Is there any chance that a 1300 rated player can beat a 2700 rated player?

@mdinnerspace, @alexm2310 ... Thanks for the interesting tale of the hustler.  Stories of pool hustlers interest me also.

Some players have a natural talent for spacial relations and are a quick study, and as a street hustler playing the compact Philidor, I assume he keep the position relatively closed and in his favor.  I wonder what he played as White, king pawn, queen pawn or even queen bishop pawn of the English?

Your description makes it sound like he had a boa constrictor style, not taking any chances and letting the other fellow make the mistake; going for the crush, so to speak.  However, since most "marks," for lack of a better term, are rather weak at tactics, the hustler has an advantage too when the game opens up.

Just like in pool hustling, its how you make the game strongly in your favor, which is vital if you want to eat and find a place to flop that evening.  It's not an easy life, from what I've read, but hustlers love the action.

Best,
Bob

On this I agree with you.  You learn a lot from over-the-board play.  OTB ratings are the only ones I take seriously outside of top-flight correspondence play.  Blitz and Bullet are for the adrenaline addicted; it's a different game where board vision (the current position) versus visualization (future position) predominates.  Making a mistake in Blitz?  Well, who cares, set 'em up again, Joe.  But make a mistake after four or more hours of over the board play and you feel like hell.

I don't know how 1300 FIDE compares to 1300 USCF, but in recent years I think the USCF has moved to make them relatively equivalent.  A 1300 USCF is class D, and that's not all that good.  I haven't played OTB for over 20 years, leaving with a 1554.  My rating went up after every tournament except the last one, when it went down a mere 7 points from 1561.

The truth is, even at 1554 I played with the insecure feeling that I would miss something.  To be blunt, I was lousy, so please don't tell me how skilled, even ok, 1300s are.  As far as my rating here at chess.com, I haven't played that many games, and almost no games against strong players.  The site doesn't let you play up by a lot, which is unfortunate.  Like I said in another post to you, I only take my OTB rating seriously, and I need to get back to OTB play now that I'm retired and see how I fare.

I know one thing, over the last 20 plus years I've become a lot more confident of what I see on the board and how to proceed strategically but particularly tactically.  I am a case study for all those instructors who say to study tactics, tactics and more tactics and play 1.e4 until you're ready to move to closed openings and a concentrated study of the most profound part of the game, long range planning and strategy.  I also attribute my increased understand of chess to endgame studies, which I truly love for their aesthetic charm and stunning exactitude.  As far as openings, I still have a lot to learn.

That's my two cents worth.

The hustlers style (Jeff) was to play positionally solid. Develope ALL his pieces. A boa constrictor ls a good description. It seemed his pieces were always moving forward. Not a flashy style. He didn't take tactical chanches when he'd just wear down the opponent. Of course he saw astounding sacrifices, but played them after the game was in his favor. By playing fast, I mean that literally. His hands. He could capture a piece and replace it with his own so fast and smooth often spectators would say "what just happened"? This afforded a big advantage besides intuitively knowing best moves. I don't think he was "analyzing " all that much. Somehow he understood rook endgames, and with an extra pawn would convert the win.

"The guy I spoke of possessed a gift for spatial recognition and the ability to quickly process it. Why read books when your abilities already give you all the tools necessary?"

This might just be bullshit, because visualizing things on a 2d board isn't really that spatial. It's basically understanding horizontal and vertical. I'm quite bad with spatial visualization (can't draw 3d objects for the life of me), and used to be bad at calculating chess variations. Now I am quite good at calculating chess variations, but still perfectly bad at spatial recognition. I recognize more and more patterns, that's my calculation lol.

Saying chess tests your spatial ability is sort of like saying singing tests your walking ability (because you'll probably move a little while on stage).

