Can some people just not be adequate chess players?

There is obviously much debate over the relative significance of innate talent and hard work in the making of a successful player. Though many people argue that studying and playing the game is the greatest contributor, I think I provide a pretty good case study against the idea that even the talentless can work their way to a reasonable skill level. After hundreds of live games and studying chess puzzles, tactics and master games I still am entrenched in the 800s on standard and am evenworse within other live modes. Is there something I am missing or am I just destined to suck?

Yes, I'm a living example

"talent" should only really come into the conversation if you're talking 2600 and above. 

shankland is talent. do what he did and I'll call you talented too.

http://www.samshankland.com/about_me

Well innate ability would be more appropriate I guess.

be sure to control for environment and all other factors if you want to actually test for "innate ability".

Yep. Some people's moves make no logical sense and they don't do obvious recaptures. No matter how much they study, they will never be good.

The problem as I see it is players like that are set in their ways and bad habits they can be very stubborn like if you tell him don't bring out your Queen too early he'll argue for 25 minutes why he should or if you suggest he study the endgame he'll say I rarely reach endgames so no I won't study it *sigh*.

Online Players are the worst.

best advice learn to look every piece before you move,learn an opening

and stick with it,castle early!

In response to the OP (WARNING!  This is LONG!  But take the entire message seriously - This will do you a lot better than the jargon in the previous responses), there are a number of questions to ask yourself:

1. When you say "Live Games", are you talking "Over the Board" with at least 2 hours for each player, or "Garbage Chess" (better known as "Blitz Chess") in the form of 5 minutes per player?  If it's the latter, quit now, and start playing in tournaments over the board with long time controls.  These usually take place over multiple days, and often involve getting a hotel room, so you can probably only do this a couple of times a year.

2. Find a chess club that plays serious chess.  A common example of that is a club that meets once a week, and plays 1 tournament game a week for a said number of weeks.

3. Do you play Correspondence Chess?  If so, how many games do you play at once?  Do you actually analyze the position and treat the game seriously?  If you do this, it might be your move in 5 games, but you may only actually make a move today in 2 of them (one of them you analyzed yesterday, the other is a Queen Trade recapture where you King is in check and it's literally the only move that makes any sense at all), and stew over the other 3, looking over them when you have time that night.  If you are not playing Correspondence Chess (or "Online Chess" here), I'd recommend starting.  If you play it here, play at minimum 5 days per move.  Don't just make moves the moment you get to the board (aside from the first few - obviously if you are an e4 player, it doesn't take thought to play 1.e4), and don't ever exceed 10 games at once.

4. When you study master games, whose games are you studying?  Steinitz?  Capablanca?  Alekhine?  Petrosian?  Karpov?  Kasparov?  Anand?  Carlsen?  There is a direct correllation between level of play and whose games you should be studying?  In the days of Steinitz and Capablanca, and to some extent Alekhine (but his style of play was vastly different), a lot was based on pure knowledge.  What many call "Simple Chess".  There's even a book with that type of title.  These are the types of games someone at your level should be studying.  The more modern players, like Karpov, Kasparov, Anand, and Carlsen, come in the "computer era", where tons of opening research is done, engine analysis, etc, where what must be stored in the human brain is more of a complete database rather than a spreadsheet.  The more modern players should be studied by Experts and Masters, not beginners.  Also, do you own any books on these older players?  Old master games annotated by a master is better than just trying to figure it out yourself going thru unannotated games in a database.

If you haven't caught on yet, success in chess costs money!

some tips that might help:

1) play more online games and actually take your time. Think about the position and ask yourself: whats going on here on the board? Then put away the game and come back later and rethink your ideas. After that you check if your move is an easy capture, see what checks do and THEN you make your move. This is timeconsuming, but after a while you'll need less time to check those things.

2) Find a strong player to play a game with you and afterwards (or during the game) you talk about the game. This helps you checking if your ideas are sound and if not why not and how to change them.

3) Read a beginnersbook on chess. It will give you fairly easy to grasp concepts that you can use in your games. Dont read the book page after page, but really make sure you understand the concepts the book tries to convey. When you use the concepts in your game, try to see if it does what you are hoping for and if not try to find out why it doesnt.

Hope this helps :)

You will want to study smart, as well as work hard.

challenged u with a nonrated takeback game

you must be playing moves that you "like".  you can be over 1200 live and 1600 online by not blundering material and simply following basic chess principles.  It might not always be the way you want to play but often there is a move that adhere's to fundamentals and then there is the more risky move that we want to play and sometimes works out brilliant, but is technically incorrect.

I looked at one of your games and found that you miss tactics and even hang pieces.  You should slow down, look for checks, captures, and threats, and see what the opponent's move threatens:

You may be trying to make the game more interesting than it really is in the beginning.  Without some habits and basic approach no amount of book knowledge or puzzles will make you better.

For some, these habits are too tedious to acquire.  Some acquire them quickly and never seem to have to worry about it.  I think that's what we think of as talent and talent-less.

A habit I'm thinking of is noticing all the squares your opponent's last move changes.  This will help you spot 1 move threats (newly attacked squares) and also their mistakes (1 move to win material for you when they un-defend a piece).

Basic approach I'm thinking of is trying to use all your pieces and completing development before starting any action.

The ability and habit of calculating at least a few ply ahead on every move too.

You may need someone to teach you, a master or a very strong player. If you cannot afford topay him cash maybe you can barter, if you have a skill or talent you could trade your services for his or if you have books or other items that may interest him you could barter that. If you cannot get a teacher you should use a computer engine to analyze your games. It may just be that you have no talent in chess at all. If you cannot understand the logic and reasoning behind the chess moves, or if you are not good at puzzles in general you may be better off to take up tiddly winks or something.    

I think if you're not improving there are two basic causes: 1) You're really not learning anything new; 2) You're not really applying what you are learning.