can we really improve??

true. I was sparring with my friends who suddenly 'stopped' somewhere around u1800 and had to follow rest of the journey myself. It was so much fun. We went to chess school club and after everyone finished training, we forgot ourselves there till 4am playing blitz, rapid (I was writing down moves) and then we analysed. In the end we had to get the janitor up from bed because school was already closed

Once you plateau as an adult that's it, only kids can get past plateaus

no we just suck

Children are more curious and recognize their mistakes more easily. So when children play often, they automatically improve. However, this is usually not enough for an adult.

Most adults just don't understand the importance of looking for mistakes, understanding them and incorporating new thought patterns into their play.

How do you know when one plateu starts and another ends?

People plateu because they stop trying to find new ways to improve. People plateu because they dont know how to break free. People plateau because they dont know what else can be done. I saw people plateu simply because they believed they need to have talent in order to improve. I saw people plateau because they quit on trying.

What you need is hardwork and believe that everything is possible.

If you can't do that, you can go to queue with others who already gave up on trying and on themselves..

It is always possible to improve in anything you like. Look at chess as learning a new language. It takes years and years of studies and different form of training to be good at it. But you wll slowly be better. For top levels one has to have special talents but a good intermediate level is poßible to reach with hard work. And books are better than Facebooks becaue you must concentrate more.

Its important to play and learn chess like a kido if you want to improve fast!! The two obstacles that the children dont have are conscence and understanding!! So if you take a glass of scotch or listening music while learning and playing chess is very important to improve fast. Dont ask yourself of the meaning of the move but instead try to find the fork pattern of the figures!!

To improve more quickly move more slowly.

skip leg day and flag

Stop crying, my dudes. If you would like to improve, here is your 5-year master plan:

The first step is to learn visualization, i.e. you play 3 long games every day and visualize them afterwards in your head and without a board. In addition to these three games, analyze 3 master games first without engine and then with engine. Afterwards, watch a video from the Daniel Naroditsky's Rating Speedrun every day and shortly analyze 5 Blitz games from Cagnus Marlsen on chess.com.

I assure you, if you keep this up for 5 years you will end up with a FIDE rating of 2200 at least. The difference between you and a child is that you want to have leisure time. A child can do that at 7 and still have a whole life ahead. That is the secret to improvement ma dudes.

kids learn very fast and can easily pick up on their mistakes and correct their play a lot faster than adults, which is why kids need less time to improve; adults on the other hand will take a lot longer.

At the most fundemental level, the way we improve is by figuring out what patterns are good and what patterns are bad. We learn this by positive/negative reinforcement (winning/losing a game), of course there are many patterns in a game so it takes a long time for us to figure out where we went wrong, and often is a result of multiple games with re-occuring patterns. The point of analyzing games is to quicken the process by purposefully trying to identify the good and bad patterns, if done right you can improve quicker with playing/analyzing games rather than just playing.

as for improving to 2000 it has been done by many adult learners, my favorite example is twitch streamer daiwynn, who reached 2000 in 1-2 years. You can improve if you have the time, patience, and discipline so dont give up.

True, but children don't learn any faster either. They just have more time. Every adult can achieve 2000 and more, but no one has the time. And I know this because my uncle became an FM at 24 and gave up his career and friends for it.

This is absolutely number one reason for adults. We have kids and responsibilities and kids have plenty of free time should they with to spend it on chess. They learn quicker that is true but even adults can learn. Late improvers: Botvinnik, Petrosian etc would heavily disagree with a view that it can not be done. Viktor Kortchnoi was upgrading himself constantly by working harder than anyone else around him.

The defenders of why it can not be done have either no idea how to improve, didn't try hard enough or have blocks that prevent them from learning. Most prevalent is looking for verification of their idea that it can not be done.

Right and as I said, I can have a child study for 8 hours a day because it doesn't necessarily make them quit. And I've had 3 adult students over 25 now and the biggest problem is that they don't want to see mistakes because of their biases and quit if I force them to understand what the problem was.

Everyone has a limit and upon reaching 45 years of age or so, the competitive skill level decreases even though one's knowledge can increase. Sad but true.

I take no nonsense from my students. They are warned they will have to work hard and they are aware they will have to work on their base line if they skipped their leg day. I simply remove all possible excuses as quickly as possible and if the student can not do that, they either realise chess isnt for them or simply quit.

At the same time I always make sure they learn. I had two students that were natural born quitters but I am pretty sure the training not only helped them gain points at the time but also improve their lives. And as they lost the uphill struggle chess brings, they became slightly better winners in life.

I keep students who want to work hard and improve and they do me proud because they do improve. I have for example dad of 2 who is really just starting but I keep him accountable and he is showing quick signs of improvements.

What would be the point providing someone 'entertainment' like lesson beside taking their money? I wouldnt like to do that.

I agree with you that most people have there biases and in order to start improving they need to fight with me and with themselves to remove these. It is not possible to remove their bias from my side. I can only give them tools to work with it. The main issue here is that not everyone wants to face mirror and that is what chess does to people.

Much easier way out is to say it can not be done and walk away...

....and that my friends is also human nature

Not true. It is what you make it that makes things true. Don't give up and try new things would be the advice here.

Are you from St. Louis?

I didn't realize you had a YouTube channel, but now you definitely have one more subscriber!