Class A player, how many hours to become one?

Oops, that's true, the number of tourneys you play in limits your rating's progress. 

I was thinking in terms of an 1800 playing strength, not an 1800 rating.

That's a performance rating of 100-250 points above your current rating for every tourney for 4 to 5 tourneys in a row though.

So ok, yes, it's possible, but it would mean your playing strength has outpaced your rating and your rating is just playing catch-up.  If you're using tournament games as part of your practice it's unrealistic.

I suppose that's the strategy I use and I never really thought about it until this moment.  I always go in to maximize my performance, but I do all the improvement activities in private.  I am plotting my next tournament for October 2015 while working hard on needed areas of improvement.  You are right Mika.  I actually play otb to just catch up to my true strength. 

I'm not sure if that's good or bad though. 

I suppose since I promised my family I'd go to only one tournament a year it's the best I can do.

If I had  read "...2 hrs study and play..."  I would have written him to take up shuffleboard  or  horseshoes.

so it breaks down like this:

500 points at an average rate of 1.7 points per year of study accelerated by a tactics trainer multiplier of 0.25% per tactic passed, which is inversely proportional to your rating climb, compounded per hour of study in any opening theory divided by half your age at the time you start playing. so if you are roughly 10 years old and do 100 tactics trainers per day you should be a grandmaster in 56years! good luck.

Wow! So many comments. Thanks!

Again, I am only making an educated guess as to my OTB rating, based on playing against guys with a real USCF rating. I have played Class C to Expert. I actually gave an expert rated player a hard time in an opening he was not familiar with! I maintained the initiative into the middle game, but then his superior tactics and board vision kicked in and beat me. My tactics are much stronger right now, than when I played him, so now I could give him a harder time, if he didn't know the opening.

As to how I am improving, I spend time daily on various tactics trainers, and I just started using Chess Mentor again, which I actually enjoy...wanting to keep my study time, and chess in general fun. It is my hobby, not my profession, so it should be fun.

I have had a major set back with my back, thus I have yet to play in a tournament, because I can not sit for very long. This could change soon, as I have discovered the joys (actually the pain) of deep tissue massage.

Who knows, my performance rating may be higher than my own estimated rating, or it could be lower, if I can't remain focused for a 60 0 game. That's the time control at my local club, each guy setting their clock for 60 minutes, so 2 hours total, at most. I've watched them play. The whole room is dead quiet, and they stay very focused. Some of the guys will play in Las Vegas, where there are many, many players in a very large room. Some guys come home with money, sometimes several hundred dollars.

As to online versus OTB rating differences, they are about the same, at least here. I know of one Class C player who's chess.com and OTB rating are pretty much the same. So, even if the difference is as much as 100 points, it can still give one a good estimate of a USCF rating, pretty sure.

Regarding coaches for improvement, no arguments there. I have been a band and orchestra teacher for almost 30 years, so I do believe in the value of good teaching, and that with some aspects of whatever it is you are trying to learn or improve at, there is no substitute for a good teacher, and some things will never be learned that well with a book only approach, at least that has been my experience with the learning of a musical instrument. I have played a few training games here, cc, and that has been helpful, especially since you have three days per move, and can really go deep with your own analysis, and the coaches will make comments, open my eyes to things that would have maybe taken years to see and understand. Yep, teaching/coaching is something I will continue to utilize, as there really is no substitute for that, especially in regards to creating the best curriculum for the student, since the teacher can clearly see what the student needs most!

Bottom line, no matter what, I will continue to keep chess FUN, and won't be greatly saddened if on my deathbed, I have not made Class A! It is not a life or death thing for me, just one of a few goals I have for the few years I have left on this planet. There is a big difference between attempting to get good at something in your teens and twenties, as opposed to in your fifties! I get that. So, even making Class B by age 60 would be quite nice. I do understand that the amount of information grows exponentially with each class, with a few Class A players I know having been stuck there for some time, without breaking into Expert, which I hear is a difficult task. I can't even imagine the difficulty of going from Expert to Master. My guess is that these classes are most likely attained more often in the youth. Although our Ben Finegold did not become a GM until age 40, and in his videos he tells people basically that even old guys can become GM's, trying to give us hope, since he did it.

If you want to be a class A Tactics Trainer player, you spend time on Tactics Trainer.  The more the merrier.  The same goes with anything else.

yedddy wrote:

so it breaks down like this:

500 points at an average rate of 1.7 points per year of study accelerated by a tactics trainer multiplier of 0.25% per tactic passed, which is inversely proportional to your rating climb, compounded per hour of study in any opening theory divided by half your age at the time you start playing. so if you are roughly 10 years old and do 100 tactics trainers per day you should be a grandmaster in 56years! good luck.

Lol !!! Are you a mathematician? I hope you wrong! I don't have that many years left, unless. I live to be, umm, getting calculator out...110 years old !!! Has there ever been your basic white guy living that long? I read about people living past 105 in far away parts of my world, like Asia, but they are mostly women. Which supports my theory...and this is way off topic...that women are biologically more survivable than men because they are the ones who bring new life into the world, keeping us from becoming extinct.

eastyz wrote:

If you want to be a class A Tactics Trainer player, you spend time on Tactics Trainer.  The more the merrier.  The same goes with anything else.

I think I see the logic. Are you saying that having a "Class A" TT rating translates to a Class A OTB rating? I have seen the phrase, chess is 99% tactics!, and my online rating and TT rating are often quite similar, so maybe there is some truth to that.

