Can intelligent person suck at chess, forever?

The mediocrity of the horse begins with the new species, the jackass among horses, the donkey.

Donkeys are actually quite intelligent.

No one denies that top grandmasters work hard in their field but the fact of the matter is if they didn't have a certain innate ability all their hard work is for nought.  Some people are born with great mental powers far beyond the average person and no amount of study will ever compensate for that.  It's a fact of life as found in a few examples where the false "theory" that everyone is on a level playing field and hard work is what makes the difference is beyond dispute.  Some chess players have a very high "Chess I.Q." that no amount of study will ever compensate for.  One can be a genius in one field and an idiot in another.

 Kim Ung-Yong  By the age of four he was already able to read in Japanese, Korean, German, and English. At his fifth birthday, he solved complicated differential and integral calculus problems. Later, on Japanese television, he demonstrated his proficiency in Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Tagalog, German, English, Japanese, and Korean. Kim was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records under "Highest IQ"; the book estimated the boy's score at over 210.

Michael Kevin Kearney   spoke his first words at four months. At the age of six months, he said to his pediatrician "I have a left ear infection" and learned to read at the age of ten months. When Michael was four, he was given diagnostic tests for the Johns Hopkins precocious math program and achieved a perfect score. He finished high school at age 6, enrolled at Santa Rosa Junior College graduating at 10 with an Associate of Science in Geology. He is listed in the Guinness Book as the world's youngest university graduate at the age of 10, receiving a bachelor's degree in anthropology. For a while, he also held the record for the world's youngest postgraduate. 

my point exactly

Dock Ellis. It wasn't a World Series game, however, it was in the middle of the regular season. July 12, 1970. Ellis, pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates, scored a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres. His no-hitter, however, wasn't because of brilliant pitching on his part. It was because his pitches were all over the place. He was basically throwing wild the entire game. In that same game he walked eight batters and it was only good fielding play by his teammates that saved the game for him.

Oh! Darn it, Darth, another illlusion shattered.  ; -)

Good luck with that. There are many books that are better. De La Maza's book shouldn't actually hurt your chess, but you'll have to wade through pages of self-advertising to get to anything useful.

A close reading of the book will quickly prove that De La Maza himself didn't follow the method he recommended. He studied classics, played regularly, and studied endgames and tactics.  

The key to improvement in chess is how much work you put into the game. If De La Maza's book inspires you to study chess more thoroughly, then it will help.

haha! "rapid chess improvement" doesn't exist (unless one is naturally gifted). 

i'm not doubting that the book will help someone, but, for most, it's a process.

A chess book with rapid in its title ah ah

Yes, you can suck forever!!

And so are Goldfish

Not.

You can catch them with an opening trap and ten minutes later they'll fall into the same one again.

Still a great story though.

"I remember hitting a couple of batters, and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes, I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. I started having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire, and once I thought I was pitching a baseball to Jimi Hendrix, who to me was holding a guitar and swinging it over the plate. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn't hit hard and never reached me."

I recommend watching the film No No: a Dockumentary. I believe it's on Netflix. Dock Ellis certainly was a character. Professional sports doesn't have guys like that anymore - guys who are unique characters on their own - only bland automatons.

The writer-philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau could hardly be described as an unintelligent man, yet he wrote (in his autobiographical "Les Confessions"):

“At Chamberi there was a Genevese, named M. Bagueret, who had been employed by Peter the Great at the Russian Court; he was one of the greatest rascals and greatest fools that I have ever seen, always full of schemes as mad as himself, who flung millions about like rain and thought nothing of an extra cipher. This man, who had come to Chamberi on account of some lawsuit before the Senate, got hold of mamma, as was only to be expected, and in return for the ciphers which he generously lavished upon her, drew her few crowns, one by one, out of her purse. I disliked him; he saw it—never a difficult matter in my case—and left no kind of meanness untried, in order to gain my favour. He took it into his head to propose to teach me chess, which he himself played a little. I tried it, almost against my inclination; and, after I had learnt the moves indifferently, I made such rapid progress that, before the end of the first sitting, I was able to give him the rook which at firs the had given me. That was enough; I was mad for chess from that moment!  I buy a chess board and a “Calabrois,” [a compiltaion of Greco's manuscripts considered at that time to be the chess bible] and shutting myself up in my room pass whole days and nights in studying all the varieties of the game, being determined by playing alone, without end or relaxation, to drive them into my head, right or wrong.  After incredible efforts, during two or three months passed in this curious employment, I go to the coffee-house, thin, sallow, and almost numb;  I seat myself, and again attack M. Bagueret; he beats me, once, twice, twenty times; so many combinations were fermenting in my head, and my imagination was so stupefied, that all appeared confusion.  I tried to exercise myself with Philidor’s book ["L’Analyse du Jeu des Échecs"] or Stamma’s book ["Essai sur le Jeu des Échecs"] of instructions, but I was still equally perplexed, and, after having exhausted myself with fatigue, was further to seek than ever, and whether I abandoned my chess for a time, or resolved to surmount every difficulty by unremitted practice, it was the same thing.  I could never advance one step beyond the improvement of the first sitting, nay, I am convinced that had I studied it a thousand generationss, I should have ended by being able to give Bagueret the rook and nothing more.  Time well spent, don't you think? And did I did not spend only a little of it in this way.  I did not finish this first attempt to learn chess until I no longer had the strength to continue.  When at last I emerged from my room, I must have looked like a corpse, which indeed is what I would soon have been if I had gone on like this much longer.  It must be admitted that it is difficult, especially in the ardour of youth, for such a disposition to allow the body to enjoy continued good health."

I think Unamuno got a bit mad against the game for the same reason.

Thanks for that, Batgirl! I'd completely forgotten Rousseau's comments! It's been about three decades since I read it though.

Hey Darth,

Thoze were the daze, in a purple haze😨...but today's O.K.too, each one. Why? I'm still here! Amaze!

The 'Talent'/ specific inclinations, & brain-cell, configurations.. that make for a notewothy 'artist'..'author' or 'craftsman' etc ..Will normally mean - That, they Won't be also excelling, in some other endeavor. o: