Do you have a structured training regimen?

The average FIDE rating is around 1800-1900. Most FIDE-rated players are somewhere in the 1700-2100 range. With your chess history (learned the rules as a kid, did some reading as a mid-teen) I'm sure you have the potential to become at least an average player. You definitely have an advantage over adults that are pure beginners.

What does it take to become better than the average?

GM Andrew Soltis wrote a book, "What It Takes to Become a Chess Master", on this very topic.

Indeed. 

I think we might be able to take it a little further than that. For instance, a player rated 1200 has probably done little to no opening training, but a Grandmaster has done a ton. That same 1200 player perhaps has never done any targeted end game training, but certainly a National Master has done plenty.

To return to my analogy that I gave earlier about martial arts, I guess what I'm wondering is whether or not a "black belt in chess" course could be devised. 

As I also mentioned earlier, I have a copy of Vol 1 of Lev Alburt's Comprehensive Chess Course. In the introduction, he makes a curious statement that really stuck out to me:

Over a period of four to five years, attentive students could expect to reach the 2200-level with a weekly input of a single two-hours lesson, buttressed by four hours of homework and another two to three hours of practical play.

As we both know, that certainly flies in the face of what many tend to believe, to the point that even I am not sure about it. But it is interesting. 

Somewhere else in the book I remember him making another statement that caught my attention. He's talking about end games and he says that many chess players spend their time learning over a thousand different positions, when in fact this is unnecessary. Instead, he says, you really just need to know 50 key positions. 

That really got me to thinking about the way that people go about learning chess. How much unnecessary stuff does the average chess player do that gives them no actual benefit in terms of improved playing ability? If we all knew EXACTLY what to do in terms of streamlining our study, how far could we go and in what amount of time?

You know, I've wondered about this. I was quite young when I played my first chess games, but at that time I wasn't taught anything beyond how the pieces moved, the basic rules . . . you know, just how to get through a game from beginning to end.

Then when I was about 15 I bought Chess for Dummies and read some of it and I picked up a pocket chess computer and I'd play against it when I got bored. And I would pick up games with people I knew personally when I could find someone who wanted to play.

During this time I was certainly not a good player by any stretch of the imagination but I learned enough to be able to get past most of the usual riff raff who thinks they know something about chess: family, friends, a girlfriend's dad, etc. And I played a bit online, but not much. I certainly never played competitively on any serious level and never entered tournaments. I'd say this occasional playing went on for . . . I dunno . . . a handful of years, maybe into my early 20s. Just playing occasionally, no additional study beyond the one book I owned. 

And then I didn't even really touch a chess piece for, I guess, over a decade before returning to the game about a year and a half ago when I discovered the Chess with Friends app, and then later the Chess by Post app for my phone. I've been playing turn-based chess regularly on Chess by Post since then. Like with most apps, they start you with the usual 1200 rating. I went from 1200 to 1500 pretty quickly, then occasionally rising up to 1600 but then usually falling back into the 1500s. Then I got to 1600 and was able to hold steady there for the most part and, just recently, I made a sudden surge and won several games in a row and now I unexpectedly find myself sitting at 1905. No idea how long that will last though, or why I suddenly made that jump. But that's what I've been doing for the past while, slow, deliberately-paced turn-based stuff.

(I really haven't played much on Chess.com. In fact I played my first blitz game ever about 10 minutes ago. Speed chess is really a whole other animal that I am not really acquainted with.)

Anyway, that's a few more details about my journey, but what I'd like to know is how much playing the little bit I did pre-adulthood actually helped. Even though it was relatively little compared to the younger people who get truly serious about it as kids, was it enough to open up some possibilities as an adult that otherwise wouldn't exist?

It may be the lowest title, but it will also put you at about 99% of all tournament players. So in a way you're asking if the 99th percentile is achievable by anyone. I realize not every tournament player works hard (or even at all) to get better, but that's just something to keep in mind.

As for a chess player's personal point of view on a rating... it's not worth much. In chess, it's odd, but what's almost impossible to understand or do well at first, may seem like child's play a year later... it may seem so obvious that it goes without saying during e.g. an analysis session. So when players near a rating say that rating is easy, they're usually taking a lot for granted. Of course this is true for me too. Players around my rating (myself included) give me the impression of being pretty bad honestly lol.

As for your personal gut feeling about NM... come on man, you don't even have an OTB rating!

Must be nice to be retired at age 23

 That schedule looks totally made up for a few reasons.

