"I guess I'd say in reality it's not so black and white."
But now you know what I meant when I said the same about your theory a few days ago :) A theory can be very logical, yet not actually play out that way in reality :)
not everyone can reach 2000
Sort:
"I just don't like when people assume it's obviously not."
And I don't like it when people assume that it obviously is (which is common).
0110001101101000 wrote:
Elubas wrote:
""Based off many observations" is rather comical in this case. The observation is that most people who play tournament chess regularly are below 2000."
Well, depends on what observations you consider relevant. Perhaps great artists know a majority of great artists who became great artists through a certain method. The fact that the majority of people are not great artists wouldn't seem to be a relevant "observation," there; it would seem closer to a random observation.
This can be a nasty sort of bias though. Lets turn it to chess.
To begin with, some of the best coaches don't accept any student. They have age and rating requirements before a student is even considered. Also people who are bad at a thing usually don't pursue it, and when you improve at something reliably, it's both practical on your time and more fun.
So to begin with, a group of highly skilled people already have this sort of self selection bias. If they want to say anyone can do it, they need to find people who don't like chess because they were bad at it. And 2ndly, if the somewhat miracle method was only tried on the young and talented, then that observation is fairly useless when the discussion is that anyone can do it.
Fair points.
And I think that while there is fuzziness about what "basics" really are, I don't think that means we should drop the idea, either. It seems like the general impression among everybody is that 2000-2200 is a fair spot for that. When people speak of 2400 being basic or something, it seems to be taken as more of a joke.
A fair though incomplete description of basics here is that it's basically all the good stuff you can have in your game without being considered particularly brilliant. It's more of a reflection of how much of what was fairly plain to see you were able to skillfully obtain (which of course is still extremely impressive), than having knowledge that truly wows people. And again, I think there is some general agreement on that by a variety of players, even if there are some occasional interesting comments made by super GMs.
Or another way to put it, you'll have to comprehensively outplay 2200 type players most of the time. You'll have to find a number of ideas that they didn't, rather than just rely on a single blunder/misunderstanding like you could with a class player. The 2200 takes these easy points away from the class players and doesn't give them back -- that's why they're not class players :)
so are the cynics here comfortable with laying down a number that IS possible?
and lets keep it to USCF stats.
assuming 1200, and assuming lots of interest, passion, club and tournament play, and at least 5 years of effort.
- and why would you do this? Hopes, dreams, goals, whatever.
Realize that a 5 year goal isn't just Going to happen in a night.
but can you say that nearly everyone can get the the USCF average (1400), or make Class A (isn't that 1800?).
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myself it seems like kinds of thoughts are acts of faith. Pick a number that seems ambitious but not utterly impossible. and pick a number- you can work on...
so thats why chess.com 2000(standard) is THE number I hope/wish to someday achieve.
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I know some people are saying even 2200 (about what rating IS possible). but for others- what is your estimate?
just learn new stuff thats how to improve
dont worry about your rating at first, it will come later
the more you know the higher your rating will be
easy as that
0110001101101000 wrote:
Elubas wrote:
""Based off many observations" is rather comical in this case. The observation is that most people who play tournament chess regularly are below 2000."
Well, depends on what observations you consider relevant. Perhaps great artists know a majority of great artists who became great artists through a certain method. The fact that the majority of people are not great artists wouldn't seem to be a relevant "observation," there; it would seem closer to a random observation.
This can be a nasty sort of bias though. Lets turn it to chess.
To begin with, some of the best coaches don't accept any student. They have age and rating requirements before a student is even considered. Also people who are bad at a thing usually don't pursue it, and when you improve at something reliably, it's both practical on your time and more fun.
So to begin with, a group of highly skilled people already have this sort of self selection bias. If they want to say anyone can do it, they need to find people who don't like chess because they were bad at it. And 2ndly, if the somewhat miracle method was only tried on the young and talented, then that observation is fairly useless when the discussion is that anyone can do it.
Although there can be a bit of overlap between interest/passion and skill. Who knows, interest might just be skill without us knowing it. Maybe interest is just a reaction to the skill we have that makes us want even more of it.
Apr 27, 2016
0
#229
Elubas wrote:
"I guess I'd say in reality it's not so black and white."
But now you know what I meant when I said the same about your theory a few days ago 
A theory can be very logical, yet not actually play out that way in reality
I agree, so I feel like we should stick to cold hard facts.
Not everyone tries their best, this is definitely true. So lets say something like anyone can increase their rating by 200 points.
But the rating 2000? Can we really pick that rating? Why not 1800? Why not 2200? And why pick a rating that so few people reach? Doesn't that seem unreasonable?
Give me something believable. I wasn't being rhetorical earlier when I said people should try coaching. Give me an experienced coach's perspective. Something like "I've had a few hundred students over the years, and it's my impression that the ones that don't make 2000 just quit too early."
That's believable.
"I'm 2000, and 2000 seems basic to me" is 100% not believable.
