can I be an IM before i die?

Know what the guy with the 2399 rating who spent ten hours a day from the time he was four studying chess with masters and getting shuttled to tournaments every weekend by parents willing to foot the bills all through adolescence and into early adulthood says?

Nothing, because that guy doesn't exist.  He's a super GM.

Not sure what that has to do with a 26 year old beginner.

Or maybe you believe in time travel?  Yes in that case it's a reasonable answer.  I guess he'd have to find a way to convince his parents though.

some peoples kids

yeah and the "peak" for most everyone, if they really were engaging in serious training/study, would be somewhere between 2000-2200. if you look at the ratings populations on the fide website, you find it drops off like a cliff above 2000-2200. wonder why this would be?

obviously there's some kind of barrier here to which even incredibly intelligent people are subject.  Peter Theil, probably has a genius level iq, is only rated 2200. The kids of the Harvard Chess Club are all 2000-2200 as well. it seems like getting anywhere above 2200 requires a huge chunk of serious training/studying time, regardless of how smart you are.

also most people don't have any idea what they are talking about in regards to chess. though they sure like to pretend they know what they are talking about. 99% of everything you come across is speculation. hardly anything backed up by anything concrete/specific.

because these things are universally good/worthy goals under any and all circumstances and condtions, no matter what. right......

I always read threads like this as they are somehow fascinating.

I think this idea that with hard work you can achieve anything has come out of the prevailing notion of, for want of a better phrase, 'The American Dream'.  If you want something enough and work hard you can achieve it.

Although this may be so for many fields, I think it is not so for chess.

When my brother was in his teens he could play half a dozen good games of chess blindfold.  He peaked at around 2000 ELO I think, and has devoted most of his spare time to chess all his life.

There is some aspect of mental agility (call it what you like) that is required to be a brilliant chess player, and quite simply very few people have it.  I have a very high IQ but would struggle to play one decent blindfold chess game, let alone 6 simultaneously.  It calls for high visualisation skills, a phenomenal memory and so on.  These skills can probably be improved to an extent, but if you are not born with these unusual gifts you will never be the next Magnus Carlsen.

I am also puzzled as to why anyone would want to be a grandmaster.  It looks a horribly stressful and largely poorly paid job.  Must be almost like a vocation I think, as the effort and talent required could be much better used in many other fields.

Are IM Joshua Waitzkin, IM Sofia Polgar or IM Jeremy Silman Super GMs?

Your name answers your question ;) Reach high, go big. My philosophy is this. Anyone can do anything. They just need to be willing to put in the effort and time to accomplish that 'thing.'

yeah those things can be improved. not "to an extent", but immensely. given the proper training/time. to the point where the person is calculating at around a 2000-2200 level most likely. it's probably true that to get anywhere substantially above this level requires such an enormous chunk of time that it's just not feasible for 99.9% of the population.

also when people talk about "talent" in chess, they are referring to karpov, fischer, kasparov, other people well above 2500. you either have that talent or you don't.  they aren't really talking about 2000s, 2200s.......just so you know. 

and are people to just believe everything you say? people should just stay away from personal anecdotes and keep within the realm of things that can be fact checked. 

(I doubt anyone at 2000 elo could play half a dozen "good" blindfold games simutaneously.  the top players in the world would have trouble doing this, assuming their opponents aren't 5 year olds of course.)

Yep, there you go.  Sorry, I was wrong.

(I doubt anyone at 2000 elo could play half a dozen "good" blindfold games simutaneously.  the top players in the world would have trouble doing this, assuming their opponents aren't 5 year olds of course.)

Of course you can doubt it if you want, and no, there is no reason to believe what I say.  I'm just putting it out there as a tiny bit of my experience of the world, and I have no incentive to lie about it.

I'm not sure quite what point you are making, as you do seem largely to agree with me in the rest of your post that becoming a top chess player is beyond the scope of most people.

IM Marc Esserman started when he was 7 years old, he is not a Super GM.

Actually the fact that they're IMs pretty surprising, at least if they would continue with chess as the main and almost only thing in their lives they could become GMs easily, especially waitzkin.

no I do not "largely" agree with you and I clearly state this.  

also top chess player = above 2700 nowadays. just so everyone's clear on that. we aren't talking 2000s-2200s. 

Except that he quit because he couldn't reach GM.

he also spent 4 years at harvard earning a degree.

He couldn't reach GM because he quit.  

Except that he became IM at 16 and didn't quit for another 7 years, never achieving a GM norm.

And yet you say that "to the point where the person is calculating at around a 2000-2200 level most likely. it's probably true that to get anywhere substantially above this level requires such an enormous chunk of time that it's just not feasible for 99.9% of the population."

And IMs have ELOs of 2400+ in general?  And the OP is talking of becoming an IM.

well honestly i think beating a higher rated player (with a difference of 400 or more ratings) is far from impossible...i have already seen this too many times in the 3 tournaments i have played..i myself had beaten a 1532 (the 1 was talking of out of the 5 i played)...i cud have drawn against the 1712 i played, but lost only bcoz of lack of technique...i cud fox the 1972 with an unusual opening, but lost a piece by blunder...against the 1665 i was beaten in the opening bcoz he played a book line...and i lost to the 1412 only in the last stages of the endgame...so i guess its also a matter of luck before u net big fishes on ur way, after all even higher rated players are humans, and in a tournament, they r the ones under pressure to perform...and if i beat a player 400 points higher, i get 27 points, which doesnt seem bad...yes it does get lower as the difference lowers...and i vud very humbly say that i have never studied chess or any opening, just know the first 3 or 4 moves...just played on general principles...so with serious study in the 4 or 5 hours, i say without being arrogant that atleast 2000 is not too difficult by the time i reach 37 or so...and here at chess.com, i cudnt find players who play with larger time controls, so i dont find it useful bcoz playing shorter games teaches u nothing useful...