past play a great number of times. And that the amount of skill you can gain in a year is roughly equal to the amount of skill millions of others will gain in the same amount of time.
So becoming a grandmaster isn't an objective measurement like achieving the speed of sound, it's a relative performance where you're able to out play fellow human minds that have spent a lot of time and energy acquiring the same skill.
The performances of prodigies are outliers that have nothing to do with the practical methods and gains of study.
While a good memory is a useful skill for a chess player to have, it alone is nearly worthless without the ability to analyze and understand a position. Memory is most useful in the opening, and certain types of endgames, but in the middle game is about a combination of pattern recognition, visual/spacial skills(which together make tactics), and the ability to understand positional strengths and weaknesses. If all you have going for you is memory you are lost once your opponent leaves theory, even if their move choice is sub-par. If you don't know why the non-book move is weak you can't take advantage of it, and you probably can't find a good continuation on your own not understanding the nature of the position.
In short, you can't make your way to Class C, let alone Grandmaster, just by having a very good memory. That's why lower level players are often told not to spend time trying to memorize endless variations, but rather to work on tactics and basic positional concepts.
#30 -31 seems to be interesting intellectual counter arguments, unlike the racists who made personal attacks on #23-24 to silence someone.
Hey polly, I know this is off topic and all but I just cant get the statement out of my mind that you beat chessmaster and rybka on a regular basis. Gogo, start playing chess games on live chess to show us the new mikhail tal! You OBVIOUSLY have enough time to do so considering all these long tl;dr posts you've done
That thread was poorly worded and I already edited/deleted, I think you guys misunderstood and think that I'm somehow bragging about my skills when I was just trying to understand the game/learning proccesses, relevance of pattern memorization and it's players better from a scientific perspective.I've never claimed to be better than any person at chess.
Why do you guys constantly make personal attacks?
Hi!
According to a lot of sources, it takes at least 10 years of study to become a Grand Master. How can it be that this takes so long? And 10 years from what rating? How much study?
I know that one needs to have the deep positional understanding all prominent players have, but why can't this be achieved over a couple of months?
Answers from especially titled players would be awesome!
Thanks
Scientific America had an article in there magazine called “The Expert Mind”. The article clamed it would take 10950 hours of training in a field to make you an expert (expert ratting in chess is 2000 – 2199). They suggested that you study 3 hours a day for 10 years.
Polly, this is a chess site. Why not play chess? Do you have some good reason not to play chess?
So why are you directing that towards me? why not towards anyone else on the forum?
I was gonna play chess when I just registered but u guys are so hostile I thought I should just find a few nice people to play with instead of randoms and people who constantly make personal attacks.Seeing how you guys are already so hostile on my first post and with threads here complaining about rude players, I can pretty much guess what kind of comments you guys will make regardless of the outcome of my chess games as I've played a lot of online video games.I really thought the chess community would be a lot more mature and intellectual but now I realized that there are bad apples anywhere.
I still learn a lot by memorizing puzzles/openings on this site and from people who make intellectual posts on the forums.
No, don't play chess. First study for 1-2 days. :p
Please, stick to one story. You originally said that you were too busy to play, then you started posting arrogant tripe. You decided not to listen to anyone who disagreed with you. Now you claim that you are interested in intellectual discussion?
Better than sticking to one story, stick to one story that has a hint of truth.
That's why you're being attacked.
Play some chess, the great majority of the people who post here, and almost everyone who's opinion is worth reading, plays chess here.
Play some chess.
They're all truth - I Was gonna play a few games that day regardless of wheter or not I win/lose before you guys made the comments, I do work and do have to go on a business trip soon but the difference between typing on these forums and playing a game is that playing a chess game requires more concentration and if I do lose I'll feel the urge to analyze every other possible scenario and not focus on my work.
I'm bad at blitz/bullet and w/e else but those arrogant comments were made by other people on the thread who claim that I could beat (insert grandmaster names) if I could beat chessmaster and rybka.
Polly, its no wonder everyone is being hostile to you - you demean every Chess player who works hard at the game and write it off as something that can be mastered effortlessly. Even I take offense to your statement as I've spent a fair bit of the last year improving my game and I've made strides but not at the GM level and certainly not for a few years and same goes for my piano skills which have a long way to go.
Where did I demean chess players? I simply stated that I believe memory might affect gameplay and showed a child prodigy as an example.
Quit bullshitting and start playing chess, little troll. Your kind is not rare here. We get guys who claims to beat grandmasters, to be at the level of grandmasters, to be a grandmaster, refuting well known openings and defeating 3000 rated chess engines every single week. You're nothing special.