My gut feeling is mostly just based on how people who know more than me talk about the master ranks. It's not uncommon to see people talk about how an IM is just MILES AHEAD of an NM . . . and how a GM is MILES AHEAD of the IM . . . and a SuperGM is MILES AHEAD of a regular GM. And so on. 

So if that's actually the case, and an NM--being the lowliest of masters--is a rather weak player compared to a SuperGM, that implies that there is a very wide range of chess ability within the master ranks. And so surely, in that case, us mortals can at least aspire to become NMs with a reasonable chance of success.

BTW, you said, "come on man, you don't even have an OTB rating." I'm glad you said that. I see a lot of comments like this, so perhaps you can enlighten me. What makes competitive OTB chess so much different from any other kind of chess? Is it just the nerves involved with having to sit across from your opponent, or is there something I'm missing? 

Black belt curriculum : it's always possible to reinvent the wheel, but there are already good programs available. I think Chess Steps + either Yusupov or ICS + 50-70 OTB games/year + analyzing with a stronger player will cover 90% of what every player needs training wise.

What's so different about OTB play ? It's more intense and more competitive than online play. It's also more interesting and rewarding. At the end of the day, practice is probably more important than having the "perfect" training program

NM are relatively weak - yes, relatively, like your average pro NBA player is weak compared to Mickael Jordan I guess. The amount of knowledge and skills a NM has is already quite impressive.

I wouldn't say "miles ahead." 200 rating points (at any level) means the higher rated player is expected to score about 3 out of 4.

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OTB is different because people are giving up their weekend and money (entry fee, travel expenses, sometimes hotel fees) to play. For some of your opponents (and maybe you as well) there is a chance to win prizes. Also because online it's easy to cheat, people tend to take their OTB rating as their "real" rating. All this to say, people tend to come rested and in reasonable to good playing condition, and they focus during their games. Also because the games are longer, losing is even less enjoyable. If you'e spent the last 3 hours playing a good game, you don't want to throw it all away in 1 blunder!

Online you can get people testing new openings, playing no-name openings just for fun, playing just before bed or after waking up, playing with spouse/kids/pets/friends causing distractions in the background, etc.

Also the time control makes it different. First let me make a distinction between calculation (moving the pieces), visualization (seeing the end position after a calculation clearly) and analysis (choosing between two or more end positions). Online play, which is typically faster, usually only gives you time for calculation to check whether or not you're losing material, not much visualization, and even less proper analysis. So tournament play tends to take more mental energy (you're always having to visualize and compare positions), and if you've never done analysis, you won't be able to use your time efficiently. This was my experience anyway, as someone who play online for 3 years before going to my first tournament.

Also the duration of play. One tournament I played in had 3 rounds in 1 day. The time control was 90+30. My first game started around 9:00am and my last game finished after midnight! I had just enough time to eat, go to bed, and wake up to play again the next day (only 2 rounds the next day). So even if you play long games, and do lots of mental work during online games, you're probably not used to playing/working that much in one day.

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But more fundamentally, I said "come on man" because you're saying you feel it should be possible when you've never even played a NM in a rated (OTB) game. For all you know every one of them are super-geniuses who have memorized thousands of games and have decades worth of playing experience

I wouldn't say miles ahead either, but kilometers. Shame on Napoleon!

Well, I'm afraid I made it sound awful lol. It's a lot of fun, and people are competitive... but generally nice. I'm comfortable chatting with anyone there usually. Even if you don't know anyone you can e.g. follow your opponent's results through the tournament. Ask them in later rounds how they did or who they played. You can watch other people's analysis sessions and ask questions, and of course analyze with your opponents after your games.

It is awesome, once you try it you want more and more. Btw, I've played what you call a NM (a 2275 FIDE, but he's untitled, NM doesn't exist here) in many casual games and it is like facing a bulldozer.  

I've scored some draws and had winning positions against 2200-2300 USCF players (but I haven't won yet). In blitz games between rounds I'll win sometimes. They're definitely better than me

I once drew a 1800! He should have been riding a hangover.  :D

I once lost to a player rated 300 points below me... the jerk calculated a forced mate!

My training regimen consists of watching cartoons and drinking beer.

I remembered a book which fit this forum:  "Chess Master At Any Age" by Rolf Wetzell.  He lays out what he did to get a 2200+ rating around age 50.

i do yoga and pilates

and eat a mediterranean diet