I just started playing this year at the age of 30, is it too late to get good?

chessmicky wrote:

Dvoretsk's Endgame Manual is a terrible waste of time for anone rated under USCF 2000 (or FIDE 2000). This excellent book presumes that its readers have mastered all of the basic endgames and are read for an advanced course. If you are a strong player who wants to take his endgame play to master level, this is the book for you. For a relative beginner who simply wants to become competent in the endgame, it's a waste of time.

There are a lot of great chess books that only become useful when you reach a certain level. Reading them when you're not at that level is a waste of time at best, and can be positively harmful. First of all time wasted on these books is time you could have spent learning something more useful. Secondly, you can come away with the illusion that you "know" something that's really over your head. And you're unlikely to go back and "relearn" it when it can do you some good.

The Thing with most

Basic endgames books is that most stuff u either dont understand or know anyway. but it applies to most even Silman. Well i havent read the hard stuff but till level 1800 were i stopped reading , i could work most out even without Board and im not even 1600 on Chess.com

the hard stuff in endgames u probably forget anyway, unless u learn tactics and improve calculation. But Most likely you learn the important endgame concepts yourself than by analysing your games.

Thats why i personally like learning openings and middlegames. Not memorization or complex stuff, but absorbing the strategical ideas with good explanation, seems to stick forever in your brain. You are also not so likely to find the ideas yourself even though they are highly logical.

You'll find that no matter what level you play, winning is fun and losing is less fun...simple. You don't have to be as good as Messi or CR7 to enjoy playing a game of football, same goes for chess.

Jabba i have the feeling i would enjoy football more if i were messi

there has been no really high rated player commenting to say he started as an adult.

As I mentioned earlier, Chigorin didn't start playing seriously until he was 24 and by the time he was 30, he was one of the strongest players in the Russia. Not long after that he was one of the strongest players in the world.

Chigorin lost two World Championship matches to Steinitz with an overall score of 24 wins, 27 losses and 8 draws. That's a player who got good.

So unless you are demanding absolute chess virgins -- Chigorin learned the moves of chess at 16 -- Chigorin's your man if you want an example.

I think the lack of examples here is (A) not many people attend to forum topics or necessarily care to reply to them and (B) few people get interested in chess as adults and want to become really good players. It's hard to work a serious chess regimen when you have adult responsibilities.

ipcress12 wrote:

there has been no really high rated player commenting to say he started as an adult.As I mentioned earlier, Chigorin didn't start playing seriously until he was 24 and by the time he was 30, he was one of the strongest players in the Russia. Not long after that he was one of the strongest players in the world. Chigorin lost two World Championship matches to Steinitz with an overall score of 24 wins, 27 losses and 8 draws. That's a player who got good.So unless you are demanding absolute chess virgins -- Chigorin learned the moves of chess at 16 -- Chigorin's your man if you want an example.I think the lack of examples here is (A) not many people attend to forum topics or necessarily care to reply to them and (B) few people get interested in chess as adults and want to become really good players. It's hard to work a serious chess regimen when you have adult responsibilities.

As i Said, there was a russian master, i dont know if he was GM or an ordinary master. He lost his entire memory in world war 2 i believe. After the war he had to learn chess as an adult again, he again Become Master or GM.

I am 30. I started this February . I had the same curiosity that you did... I wanted to check my progress to see if on comparison I was excelling, which is my intent. I have standard rating that is around 1600 , got some online rating up to 1700-1800 but like the regular time games best.... Blots is bad, can be fun but ultimately would be detrimental to improving as that's what kills ideas and plans, and IMO is more simple patern ... Which with lack of seeing the paterns = not good rating in those areas,but there again I have wins 1950+ .

I study and play as much as I can outside my everyday responsibilities.

The thing that motivates me is I tell myself "they bleed red like me"

So whatever the circumstance may be if they were junior champs or what they still have potential to lose ...

Another thing is that even the greats were not always the greats, they had to put the time and work into it too. That also helps me, you can find bobby ficher games or anand games where those guys mad blunders. Lol

I think (for me at least) it helps to play high level guys .. They have different mentality , which is reflected in their moves... Wether that was tought to them or simply rubbed of onto them, or not? But it's there...

Also be leave it not all bad in progressing not super fast because then you might miss out on some of the beauty of the game, it's fun to have child like imagination about it .. And break "rules" on openings.. Basically just play the game you want to play, and rook sac

brah just shut up and stop being pretenious, ok. Go watch cookie monster or something. 

My iPhone went wacky, I meant to say blitz is bad, and is more pattern recognition as opposed to calculating variations, and I believe it is calculating of variations and putting together ideas, attempt to pull the off is what will help prove.