Of course, you WOULD be something special if you managed to prove us all to be wrong and decided to play some games, showing us amazing skill.
Finally; If you were good enough to beat chessmaster and rybka you'd be better than everyone on this website and pretty much every single gm out there so it's hardly arrogant to say you should be able to beat -insert gm name here-
Why am I feeding the troll you ask? I'm bored.
Once again I've never claimed to beat grandmasters, those trolls are the ones who claim I could beat the grandmasters.I've never refuted any well known openings or any opening for that matter so you must've read someone elses post.
I'm not here to brag or demean anybody, I've deleted that thread and apologized few days ago.
Polly, its no wonder everyone is being hostile to you - you demean every Chess player who works hard at the game and write it off as something that can be mastered effortlessly. Even I take offense to your statement as I've spent a fair bit of the last year improving my game and I've made strides but not at the GM level and certainly not for a few years and same goes for my piano skills which have a long way to go.
Where did I demean chess players? I simply stated that I believe memory might affect gameplay and showed a child prodigy as an example.
Your very first post on this t hread says enough of how little you think it takes to become a Grandmaster. You bring up other endeavors like say doing rocket science and that also take years of work from the brightest Ivy League students. You infer to to a link of a prodigy obtaining the National Master title that doesn't even support your argument because it still took several years to achieve the title and that title isn't even recognized by FIDE which begins with FIDE Master which is still a few years (or a lifetime) away from Grandmaster.
I guess I misunderstood the boy's official title as I'm not familiar with official chess ratings and as for my perception on prodigies being able to master chess in a short time, I've always thought that certain people are born with certain features that enable them to learn/perform certain stuff better than other people and it's not limited to chess.It might be a flawed perception but it's not meant to demean anybody
You've already been identified as a troll. Quit the act.
1. Go to 4chan
2. Go to landoverbaptist.net and learn how to troll from these troll-masters.
3. Start playing some actual chess
4. get lai---oh wait, that'll never happen to you.
Or maybe you should
1.go to america
2.join the KKK
3.oh wait, you're already an intolerant prejudiced midget no1 likes
4.shouldn't you be worshipping your Fuhrer?
In psychology, polly, your response is called "projecting".
I must admit that child prodigy post does look like a projection althought now that I think of it, it's probably the combination of post traumatic stress disorder and a subconcious fantasy of an alternate timeline where everything is fine and dandy during my childhood.
Well have a nice day everyone, not trying to troll.
I have photographic memory but over the board it is still hard to recollect every single variation because sometimes you get them mixed up. One thing I noticed about my memory is that if I visit a place or look into my head on a place i have visited. I can visualize what the room looks like from different aspect points. Maybe from another corner of the room or from above. This is neat because I can try and visualize what my opponent sees from the other side of the board.
I think the higher your rating becomes, the harder it comes to improve.
For example: It took me ages to go from 1800 to 2000 rating, but not that long to go from 1200 to 1500.
Yes the law of diminishing returns as you approach a personal ceiling.
Both talent and great application are needed to become a GM which rules out 99.999649% of active players and all reading this post.
However there may be some hope as gaining the title now is easier than its ever been.
>:)
Seriously, let me start by saying I like chess.com. Alot.
I made a couple of moves today on my correspondence games, checked some blogs, ran through game explorer, and finally, I went to check my profile to see if anything had happened on my new forum thread "becoming a grand master". I was really happy when I saw that I had gotten 57 comments, and rushed to check them.
Now, the first posts are great, and I am really glad to get help from someone who knew what they were talking about.
But the next 50 posts were just a fight between a user named Polly and the rest of the forum. Come on guys, if Polly really is a troll, don't feed him. Do like I do, ignore him. If he is a troll.
Now, can't we move on? It would be fun for all of us to know the answers to these questions right? I can't believe that people can be so immature. Maybe I should have asked this on the private forums, as chess.com says they "prevent immaturity".
I just kinda hoped that people would restrain themselves a bit in order to keep a clean, nice forum.
The comments here are interesting. I've also read somewhere sometime that pattern recognition is also key to master level strength. So, an average intermediate like myself may recognise 1,000 positions; an IM about 10,000 and a GM probably close to 100,000. Of course, that points to targetted training and plenty, plenty repetition of positions. This means thousands of exercises and problems solved in tactics, endings, openings and strategy. Soon, it begins to activate positional intuition and high tactical awareness. Well, I have software where I've begun to put myself through my paces. Maybe we'll meet on the other side of 2300.
If you check wikipedia, the very existence of a photographic memory is highly debatable...
Only one person has been "proven" in a semi-rigorous scientific test to have a perfect eidetic memory, and apparently you married the researcher afterwards...
which of course raises questions about subjectivity.