Chess talent.

Yep. I'm not that naturally inclined at chess. But I am much more inclined than a lot of people I know.

Some people on this site were probably as good as me after 10x less games than I've played. Yet, I'm sure that I am better than many people who have played/studied much more than me.

Some people just "get it" better than others, like anything else. I can think of a few things that I'm a "natural" at, and it feels a lot different than how I feel about chess. I know some people have that similar "natural" feeling with chess, that I have with a few other things (but not really with chess).

Here it is.

Well, for me, most things, other than capturing free pieces and mating with two rooks, didn't come naturally to me at all. A lot of things do come naturally to me, now, in chess, but that's because they involve patterns I've seen a million of times. Digesting those patterns will beat an Einstein mind who hasn't studied chess every time.

Maybe being "smart" helps (although chess intelligence wouldn't be easy to define), or it might actually give you a lazy mindset, hoping to easily find the answer in chess, something that will never happen. No matter how smart you are, you have to struggle with the game to get good at it, and few people have the willpower (or interest, or obsession) to do such a thing.

I believe that pretty much anything in chess, with some work, can become easy to understand if you've seen it enough times. How do you think GMs know a sac will work even in blitz? Because they've seen similar sacrifices like that so many times, that it "looks like" one of those positions where it will work. It's not necessarily because the grandmaster is a genius.

That's nuts!  How can you have "utter respect" for some shmuck who sits around drinking beer and eating chips all day every day?

Boy howdy! doesn't take much to gain your respect.

To show how I think talent stacks with chess skill, I'll give a simplified example:

Let's say a player can be ranked based on two things: one, "talent," and two, willingness to practice, in a superior way.

I will give Player A a 5 in talent and a 5 in the other category.

I will give Player B a 4 in talent and a 5 in the other category.

In this case, I will say Player A is, or will end up as, the better player, even though they both practice equally well.

However:

If Player A instead had a 2 in talent and a 5 in practice,

and Player B had a 5 in talent and a 4.5 in practice:

I would give the edge to Player A.

So I am not denying that some minds work better with chess than others; but I think that so much of chess is based on patterns, that the ability to get all of that stuff into your head is probably going to be the determining factor. It is just too huge of an advantage to have learned more.

But you have to learn it well. Even if you have 50 years of experience playing and studying chess, you might still not be learning anything depending on how you're approaching it.

I know this is controversial, but I just want to make it clear I don't deny that there is talent, I just think that practice is overwhelmingly more important, to the point where talent isn't significant.

@bigpoison: I know right? Aren't I just sweet?

I find the truth is somewhere in between....

Having a certain "type" of intelligence can make a similar quantity of practice 100x more effective and lasting (when compared to someone else who is weak in that intelligence).

I'm just not that good at calculating and seeing fancy combos. Yes that takes a lot of practice, but I don't improve at it as nearly as quickly as some people would.

By the same token, some people may be good at calculating almost right away when they start playing and learn the rules. But maybe they don't know how to plan effectively. They just don't have that trait. Maybe it can be developed, but it could take a long time for them. Natural tendencies and specific types of intelligence play a big role, I think.

They showed one kid who was born blind, and retarded, but all he had to do was listen to a song on the piano once, and he could play it. He had always acted very agitated, and upset, but then they discovered music immediately calm him down. They said it was like he could see the notes in his head. He had never taken music lessons, but as I said, no matter how difficult the song was, he could play it after hearing it just once.

Yeah, but people have a way of stretching the truth to make a documentary out of it. How do you know they are not trying to make the story sound better than reality?

Child prodigies are proof.

And the other end of the spectrum is people who play forever, practice a lot, have a good coach, and... still suck.

Obviously, most people are somewhere in between, on that huge spectrum.

So, there are "idiot savants" in chess.

And everyone just focuses on one of those two words to emphasize?  

"THE END"

It is quite plausible that child prodigies do, in fact, find a way to fit in a lot of practice.

They do practice as they get older, but a lot of them are just very good very quickly, obviously before they practice for endless hours and years.

Sure, hearing things like the fact that Mozart was writing compositions at age six may make it seem like the song was in his dna, but it turns out, he did find a way to squeeze in lots of practice from ages three to six, too.

And yet how many other kids who practice from 3 to 6 are like Mozart was at 6?

So few people are willing to put in the time commitment required for improving at chess.  Very small payoff.  Very big effort needed.

"Talent" and "DNA" (whatever those terms might mean) hardly matters until you're at the stratospheric levels of the chess pecking order.

We might ask--why so few chess players on this site (seemingly) can't write in complete sentences.

That's hardly a talent.  But it's sorely missing.   

How many other kids practice from 3 to 6?

Here is a blog post by GM Igor Smirnov that is about chess talent.  I like it!

Looks like not everyone disagrees with me. Talent is probably only a limiting factor at the extreme levels. It's not like chess concepts are inevitably beyond most human understanding; it just takes work and experience.

Well, I heard that IQ and intelligence in general is genetics, so playing chess is more or less a talent that some have and others don't have.