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.
To be a GM, is a lot harder than just work hard, GM Whatever your name is. Iwas obssed in chess for like 2 years but little has changed.
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.
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.
To be a GM, is a lot harder than just work hard, GM Whatever your name is. Iwas obssed in chess for like 2 years but little has changed.