Can Anyone Become Grandmaster?

Grand Master Flash

Becoming a Grandmaster isn't an easy task. It requires a lot of hard work and complete deducation to the game. Currently there are less than 1500 Grandmasters in the world (Out of Over 7 Billions). In my opinion, hard work can only do you so much, raw talent is certainly a requirment. "If you're not a Grandmaster by the age of forteen than forget about it" --Vishy Anand(Current World Shampion).

No, just the furious five (hundred).

To become a GM in this day and age you need a GM as they know what it takes. They will have you on the most direct course without wasting any time.

1500 that should be larger than that number due to improvements in learning the game. It might they can afford the travel needed to play in those major tournaments. They may be titled players that figure they could make just much money as not being a GM and have more free time. Maybe the titled players has a choice keep you title status but nor persue the GM and not have the spouse leave with the kids.

He meant you should forget about becoming world champ, if you're not a GM by fourteen, not forget about becoming a grandmaster at all. Though a agree with the rest of your post.

Yeah it is easy to talk when your the Champ at the moment. It when you lose it and can gain it back and not the title but your game. Timing of opponents in a generation helps also.

If your starting off against watered down competition that can help also. Then when at the top the rest of game can come as the competition may no longer be as watered down.

I am a Filipino.

The answer is clearly 42.(yes)

Look all these avatars here!

Intimidating.

We should form a group.

Uh-oh, looks like we've got us a couple more ad hominids going at it.  Once again the straw is flying...

(No wonder everybody else hates chessplayers.)

Ha, no wonder indeed...

This thread is quite useless. Face the reality - clearly everyone is special. It requires a certain type of special talent to become a grandmaster, and some just don't have it. Obviously if you are obsessed with chess, you most likely do have skill and intelligence, but it requires nurturing from early childhood to flourish. And who wants to ruin his childhood for a pointless game like chess? Who wants to ruin his childrens' childhood for that? I think the nowadays competition is simply too cruel for most of us to actually get in there.

"During many ages, the prediction, as it is usual, contributed to its own accomplishment" - Edward Gibbon

A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior. 

"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." - Henry Ford

In his book Social Theory and Social Structure, Merton defines self-fulfilling prophecy in the following terms: e.g. when Roxanna falsely believes her marriage will fail, her fears of such failure actually cause the marriage to fail.

The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour which makes the original false conception come 'true'. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.

 

 

In other words, a positive or negative prophecy, strongly held belief, or delusion - declared as truth when it is actually false - may sufficiently influence people so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the once-false prophecy.

....[It] tells us that public definitions of a situation (prophecies or predictions) become an integral part of the situation and thus affect subsequent developments. This is peculiar to human affairs. It is not found in the world of nature, untouched by human hands. Predictions of the return of Halley's comet do not influence its orbit. But the rumoured insolvency of Millingville's bank did affect the actual outcome. The prophecy of collapse led to its own fulfilment.

Philosopher Karl Popper called the self-fulfilling prophecy the Oedipus effect:

One of the ideas I had discussed in The Poverty of Historicism was the influence of a prediction upon the event predicted. I had called this the "Oedipus effect", because the oracle played a most important role in the sequence of events which led to the fulfilment of its prophecy. … For a time I thought that the existence of the Oedipus effect distinguished the social from the natural sciences. But in biology, too—even in molecular biology—expectations often play a role in bringing about what has been expected.

 

 

 

People will often change their attitudes to come into line with what they profess publicly.

In Canadian hockey, junior league players are selected based on skill, motor coordination, physical maturity, and other individual merit criteria. However, psychologist Robert Barnsley showed that in any elite group of hockey players, 40% are born between January and March, versus the approximately 25% as would be predicted by statistics. The explanation is that in Canada, the eligibility cutoff for age-class hockey is January 1, and the players who are born in the first months of the year are older by 9–12 months, which at the preadolescent age of selection (nine or ten) manifests into an important physical advantage. The selected players are exposed to higher levels of coaching, play more games, and have better teammates. These factors make them actually become the best players, fulfilling the prophecy, while the real selection criterion was age.^[8] The same relative age effect has been noticed in Belgian soccer after 1997, when the start of the selection year was changed from August 1 to January 1.

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy )

 

So, billyblatt, you have publicly stated that you can become a grandmaster. When shall we expect that glorious event to be fulfilled?

Yep, belief in yourself and hard work are key ingredients to success.  However don't mistake an accurate assessment of "I can't do it" as ignorance.  Belief is not supernatural.

I am just worried about this: Self-perception theory (SPT) is an account of attitude formation developed by psychologist Daryl Bem. It asserts that people develop their attitudes by observing their own behavior and concluding what attitudes must have caused it.