It's just tricky sometimes. For example, you'd think a great table tennis player would be someone with "genetically" good reflexes. But really, you don't need that; what looks like reflexes is more like, knowing what to expect from your opponent's next shot based on micro details (how they are swinging it, where the ball is right now, etc), and so it's easier to prepare against in a timely manner; it's simply easier to process the information of where a ball is going when you already know where to look. Which comes from (high quality) experience.

My eyes closing when someone pretends to slap me is a reflex. Processing large amounts of subtle information quickly is not.

Elubas, you are off topic, and I like it. The interesting lines in this debate are the sidelines :)    

@ Elubas... you play table tennis? Well I do. Having won several national titles and played vs world class players I can say there are many holes in your comparisons. 1st., quick reflexes is a muscle reaction, different from "anticipation" of opponents next shot. Both are possessed by good pjayers.

Spatial recognition and pattern recognition, I agree are 2 separate things. I should have been referring to pattern recognition as the more useful tool.

Of course a 1300 level player could beat a 2700 level player.  Imagine a scenerio where the 2700 level player has a heart attack and his time runs out.  Or the 1300 level player could bribe the 2700 level player with $10,000 dollars to throw the game.  Or the 2700 level player could have suffered a massive stroke that cost him his higher reasoning, but his rating has not yet caught up to him.

What us the point tom? Anyone can make up a scenario.

Well in a book I read (the author was a table tennis pro himself), there was a dude who had the quickest reflexes... or so it seemed. He would return the ball in a more timely manner than anyone else in their club or something. But then they all played a "pure" reflex exercise, you make a movement or something as soon as you hear a beep or something like that, and that "fast" guy did the worst out of the whole group. At least according to the author. Sure, that was just a game, but if you're going to argue for this "general" skill of reflexes that you need for table tennis, surely a person who is good at table tennis reflexes must be good at many different kinds of reflexes. In reality though, that's not necessarily the case at all.

There's far more to table tennis than just fast reflexes. What you described about anticipation is obviously extremely important, and can make up for having slow reflexes to a large extent. But at a high level, all other things being equal, the guy with faster reflexes has a significant edge.

How much do reflexes even vary? Are there really some people with way faster reflexes than others? I come across people who respond much more quickly to things (in general) than others, but I'm not sure how much of that is physiological and how much of it is just mental, that you know what little things mean and can discriminate and perceive of them. So I just wonder if when we think someone has faster reflexes, we're getting reflexes confused with something else. Or maybe not, but I'm curious about that.

People have two general types of skeletal muscle fibers: slow-twitch (type I) and fast-twitch (type II). Slow-twitch muscles help enable long-endurance feats such as distance running, while fast-twitch muscles fatigue faster but are used in powerful bursts of movements like sprinting.

The "twitch" can be measured and is an indicator of a person's potential performance.

I am a defensive table tennis player. I slow the game down. My anticipation is based on the spin I used to return the ball, the players position at the table, forcing either a fore or backhand or a shot directly at the body. I will often switch hands to make a shot. Something not often seen by the other player.Throw in a drop or a block shot limits the other players choice of return. Knowing their tendencies, strengths and weaknesses is taken into account. In other words, it was a thought "process" with many factors. 1 big factor is the angles of the shots at the table. Driving the ball cross court to a players backhand most likely will produce a limited option of return. I was preparing my next position before returning the present shot. The really good players are able to change things up by for example going down the line in a difficult position, when it would seem the only option was a return across table. My chop was 1 of the best going, floated low over the net deep onto the table. A player needed a darn good loop to make a decent return.

The speed and agility of today's players is amazing to watch. It Is claimed they are the best conditioned of all athletes. I would not dispute this.

On the topic of reflexes, some seem to have a greater ability to quickly change from 1 shot to another. By example, being in position, anticipating a forehand return and a backhand becomes the only play. Requires fast hands and feet. It gets measured how fast someone reacts to a starting gun in races, but I don't know if that equates to the table tennis discussion.

yes

Yes it is possible. I may not have beaten a player above 2700 but I have recently beaten a CM rated above 2100

And yes I have proof