How far should you expect to get after about a year of studying/playing chess?

The 1500 has surely worked harder than Nakamura, you're totally right Ubik. This is the same for great violonists or in any arts : they never work. They just got the "talent".

davebrah, has kacparov work 8 hours a day since day 1 ?

I started playing about 6 months ago, when I started I was rated about 700 and now I'm about 1300(standard). I only started trying to get better properly in the last couple of months (doing a bunch of tactics trainer problems, watching the intructional videos here etc.).

I'm aiming to be 1500 by next June and 1700 by this time next year, when I hope to start playing my first tournaments. I believe these are reasonabe targets especially if I stay committed.

Hopefully after that I'll maybe grow 100 points per year for a couple of years but after that, who knows?

I said "IM level", which is 2400 fide level (one must have not the title, not the rating, but the level). To be IM, one must have the IM level, but also play tournaments to get the norms, and it takes some time, like 1 year or 2 if he play 6 or 8 tournaments per year, depending on his level.

To have a 2400 fide rating level, from 2000 or even 1500, I think 1 year (8h/day) is a normal time.

No, it is not. You are simply just wrong. It is not normal...it is unheard of, absurdly unrealistic.

Again, to use Nakamura. He became 1500 in July 1996 and surpassed FIDE 2400 almost 5 years later, in April 2001.

Instead of just spouting nonsense, try doing some research. Find a single person who has had the growth you are talking about. 

I don't think any person can commit half of the whole time they'll be awake to chess. You just couldn't do it. 8 hours a day, every day, of playing or studying chess for a year as an amateur is not possible. 

You are right, Brah. No way this clown can be serious. I will let it go.

In my opinion talent is of great importance in addition to age at which one starts playing chess. Some people have natural ability and aptitude for this game. To quote you an example of myself I started defeating the person taught me some tactics of chess.He was also playing chess for so many years and was considered a good player at a club level. I never had the luxury of books computors were still sort of fictions. I also played lot of chess and personally I love this game. But When I started playing again after a gap 20 years with so much assistance from net I am not still able to cross 1300 barrier in one tear. My point is that it is anatural talent but can be polished and groomed with books practicing and coaching

Rapid progress presupposes talent - not because hard work is incapable of substituting for talent but rather because only someone with talent would ever be willing to invest a lot of time in chess.

When Mr Polgar claimed that training is what is needed to excel rather than genius he stipulated that the subject chosen for training be a subject in which the person showed interest. And that was how he chose chess for the experiment he and his wife embarked upon, Susan showed interest.

Carlsen for exemple, had a 2100 level when he was 10 (july 2001). 2 years later, july 2003, he was perfoming at 2450/2500.

Karjakin's rating was 2262 in april 2001, and 2523 in july 2002 (15 month later).

You were talking about going from 1500 to IM in one year.

The examples you provide are not even close to what you are arguing. They are wrong, anyway. Carlsen was 2385 in July 2003.

http://ratings.fide.com/id.phtml?event=1503014

The jump from 2100 to 2385 took Magnus Carlsen himself 2 years. And you think that anyone with proper studying can EXPECT to go from 1500 to 2400 in ONE year. Stop being silly.

Try again.

Way to misread my post.

You are getting it backwards. To succeed you need talent and hard work.

Many people have talent, and dont work hard.

Other people work hard, and dont have talent.

Some have a combination.

I knew a guy at a local chess club about 12 years ago, he went to weekly lessons and did every tournament, played over master games. He was rated 1200. I did one of my usual "quit chess for 7-8 years at a time" shticks, and when I came back, there he was, still taking lessons, still going to a tournament every week, and, yes, still 1200.

But he enjoyed it.

I was talking about going from 1500 to 2400 level (not 2400 rating).

Carlsen level of play was 2450/2500 (and his rating was 2385 but his level was higher, you must look his rating performance) like I said, exactly 2 years after his 2100 level, in july 2003.

If one could go from 2100 to 2450/2500 at the age of 10 in 2 years, one could go from 2100 (or 1500, which is very close to 2100 when you're 2400) to 2400 in 1 year with a lot of work (8h/day).

Karyakin was a 2250 and get a 2550 level in 1 year. To get a 2550 level you need much more work than to get a 2400 level.

A couple of factors that I've come across: Did the player take the time to build a strong endgame base of knowledge early in their carreer?  Does the player easily recognize patterns?  Does the player remember their mistakes?  How much time is being spent on these three things?

Tell me this, and I'll tell you if the player may improve at all, let alone rapidly.  I believe rapid improvement (> than 100 pts in a year) might be reserved for those that answered yes to all 3 AND have some other influence driving their improvement.

I must admit that this 1200 guy is quite impressive.

"The luck to be talented isn't enough, one also must have the talent to be lucky" Berlioz

Play while riding an exercycle.  Check the odometer after 1 year.  Very Simple.

Okay i'll share my experiences here. I started March this year here, and had played a little on FICS before, and basically rarely played OTB(a few games for fun a year with relatives/friends). The first few months i literally played hundreds of blitz games. Which didn't do any good and i decided to switch mainly to correspondence games and a slow live game here and there. 

I've recently gotten up to 1860 in correspondence and scored 2-1 against a FM which i am quite happy about. I play about two hours a day, if i'd guess. I have mainly just played games and try to calculate and visualize a lot. I have also worked a lot on my memorization and i'm able to remind one or two games i played now if they were not too long or crazy. 

I have also spent a reasonable amount of time on tactics on chesstempo(but probably not enough) and i feel that's  what i got the most benefit out of. 

I think the most crucial thing is that you really, to a certain degree, need to torture yourself. If you only hope you play good moves and not really calculate i imagine one can play thousands of games and not get any better. 

I have reached 1100 and I have played chess for about 10 months. However, I was actually learning new openings and practicing intermediate tactics. If you want to rank up to the next milestone, studying and concentration IS A MUST.

I´m so lucky to be born in 1958. I grew up without computers, internet, mobile phones. Chess I learned att an early age but I was in my twenties when I played my first games with a clock and around 25 when I got my first rating. Life and chess were simpler and better then.

I'm 1550 and I been playing for 10 months