No limits to what you can do so how about becoming a Grand Master

An 18 year old rated 1600 has absolutely NO chance of ever becoming world champion. It is too late. (Especially if the person is a native speaker of English not intelligent enough to correctly distinguish the proper usage of use "your" vs. "you're".)

lets not pay attention to real age and consider his "Chess age" meaning he got that rating after learning the game a year ago without any of those resources

Think of this:

The Soviet Union sought out the very best chess players from a very young age. They trained them to be the best they could possibly be. Of the thousands upon thousands who had the means, motives, and opportunities to become world champion under that system, we got Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky, Karpov, Kasparov and Kramnik.

Argue all you want that hard work alone is enough. But there was something that separated these players from all the others who had similar opportunities.

The odds of becoming world champion are nil.

However, could someone in those circumstancesd become a GM?  Well, as long as they didn't lose their motivation GM seems like it wouldn't be impossible.

ooo tough one. Id like to see how david answers this but ill take a crack at it. Again have you ever lived with these players I've studied Russian chess schools and they spend alot of time in the day studying chess but for every teacher there is a slacker or someone who once they go home or the coach leaves thats the chess they do the rest of the day or start to study the wrong thing again while others are making real effort to study the right thing afterwords and make connections with the other school kids and so forth and some just strong enough willpower and give up once they hit a bump in the word I read biographies were a lot of master quit chess simply because they've been stuck at a certain level for a long time when like david said they spent a lot of time on the wrong stuff or not enough time on the right stuff. Now you and I can debate about this all day but neither you or I have been in these players lives personally enough to say whether they go somewhere or didnt get somewhere because of this or that so just agree to disagree.

agreed again the topic is about becoming GM!!! forget the world champ stuff everyone

Oh, ok, so as long as people who read the title and the first post find post #27 they'll be able to post on topic lol :p

Still I think it depends on the person.  I don't think GM is a given... probably  not even likely, although obviously not impossible.

very good point lol ill change it  now

well this is embarssing can someone tell me how to change the title 

This link:  www.chess.com/members/view_content/chessmaster102

Although no one but you can see the edit buttons... I just made it look that way...

thanks

My previous comments were based on an erroneous assumption. I was talking about becoming world champion. 

If the OP wanted to change the topic, he should have created a new thread.

Reminder to self: don't participate in threads managed by people who will change the very topic of that thread.

he said GM there are like 1200, how many world champion marathoner are therE?

I know its not very likely and the chance is less then 1%. but there are 1200 grandmasters, how many marathon worl champions are there right now?

I guess if Kim Jung Il the former dictator of Noth Korea can get 5 holes in one on his first golf outing and bowl a 300 in his first try at bowling anything is possible.

my fault then

i totally agree

I already said i didnt want to be a talent vs hard work so thats why i changed it did you even read the comments ? you should make that reminder as well

yeah hes just trying to make a point a failed one at that

But, no...his real age IS important. That is the whole point. The brain just loses far too much plasticity to get that good starting at age 17 or 18. It is EXACTLY his real age that makes it impossible.