FACT: You can't improve at chess

In bullet, you do have to calculate, but less is needed, even though some is needed. Its kind of like you are always in time scramble while playing bullet. Now to the original post: You can most definitely improve in chess, look at my rating curve

Chess is a thinking game. That means no haste with what’s placed, no? It’s absolutely defeating the individual, for one, they’re not an AI, nor should the game be hampered because some gets a rush to attempt to blast out the fastest move.

It also is so ego centered, and points enough build that ridiculousness which is very sad, because I truly find that if the points were gone and people just enjoy the game their losses would clearly not have the effect on them as to when they’re losing their claimed precious points, which is terribly sad and losing site of the wonderful fun chess can be, even losses viewed some as a win, simply by the whatever had been gained of what not to do the next time, gained experience, removing their stress and keeping the game totally the fun it belongs, instead of the depression that I’ve seen many have experienced due the damn point system!

It would also dramatically affect their skills at it and progress more, because their depression, whatsoever they had to begin with due the silly points or lack of, and happily improve and watch their game get better! I certainly by playing the 4 player have increased mine, and lol yeah it’s based most points wins, that’s most taken pieces, as well most mates out of the three opponents you’re playing in one game. Extremely fun and most definitely increases your standard skills!

i wrote a book called pandemic shark which is all about adults and what they can do to improve- should be out fairly soon! 

I went up 600 rating points in Half a year in rapid.

Nice

btw the comments about not needing to have a high i.q. to be a grandmaster are absolutely correct. i am living proof of this

for my own pennies worth i agree with a lot of the comments here. i do think that however hard you work that aptitude plays a large part in improvement but it's also single-minded focus on the game. probably when i was younger there were people my age group who were ahead of me but i improved past them due to a single-minded focus on chess.

in my experience most if not all players who achieve grandmaster have at some point in their lives been obsessed with the game, even if in most cases that obsession seriously drops off once you have achieved your goals/realized there is more to life than moving pieces around the board.

i certainly don't do five to six hours study on chess now and probably never did, although i did do a lot more when i was younger. again, in my experience most gms don't really work that hard. it's probably only the very top players who maintain that single-minded obsession with the game, and even many of them become rather lazy over time. 

so although i recognise that working hard plays a large part, i do think talent plays some kind of role, and i've always been rather sceptical of these 10,000 hours claims, that seems more miserable than anything else, like a kind of chess version of the sisyphus rock. 

I agree with everything you've said here.  I think no matter how hard you study you won't make it passed a certain level in Chess.  I think for some folks it's too late to be a GM, I'm one such person as I'm in my forties and didn't really start Chess until I was in about my mid 20s and even then I wasn't studying diligently like maybe I should have.  

I did have a love for the game though that I still have to this day, you're right though I don't think most people realize just how much work, dedication and overall time it takes to achieve the title of "Grandmaster" in Chess. 

I suck at chess, but here are my two cents. I think chess could be compared to weight lifting. When people first start out they see rapid improvement (aka noob gains), but soon they realize that the time they put in is subject to the law of diminishing returns, i.e. the same amount of work no longer corresponds to the same amount of improvement. This is discouraging to most people, and probably the reason why people plateau in chess and weight lifting alike. Of course there are some inherent traits that make some people naturally good at chess, or make some people put on a crazy amount of muscle in no time, but with hard work I think anyone can reach a respectable level in both.

I'm justing putting this here, because Chess.com is deleting posts concerning this subject. Several players are compiling on how their ratings suddenly drop and people rated on a low level suddenly play above their level. Chess.com deletes topics on the subject instead of looking into it. I don't know how or where I can make a complaint about this, so I'm doing it this way.

Seriously, it's getting ridiculous this way.

I don't think that's a fair comparison and trust me I know alot about both.  I'm by no means a "good" player but Chess is just like anything else, if you want to be a "good" player then you have to put the work in, it's really that simple.  The problem is people not willing to put the time in, ask yourself what are you doing seriously to improve. I mean I'm just saying ........

This is bs…. It’s a slow grind but if you practice the right way you will improve, I was stuck on 1700 for like 3 years now I’m 1900 and I plan to get to 2200 one day , I have a friend who was stuck on 1800 for 4 years and now he’s an IM. I also know another guy who was stuck on 1800 for 2 years now he’s 2000 and I’ve seen plenty graphs of players online who gradually improved. How ever , some people do hit a ceiling. But not every one has a ceiling that they will ever reach some people have a ceiling that’s so high they’ll just never reach it so they keep slowly improving. 

People love to rationalize things (like not making progress) coming up with their own theories, no matter how illogical they are as long as it supports their narrative

I remember reading somewhere that chess grandmasters are extremely good at quickly memorizing the positioning of every piece in positions which are seen in real games compared to regular people.
But then as soon as they're both presented with piece positions never seen in real games there is no distinction between the speed a chess grandmaster memorizing and a regular person.
Chess grandmasters have no correlation with any other typical intelligent metric, such as iq or academics etc.
Often times when presented with positions chess grandmasters are able to identify what game the position is from etc. So possibly they retain things more often in a story like format?

So my conclusion is it's likely similar to language learning, where overwhelmingly most people who are fluent in a language are those who learn it at young age, but anyone can become fluent if they approach learning in the correct way. 

I suspect sudden intense exposure and consistent comprehensible guidance is necessary to improve else much like watching anime with subtitles or spending a week learning a language only to give up and repeat from start a year later, you'll likely feel your skills are stagnant.

But this is just my thoughts on the topic.

@ChessBrainiac's blitz graph: 

Some troll thread are incredibly resilient. This thread was started in 2017, and the hypothesis of the OP was immediately debunked in the very first reply. Still, somehow the whole thing is still running more than 5 years later.

Here's just my improvement graph at blitz all-time on this website. I worked hard to improve at chess, and it worked. Guess what- I did improve, even with my principles. I was around 700 when I started, now I'm a proud 1650. People might still call me an amateur, but I'm at least a determined learner.

btw, don't judge my background. It's from almost a year ago, but I'm too lazy to change it lol.

If you're looking for a graph that looks like a solid straight line, you're not going to find it. As rating linearly increases, the difficulty of getting further increase exponentially. So if you put in a consistent amount of work over time, you should see a logarithmic curve, not linear. If you squint at a logarithm I guess you could say "the jump happened all at once," but it's just a logarithm.

It took Carlsen 6 years to reach 2800 strength after he became a master and he had already played chess for several years before he became a master. What "quick improvement" the OP is talking about I don't know.