To me it seems to be saying that What I Can Do comes from What I am Doing Right Now. So if I notice my performance is so-so, and I don't have any good work ethic, I am too busy with other things, and I have reached a certain age etc all this might lead me to believe that I can't become a GM or IM etc; that there is no future for me.

It is just how accurate is accurate?

That's as may be, but here in Australia, we've also got the "Wagga Wagga" (Wagga Wagga is a town in country NSW) effect. That is that sports stars from the small towns are more common than average rates from their  populations would predict.

It is also a coaching effect, but not through formal coaching, more of a peer group thing. Younger kids play with older siblings and mates, so their skill level goes up faster than it would if they weren't the smallest kid on the field.

So if you want to improve, take on games you expect to lose.

You're pointing out how a poor attitude can affect a person's performance.  I'm pointing out that your argument has nothing to do with how bias or correct the person's belief is.

In fact I think a person who believes they can become a grandmaster is much more likely to be bias.  Note statistically speaking it is necessarily unlikely that a person will achieve elite status in any given ability.  When a person believes otherwise I point to valence effect, confirmation bias or self-serving bias (all of which are on wiki).

Not that this is a terrible thing.  I agree with you that positive belief/attitude can help raise a person's performance.  To an extent it is self-fulfilling.  To believe effort can get you anywhere is a useful bias evolutionarily speaking but it's still a bias.  If you're taking other factors into consideration (say, like personal performance and improvement rate as compared to other titled players) then it's all good and I wouldn't call it a bias.

I was just trying to point out that people were much more convinced that it is virtually impossible to become a GM. Having such convictions might be self fulfilling, and it has become a singular viewpoint (at least for the people who have posted here, that is, slowly it is becoming culturally ingrained).

So it is either you are on your way to be a GM (you are 14, rated over 2400, active, getting coached, and have talent), or not ( over 20).

By giving reasons for not entering the race, you don't enter the race, which ensures you don't win.

Or, put another way, by consistently arguing why you can't win, you don't enter, giving your self zero chance. By giving yourself no chance (a behavior chosen by you), you say there IS no chance (which may not be true). That is, acting in a certain way, and then saying, this is the way I must act, or this is the ONLY way I CAN act. 

This is what I was trying to draw from the SPT theory. The current behavior (not trying to be a GM) has shaped the thinking, this act of pulling back, of turning away from the actions that would make you a GM, gives one the impression that there are no actions that would lead to being a GM.

That is, not being on the road leads one to say there are no roads. Hence, it is not possible to reach the end the road might lead to. 

The behavior is modifying the cognitions.

This argument can be extended even further, though a little unfairly, by saying, because you don't believe it is possible, therefore, obviously you will argue against any argument that says it is possible. It would be pretty much like multiplying by zero, one would always return empty handed.

There is a difference between being biased against a possible result and thus ensuring it doesn't arise,  and recognizing reality. 

And it certainly doesn't mean that people who don't believe they will be GM's don't work hard at improvement and/or don't "enter the race" as you say. 

I study chess daily. I spend about 2 hours a day on a combination of studying tactics, endgames, going over GM games, and problems my coach provides me. I play rated OTB games weekly. I put significant effort into my chess playing and frankly would be offended by anyone who says "Oh, since you don't believe you can ever be a GM you don't try as hard as you might." 

My dream is to get as good as I can at chess. And that is an achievable dream. Right now I'm improving. My results are getting better. I"m winning more games. I'm playing better this year than I did last year. But there will come a point where I don't improve anymore. Where the hard work I'm putting in only holds the status quo. And there will come a point where the hard work I'm putting in only suffices to slow the decline. 

That's ok. That's reality.

But to say "oh, you don't enter?" Please.  If your real name is in your profile, I noted when I looked you up on USChess.org that you aren't even a USCF member. I've played 80 rated OTB games in the last year that were at least Game/120 or longer time controls. 

I know what it takes to get a rating point. I know how hard the adults at my club work at this game. I know how hard the adults who I meet at various tournaments around the country work at this game. I know how much effort it takes to raise up a rating class.  

No, what has shapped my thinking anyway, is several years of actual effort at real improvment in rated OTB chess, combined with a background in teaching and coaching multiple subjects and some awareness of the actual research in relevant fields. 

Not believing I (or any player who started as an adult) can be a GM is a hell of a lot different than not believing I can improve. Don't conflate the two. 

Wafflemaster, thanks for the two references to bias,  I have always wondered what they were called and now I have it.   Two words today, great!

Lord, deliver me from faith unto belief.