Also, i have been a little over a year and today i nearly beat a titled player. And you are the biggest bureaucrat. You should have played a year without studing as this reduces your creavity. Now you wouldnt learn lessons from failing and being mroe pratical foolish kid.  You just limited yourself. Look at ratings this is completely natural talent. I have nbot read a chess book, even though i can read at 1300 wpm, i have not analyzed your precious measter games or even my own games. And look at my ratings. Therefore when i start to read and study the translucency of the game will be much better. YOu can only blame yourself for not having the satisfication that i will ultimately have. Before this year ididnt even know what the bisho por knight were, but give me another year. This year I am rated above average by just mere talent. did you get akll of that brah

Hey Juxtranspose thanks for sharing your story, I also started this year at 30 and it's inspirational to me to read things like that. You've got a high rating especially considering your average opponent rating about equal to you too.. So often on these forums they'll be people with like 1900 rating and then you look at their average opponent rating and it's low.

Sometimes I do think I should just quit chess though because I spend a lot of time on it and get very angry when I lose, and even when I win. It's just a really angering and frustrating game.

Its not only too late at 30 to get good at chess.....One could make a reasonable case that its already too late to even enjoy life, in general, at that accelerated age.  :(

New too adorable magui , I have felt the same... Like is there hope for me? Etc ... But I seem interview with Carlson , he too hates to lose.. Ficher"winning is everything "

Am I saying that you need to be madly obsessed and take it to the extreme? Absolutely. Just kidding ! Lol. But yes that urge is beneficial.. In fact there may be something said about having emotions tied into as it serve sort of mental stimulus ... And for the 95% that say you can't make gm... Just watch me ... Arnold swarzenager had this saying that he loved to hear when people say it can't be done or no one has before.. Then I could be the first! That's a great opportunity to have ... I find quotes like that inspiring and I generally like to be inspired. Keep your confidence level high. I think that's an important factor, of your overall approach

I get mad when i lose too. The worst is when I have completely winning positions. And throw the game. I even get disappointed with some wins if they were just so-so games

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vICbqSjy5lc

Dont worry you will be alright as long as you want to be around 1800-2000 range, I used to play chess when I was younger but gave up altogether after college and restarted at the age of 30, while I am doing a-ok I think I would have progressed faster when I was in teens as compared to now.

Thanks for the advice Chess_gg. I'm not just frustrated by chess, it also makes me sad when I win, and I look at my games and see all the mistakes and blunders even in the wins.

Sometimes when I'm solving tactics puzzles, an overwhelming feeling of creepiness will come over me. I feel like I'm beginning to learn a strange visual langauge invented by psychotic mimes, the symbols of which don't have any meaning in external reality, but only within the alternate reality of the chess board. The pieces themselves seem to have a malicious life of their own, all they want to do is *take*, in their silent, scary way. They're like evil puppets, and remind me of the movie Puppetmaster.

I don't like to attack people, and when I really think about it, I don't like to checkmate people, because i know how bad they must feel.

I remember in a recent thread here I asked what's the most upset you've seen someone get at a tournament, and someone told the story of a small child. Playing chess had put so much frustration, fear, and stress on this young boy that he actually peed in his pants during a tournament game, and then continued playing with pee-soaked pants. That's how upset it makes people. When I really think about it, do I enjoy chess? I don't know if I do. Here's a question to ponder, what if Satan really exists, and what if he invented chess? What if this is actually an evil game?

I'm 35, and it took me the past 3 months to get to 1400 level tactics, and an estimated 1300 live rating.  I'm actually more active on FICS, and so I'm 1500 over there.  In reality, I've been playing online "on and off" for about a year.  If this progress holds constant, in about 10 years I'll have a pretty good game.  Unfortunately, I expect that as I get older, it'll be more difficult to learn new things, and so it'll probably mean 15 years to meet the model's 10 year expectations.  That'll make me 50 years old by the time I get to 2000+, making it 15 years before retirement age (assuming the U.S. government doesn't extend it), which is quite acceptable for me.  At my current rate of decay, I will probably look like Old Ben Kenobi by the time I get any good.  This isn't a career or anything, just a fun distraction for when I retire over a chessboard with a single malt in one hand, and a cigar in the other, assuming the American Healthcare system allows me to see this day lol.

In my experience, you won't see progress immediately, unless you're a prodigy, and so let's get our expectations in order.  You'll have long droughts, and new benchmarks that occur in streaks.  I suppose the old saying applies; things get worse before they get better.  It took Tiger Woods a number of years of mediocrity to adjust to his new golf swing, and now he's "player of the year", for what it's worth.  I suspect based on the numbers that another masters win is just a matter of time, assuming there aren't any more of Tiger's "transgressions", which I've yet to rule out.