I would agree with you, if  you  were right.

Once a player is proficient at playing  a 6 opening  repertoire, there is something called the Brick Wall.  It is called that because any player under 2000 will feel like he is playing against a brick wall.  You will  keep looking for tactics and the  next thing you will be resigning.

Estragon wrote:

hicetnunc wrote:

You need to play OTB, not online.

While it is good to set goals, it is not necessary to reach any given level of skill to get much enjoyment and see the beauty in chess.  Goals should be set within the next class level, if ratings are to be used. 

Saying, "I want to gain 600 rating points this year" is a lofty goal, but not realistic for the overwhelming majority of players.  Unless you are already rapidly improving, 100 points a year would only even be possible by playing at least 50 rated OTB games, or almost a weekend tournament every month. 

Whatever your goals, never forget chess is above all else a game, it is supposed to be fun.  Don't put so much pressure on yourself to make arbitrary numbers, you will miss out on much of the enjoyment of the game.

I hope that I didn't give anyone the impression that my goal was Class A in one year. Even if I retired and had all the time in the world, combined with the motivation of a go getter college kid, it would still be impossible, maybe not for a really smart college kid, but definitely for me.

I do feel however that I could jump 200 points online in less than a year, only because my calculation is much slower than my tactics rating. Calculation, board visualization, moving pieces in my head to a deeper level (6-10 ply, depending on the position).....these are areas that I am working harder than anything else, since the discrepancy between my tactical and calculation strength is too big. Basically, I start to lose the picture in my head of the position after the first 3-5 ply.

One of the things I am doing, and I do it every morning as soon as I wake up, is to stare at a a very small chessboard with no pieces, that I cut out of a score sheet, about 2 inches square, playing openings in my head while staring at the paper chess board, then playing the opening with my eyes closed. I also practice check mating patterns in this way, and a few other things, like moving a knight from square to square, and visualizing the quickest route for the knight to travel from g1 to f6, which is a great square for the knight in a certain check mating pattern, for example.

So, the knight's quickest path would be g1- f3 - h2 - g4 - f6. I just did this in my head with no chess board, and I can tell you the color of each square without looking: g1 dark, f3 light, h2 dark, g4 light - f6 dark.

I also practice seeing diagonals in my head, particularly ones that are most practical right now, I.e. a2 - g8 light squares, white's bishop on this diagonal at c4 targets black's f7 pawn. The b1 - h7 diagonal light squares, where white's bishop targets black's h7 pawn, and the long dark diagonal a1 - h8, where white's bishop fianchettoed to b2 targets black's g7 pawn.

I do a lot of this blindfold chess stuff, with the theory that it will improve my calculation. I don't know if this is true for anyone else, but if I need to calculate past 3 - 5 ply, I need to not look at the board, because the fixed pieces on the board mess up my mental picture 6+ ply forward. Maybe that's why when it looks like GM's are staring of into space, they are actually calculating very deep, several variations! The fixed position on the board would mess up their deep calculations, I would guess.

Dan Heisman has a few really good videos on calculation and visualization over at ICC, with specific exercises to practice. They are difficult exercises! I want to watch those videos again, so I can add one or two more visualization exercises to my long summer vacation as a teacher, 10 weeks! Gotta love it. :)

I have played the Brick Wall, it's also called Fritz.

And here's my opinion.

You can get to 1800 without studying books or chess mentor. Play a lot of games against 1600-2000 players and analyze your game after, either with your opponent or a computer. If you SEE and LEARN from your mistakes, that basically guarantees improvement.

DrCheckevertim wrote:

I have played the Brick Wall, it's also called Fritz.

                                       ____________________

That is the reason I play OTB in  tournaments.   The only website  I play online chess is ICC in the NO CHESS ENGINES ALLOWED section.

I was referring to the actual program on my computer, but yeah, that too.

Yaroslavl wrote:

If I had read "...2 hrs study and play..." I would have written him to take up shuffleboard or horseshoes.

What is the minimum hours of study per day that is worth pursuing?

Regarding OTB games, you have said one tournament per month is required. What time controls should the tournament games be? For instance, is it worth playing in a G/30 tournament (the most common at my local club)?

What I am continuously told by people who are much better than me at chess is that you just have to relax, forget about your rating (which is hard - certainly your *opponents* do not), forget about 'getting better', and just enjoy the process.

As well as being a rather bad chess player, I am a rather good magician (if magicians were rated the way chess players are, I'd say I'm a solid 1800), and I was crazy to improve my magic when I first started......everyone had faster hands than me, I botched basic moves, I couldn't multitask (IE talk while doing 'secret things' at the same time), and, even though I got a bunch of books, they didn't really help me because they were just full of techniques I couldn't execute. It was demoralizing! The first time I pulled a card for a stranger, I pulled the WRONG CARD and he called me a hack. But, after a few months I realized that what makes one a great magician is not knowing 40,000 obscure techniques, it's simply sitting with a pack of cards, feeling them in your hands, and doing things with them.....at first those things will be ordinary, then slightly interesting, then extraordinary, and then virtually superhuman. The longer I do magic, the more I love just sitting with a coin, a thimble, some cards, or even a few rocks on the ground and watching them do amazing things in my hands. 

I'm not very advanced in my chess, but now I sit at the chess board the same way I sit with cards, and, in a few years, I don't think my chess will be laughable anymore (at least that's what I tell myself) 

G/120 at first.  After 1st 11/2 yrs G/60.   After 2 yrs. G/40

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 hrs