Ratings progress minus coaching or lessons

How would we know? We've obviously been wrecked by reading books and taking lessons.

Why don't you tell us?

Ask a genuine question, get a snarky, deliberately point-,missing,non-answer. Well,we live and learn,I suppose.

It may be somewhat snarky but it comes about as the result of attempted thought about your question and is in no way a  deliberately point-missing non-answer.

Perhaps you hope to find some players raised by wolves to test your theory? Self-play may work for AlphaZero but humans aren't that quick.

The way you've worded it makes it a bit tricky. For example the first GMs in history didn't have coaches or lessons... but what they did wasn't exactly "observation trial and error" either. They seriously analyzed their own games and studied the games of others to get better.

Actually this touches on the deeper point of how players often unwittingly misrepresent the work they've done. One man's work is another man's leisure time. Many strong players tell similar stories of e.g. being bored in school all day, and they can't wait to get home and read some chess books, analyze a game, or go to a tournament. To them that wasn't putting in work, it was pure joy, and so they got to master level with "no work."

As for leveling the playing field, people often misunderstand chess as some kind of intellectual battle. It's not an intelligence test, it's a skill like anything else (think of arts, sports, languages, trades, etc). People are good because they've put in thousands of hours of study and practice. A few top GMs are probably geniuses, but most are otherwise normal people (who may have a talent for chess, but that's it).

A good candidate for smartest GM is John Nunn, however he's only a lower to average GM. A good candidate for best player in the history of chess is Kasparov, who took a real IQ test and scored 135 (respectable for sure, but not the 1 in a billion rarity you'd expect from his chess).

As you've more or less pointed out, a real test of innate ability can only happen in low level games between beginners or near-beginners. For everyone else their skill is a reflection of the work they've put in.

And actually, even though it's only a good test in low level games, chess at that level is a horrible test to begin with.

Winning or losing at a low level is almost purely due to observation. Someone who is more comfortable identifying which pieces are able to move to which squares will likely be the winner. Not a very impressive feat.

Not a bad answer, I just want to point out the OP's main activity here is daily chess, and 1400 daily is completely different from 1400 in other ratings -- a common point of confusion for new players.

It's a totally valid question and certainly doesn't deserve to be picked apart.

@redgirlz
Ok.

Plus it's hard to compare because just like when I said "work" is subjective so is coaching.

Someone may have never paid for a coach, or even known a coach... but if among their parents, siblings, friends, there's a master level player, who often gives tips and plays games with them, then they're going to learn a lot.

So some people who "never worked" and "never had a coach" are GM level. I'm not exaggerating. The trick is how you define the words.

I have tried to re-phrase the query,to make it clearer but end up just restating.All I was wondering was how high a rating someone as described-and I'm pretty sure there are plenty not"raised by wolves", myself included-might achieve-in other words,can you make a judgement, having read advice and taken lessons, where you think you would have got to if not the case.I assumed that would be possible,as I can say the little I have had,as opposed to 'learning on the job"I don't think would have made too much difference-but perhaps you think it's not possible to make that,if you like,educated guess?

Yes, it's hard to make an educated guess. You don't like long answers so I wont explain it except to say people can't "see" + or - 400 points from their rating. In other words to a GM rated 2600 everyone below 2200 plays equally as badly. So a master is nearly indistinguishable from a weak club player.

So to ask them to imagine how good they'd be without _____ is hard because they literally can't imagine being worse than 400 points of what they are now.

I can say that for me, if someone is 1300 chess.com blitz or 1300 OTB, then I assume they've studied something at some time.

Again his is tricky because you'll run into titled players like IMs who say they've never studied a day in their life.

But if you want a subjective, colloquial, and in the end not-so-useful answer, I'd say I draw the line at 1300. What that line is exactly I'd have to write a few paragraphs... but if you're just interested in a number I'll say 1300.

@llamanade @RedGirlZ Thank you for your considered answers-,I was in process of composing above reply to @notmtwain during your posts so resulting in out of sequence.

@llamanade As I said,out of sequence-I found your answer to be very good, comprehensive and informative- Two points- I play daily chess usually not much different from a normal (albeit untimed)'live' OTB game-i.e.,not taking all hours over each position-in addition,if I touch the piece ,I move it,if release then realise I've made even a game-losing blunder,I still hit 'confirm'(even though I'm aware my opponent is unlikely to be obeying the same self -imposed rules) -Do you mean 1300 is the 'line' you'd expect (accepting your stated caveats)an average -ability person to reach?

I think of 1300 as a sort of glass ceiling for someone who, lets say, plays after school with their friends for fun for years.

Lets say they've never met someone better than them, they don't play online, they don't have books or puzzles or whatever. They're competitive, so they try to win and try to fix their mistakes, but the only activity they do is play every day for a few years. They don't review their games or anything like that.

In my mind this person can't be 1300. So anyone 1300 or higher has done something more.

This is just from my POV.

hello everyone i've been playing chess here for almost 5 years no coaching only readings books that shared in our group and I have 8000+ games in blitz yet my rating in blitz is1600+ also in rapid... and I agree 1300 + rating will be considered good player... I see lot of 1100 - 1400 player kicking out their opponents that have 400 to 700 higher rating than them ... especially in live tournament and country to country live matches.. (anyway sorry for the grammar)

And this is partly because I have a family member who is smart, as in getting 99% on various standardized tests (and he's one of those people you can tell just by talking to him he's pretty sharp).

He had a non-standard childhood that I wont get into, but it resulted in him playing a lot of chess over many years without books or internet or any experienced players. He just played with his family a lot.

And after years of this I played him and he's at best 1200-ish.

He couldn't tell you what a fork is, or that it's important to develop in the opening, or what a back rank mate is. Just 100% on his own.

One thing you do certainly learn going from basically school-team experience to jumping in a global online chess pool,is how relatively good you are ,compared to what you might have thought.Having played mostly in, presumably, the most populated zone ((between 1100-1300) in the past few months,I cannot credit most of these players should be described,as I have seen,as 'dabblers,' or mere 'beginners'-,I appreciate what you say about how people cannot see more than +or- 400 rating points from their own -it can be humbling and somewhat discouraging;-but even GM's must get a bit of a cold shower to their ego's when they encounter say a Fischer.Kasparov,or Carlsen-as Einstein might have had it, it's all relative, isn't it?

Yeah, it's humbling. That's probably the first thing chess teaches you, to set aside your ego and try to learn something new today.

Every GM alive has lost thousands of games over many years. It's the only way to keep getting better.

Nowadays everyone who starts playing chess goes on YouTube to search for videos on how to play. It's pretty hard to find the ceiling of what people would achieve without any study when information is so freely available. 

To answer your question a good rating to achieve without any outside help would be 1800 to 2000,if you put in the amount of time that professional players put in.