How easy is it to become a GM?

Wasn't it Anand himself who said if you're not GM by 14 you can forget about it (the world title).

An easy counter example to that is every world champion except Carlsen.

So maybe something has changed... but I'm not sure what.

Maybe Anand is saying today's world champion contenders are better... or at least Carlsen is better? I'm not sure.

I'll keep that in mind the next time I'm riding my mule to the farm and worrying if I have enough fuel for my stove to heat my house this winter.

Very easy. I drew Magnus Carlsen 30 games in a row once.

Here's how all the games started:

14 years can't be right, surely. There's two many notable exceptions like you said (everyone except Carlsen!). Either way, the trend seems to be for younger and younger grandmasters.

Who resurrected Vlado's old post?  He had some strange ideas that claimed it wasn't too hard to become a master, that 1200 was basically the same as a master, and one of his rated games was a move-for-move copy of a Bobby Fischer - Robert Byrne famous game.

I hope he his thinking has evolved, though I see it hasn't improved his rating - except the 2883 FIDE rating he claims despite all his other ratings being much less than half that!

you can work to GM at later life  so claiming " if you are not 2xxxx rated by 18 claims are a bit extreme. In fact, it seems that 1800 by 18 is closer to the true number, its just that the number of people that do get to GM as late bloomers is extremely low.

One theory is that you to reach a level as high as GM you needed to have been exposed a lot to a certain type of spatial reasoning to thrive later on, which makes sense. But i think this doesnt extend so far as to needing to be even master by age 18. Those rare exceptions like Jonathan Hawkins at minimum proof if the above is true, you probably only need to be a strong class player before your early 20's.

from what i know of Hawkins story, its not like he just decided to move to Barcelona or st.Petersburg and had all the money in the world to spend on coaches and training (which might reinforce how exceptionally restrictive it is to be a late bloomer). He seemed like a normal ambitious young man in a part of England that wasnt ideal for chess and worked his way up with hard work. 

It's probably a troll post lmao

Albin Planinc was an untitled 25 year old when he won the 1969 Vidmar Memorial in Ljubljana, ahead of Gligorić and 9 other GMs. He got the GM title 3 years later, when he was 28. He was clearly a strong player before 1969, winning the 1968 Slovenian championship, but he was practically unknown outside of Slovenia. So yes, there are "late bloomers", but they are quite rare.

As an aside, if you want to see some fascinating, inventive chess, take a look at Planinc's games.

i dont think he was even expert yet at age 18, but i can be wrong there

as for planinc, i am skeptical of players of those kinds of regions being true late bloomers. They may have gone untitled for a while but they almost always grew up surrounded by strong chess players, and only appeared in the FIDE tables when they were already pretty strong. They are really more undetected than true late bloomers

Yeah, if all your chess friends are minimum FM level, then you're going to learn a hell of a lot.

It's incomparable to studying on your own.

i have pretty much admitted to myself that if within 3 years i dont move to a country where i could get a full chess submersion, i might as well give up on dreams on going for IM or higher

immersion is such an important thing, being surrounded by friendly rivals and coaches that make learning so fun and worthwhile. sure beats going once a month to weekend tourneys and reading dusty books by yourself.

Anand was exactly 2285 back in 1984- you can easily check this from old game collections (his FIDE card does not go before 2000).

He gained a massive ELO increase plus the IM title from his performance at the 1984 Chess Olympiad. Before that, he had an average performance at the U-16 world championship.

Mikhail Chigorin and Efim Geller also had their breakthroughs very late but it was a different time back then i guess 

@pfren, I didn't say you were wrong. Your fact doesn't obviate mine. If you were to have said Anand was unrated in 1983, you would also have been correct.

The 1980s are a long time ago. Things have changed dramatically since Anand burst on to the scene.

First off, he specifically said that he didn't have the materials to keep going, so there was absolutely no reason to accuse him of not being passionate about the game.

Second of all, I think that setting such a big goal won't get you far. The only thing that will happen is that when you will stop improving at a fast rate you will probably give up.

Set closer goals and you will improve faster.

Here's a rather startling graph that GM Ziatdinov posted:

Excellent. All I need is about 3 12 year olds to balance me out.

I see this thread started in 2016, how much has the OP elo improved since then?

interesting but dont be misled, the reason the graph starts so high is because only the leading masters of the day were nominated for the GM title. 

Since the mid 80s, the average age of a first-time GM has dropped ten years.