It's just easy to misperceive your potential. You can't just look at a certain kind of strategy or combination and think it's impossible for you to understand. Because it's only possible to understand it with a certain knowledge base. So what you perceive with a low knowledge base can't be compared to what you would perceive with a higher knowledge base.
A GM only finds GM ideas sensible because he learned them with an IM's amount of knowledge, so it wasn't too bad. And he was only able to do that because he previously had a master's level of knowledge, so the IM ideas were learnable. And so on. No GM, not even Carlsen, can understand a GM idea if you put him in the same perspective as someone new to chess looking at GM ideas from a distance.
So in a sense, to be a GM, you need to be an IM. And to do that, you need to be a master (and to do that you need to be a class player). Indeed, you can't just juggle 13 balls at once if you're new. It can only be obtained incrementally. It's easy to confuse the impossibility of improving right away with improving as a result of successive increments.
It's kind of like a fallacy in which people would be uncomfortable if they had a million tries to execute a one in a million chance. It's really not that bad. It's just that they only look at one try at a time, and they figure, if one try is nearly impossible, then we apply that to each try. But they're confusing looking at the increments with looking at the whole picture.
It might be more accurate, if much more dreary, to look at chess improvement as just an extremely large amount of patterns. So for example, what it means to learn how to play a beautiful, "positional" piece sacrifice, really just means learning 100,000 semi-related chess patterns, that combine into a really good intuition.
The benefit to thinking of it in this way is that we can show someone, that a positional sacrifice won't just come to you right away, your brain will have to retain x amount of ideas, which will take at least x amount of years. And maybe that person will say, there's no way I'd spend my time doing x amount of exercises, so it's not a good idea for me to try to become a GM.
Apr 27, 2016
0
#233
I'm sure we all have a similar story. When I was rated around 1500, for a time I wondered if I could ever improve. I did tactics and played games and read some books. I had a 2100 player helping me analyze some of my tournament games, but none of it seemed to help.
Then things start to click, and what used to seem incomprehensible suddenly seemed so simple. I had this conversation with the 2100 guy about a month later and I remember saying "I can't even remember how I used to play before I realized these things!" (I probably just calculated a lot until something looked good.)
Those moments are hard to bring about, both as a student and as an instructor. It's easy to say once you're 1500 that you can then you can work on 1600, then 1700, and so on up to 2700. But in reality those eureka moments don't always happen. People get stuck and it's not clear why that happens. You can do the "right" things, and still not improve.
Apr 27, 2016
0
#234
Elubas wrote:
It might be more accurate, if much more dreary, to look at chess improvement as just an extremely large amount of patterns. So for example, what it means to learn how to play a beautiful, "positional" piece sacrifice, really just means learning 100,000 semi-related chess patterns, that combine into a really good intuition.
The benefit to thinking of it in this way is that we can show someone, that a positional sacrifice won't just come to you right away, your brain will have to retain x amount of ideas, which will take at least x amount of years. And maybe that person will say, there's no way I'd spend my time doing x amount of exercises, so it's not a good idea for me to try to become a GM.
Ok, this is something concrete that's believable to me
Yeah. One of the awesome things sometimes about playing good chess is that your wisdom plays out kinda randomly. Like in one game, you might get a chance to use a little idea you learned 8 months ago, and in another game you'll use something completely different that you learned somewhere.
It's almost like it's a good idea to just learn a ton of random things about chess, and some way or another, they will help you win games. Whether tactics, strategy, blah, they're all intertwined and partially interchangeable anyway :)
In other words, maybe we don't need to organize our learning as much we think when it comes to chess. A GM plays an IQP position well not by mastering his IQP course, but by just applying his developed common sense to that particular situation.
the Theory that Interest is in fact intertwined with (and perhaps indicative of) potential mastery. I love it!
the point is not to ruin the vibe with unneccesary emotional limitations. this is like when I point out feeling bad I couldn't perform a given amount of visualization. Feeling bad about it he advised, will not help. determination, and routine practice- and the task Can be done.
Apr 27, 2016
0
#238
Elubas wrote:
It's kind of like a fallacy in which people would be uncomfortable if they had a million tries to execute a one in a million chance. It's really not that bad.
If it's random guessing, and each try is 1 in 1 million (i.e. their chances don't improve as they continue to guess)
Then if I remember how to do this, the chances they'll succeed are about 63% hehe. After about 4.6 million tires their chances improve to 99%
As a professional musician I must say there's nothing more overrated than practice :)
Apr 27, 2016
0
#240
Elubas seems to understand what I'm saying.
And although I'm by no means a "great artist (chess player)", with the exception of some kids who look up to me as a chess god lol, I do know masters and near master level players my age. They all have similar methods of studying, which I mentioned earlier.
Again: possible I'm looking at the wrong popn subset, but when I see stagnant class players, I almost always also see different study habits (usually involving a lot of theoretical study, followed with little application / practice).
"I dread to get involved with this discussion AGAIN, but ..."
Well, we value your contributions and the time you're taking to share your thoughts here, great patzer.