Can the average person become a chess master?

lol, what, did you google this definition?

(omg you did, what can I say, that's cute)

I also has heard of Kasparov testet 195. Maybe different tests, at different time makes a difference? My lady was tested 190 once, but she is probably below 90 when she is very, very tired.

My father tested himself in Readers Digest one day. He scored 170. One year later he scored only 70. He figured out that he got so dumb reading Readerst Digest that he cancelled the subscribtion.

Can? Yes.

Often? No.

That seems to be the concensus.

Common sense really. The talent must be there to become a master. then you need hard work to realise the talent. 

No, a 13 year old with an IQ of 123 is as intelligent as an average 16 year old (or at least, the score on the test is what would be average for a 16 year old).

Yes, it depends on the test being used, but IIRC originally the highest age was 18.

There are lots of click-bait websites that 100% guess IQs based on things like people's popularity and fortune. They don't even try to make it about intelligence. They use things people incorrectly associate with intelligence like Kasparov's ability to play chess or Bill Gate's fortune.

Actual IQ tests can't be found online or on the back of magazines. Most real IQ tests can't even score as high as 180 even if you got 100% of the questions completely correct in record time.

Kasparov took a real IQ test, and scored 135. Yes in pop-movies and sci-fi books 135 is really low. All the geniuses are 180 or 220 or something and developing portal guns, time machines, or some dumb shit like that. In real life 135 is high, about 1% of people score that well or better.

If chess is a memory game, then you should claim kids are worse (less years spent memorizing) and adults better.

If computers make players better, then you should argue that this raises the average. This would make a master rating proportionally harder to reach.

Next time, maybe you'll believe your kid. Small children apparently have better memories than their parents, U.S. researchers say.

They found a five-year-old could beat most adults on a recognition memory test, at least under specific conditions. It seems that adults know too much.

Professor Vladimir Sloutsky from Ohio State University led the study, which was published in the latest issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society.

"It's one case where knowledge can actually decrease memory accuracy," said Sloutsky, who is director of the university's Center for Cognitive Science.

For their study, the researchers showed 77 young children and 71 college students pictures of cats, bears and birds. The study was designed to make the volunteers look at the pictures but they did not know what was being tested.

The researchers said the children, who were on average aged five, were accurate 31% of the time in identifying pictures of animals they had seen earlier, while the adults were accurate only 7% of the time.

The reason, Sloutsky believes, is that children used a different form of reasoning called similarity-based induction when they analysed the pictures.

When shown subsequent pictures of animals they looked carefully to see if the animal looked similar to the original cat.

But adults used category-based induction. That meant that once they determined whether the animal pictured was a cat, they paid no more attention.

So when they were tested later, the adults didn't recognise the pictures as well as the children.

"The adults didn't care about a specific cat; all they wanted to know was whether the animal was a cat or not," Sloutsky said.

When taught to use category-based induction like adults, the children's ability to remember dropped to the level of adults.

Interesting.

Yeah, take a group of chess beginners and watch them for a few years. The kids will improve much faster than the adults.

I think this would even be true if you adjusted for time spent studying. People sometimes suggest kid have all day to study, but most kids I know say they only spend a few hours a day.

Yes.But ofcourse,it requires a decent amount of dedication and a lot of passion.In this day and age though,becoming a Master is not ridiculously difficult.

Every man can kill 10 person. Its easy

no, it's only below average people that even consider learning chess.

i think anything is possible now after seeing this presidential election

 Everyone has the potential to have a little chess master in them ^. 

I think anybody with the right amount of training can achieve a good rating. 

Becoming a master (Be it a FM, NM, IM, GM) is a whole different story though. 

NM in the US is nowhere near FM though, or I'd estimate it is 200 points lowers on average.

It still isn't easy for most, of course.

That's the rub. Where does one receive this raining and who administers it? If I want to be a biologist I go to college and study the sciences. The requirements for the various degrees are quite clear and it's up to the person to do the work. There's a lot to be done outside of school  of course but the foundation is there.

This exists in chess sure. In Russia they had schools dedicated to it. But what about now? Where do you go? Do you get GM lessons? How many lessons will you need to become a master? How much would that cost? Do titled players have curiculums for improvement? Who are they? How do I contact them? Is it even worth it?

If you live in a place with a rich chess culture these questions are more easily answered. But if not, you're kind of just reinventing the wheel which is just a terrible way to learn a new skill.

It's why talent in chess is such an unimportant consideration, not good for anything but idle thoughts. There are so many practical problems in the way of chess mastery that talent is just an afterthought. How relevant is talent if a person can never get in a position to even know it exists?

He would say that, he's trying to sell chess books...