Chess ability: inborn talent or learned/environmental?

Did not take long for the trolls to arrive, did it?

I am not necessarily chiding the last poster, in case he thinks so.

well said

+1

and on the second post! no less....

Where?

Exactly.  

...

yeah thats what I think it said.

why do you think your speal is better?  an emphasis on hard work???

I believe the opposite...emphasis on talent.  

right.

well we could have this big argument over Hard work versus innate ability

and the two sides take absolute (surely wrong) POV's with long posts trying  to convince all the world they are right....

but Frankly... its been done before

its on the list of the "100" most overdiscussed topics on the chess.com forums- and right near the part about how a "high IQ" is supposedly part of being a strong chess player.

It's not a black or white debate regarding talent and work.  It's simply that talent is REQUIRED to be able to attain top chess skill.  You could spend 12 hours a day your whole life and never reach GM if you weren't given certain physical gifts, like spatial memory and ability to accurately visualize and calculate.  Those given talent could do tactics trainers at 2000 level at 8 years old without even realizing how difficult that is for "normal" people.  Add in a love for the game, opportunity to spend lots of time on chess and get a coach, and you eventually have yourself a teenage GM.  

there I agree withthat 100%

but why guy on post #2 is "100% wrong" seems off

ofc when you strive to distill this down to a single sentence- its gonna be a little simplistic.

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if it makes it better to state in something more explicit that's fine.  but I still think there's a 78,9% chance of this turning into an argument

interestingly  enough that is the EXACT same amount of this whole "what makes a gm" that god says is due to hard work

This Time article, Is Genius Born or Can It Be Learned? says:

In a 2002 study, Simonton showed that the average IQ of 64 eminent scientists was around 150, fully 50 points higher than the average IQ for the general population. And most of the variation in IQs (about 80%, according to Simonton) is explained by genetics. (See pictures of Bobby Fischer, chess prodigy.)

I believe the view that IQ is 80% genetic is widely held. Fischer's IQ was evidently in line with the above value for eminent scientists, according to this Quora page: What was Bobby Fischer's IQ?

In 1958, when Fischer sat a Stanford-Binet test at the age of 15, his score was 180-187. But in today’s terms, Bobby Fischer’s IQ should be 148–155 on the Fifth edition of the Stanford-Binet test, and 150-160 on the WISC-V/WAIS-IV tests administered by Mensa.

My own belief as a mere amateur is that you need to work hard at chess for 10 years, studying (especially master games) and playing competitively (especially in tournaments), before you can judge how far you are likely to go in the game.