Secret of Studying Style of B.Fischer

Could you say that a little louder?

Kasparov sells a shirt on his website that says Hard Work is Talent.

I don't see how people can post anecdotal evidence that they got better at something like playing the French by hard work and therefore there is no talent for someone like Fischer who had by far the largest rating gap between first and second on the rating list.

He worked hard all the time from a young age and that hard work led him to become the youngest GM the world had ever seen.  However, that didn't make him World Champion.  The fact that he was extremely talented coupled with the hard work did.

But perhaps that Talent was the ability to work hard.

"The fact that he was extremely talented coupled with the hard work did."

This is simply an assumption. It's like saying "yeah, he worked hard... he probably had something else though," and yet it's not clear why we should think there was anything else at all. I do think it's plausible that you could become a GM simply by focusing a disproportionate amount of energy to it, as long as the work is smart as well as hard.

And of course that doesn't have proof either, although I have seen pretty good correlation with that stuff. But certainly, just stating an assumption isn't going to settle anything.

@ Elubas
I don't know how "smart" a 10 year old has worked to become master for example.  Either we're all working very poorly, or there is something that aids learning that is biological in nature, and can't be changed by conscious effort.

Maybe Elubas, you work incredibly hard to learn things.  For me, sometimes I can see an idea (in chess or college) and it just "clicks" and makes sense.  Yes I have to read and work exercises to supplement that "click" moment, but the benefits of all the learning subsequent to it is greatly enhanced vs those times when I'm just confused.  Otherwise it may take 6 months with the material to have that "ah-hah" moment, afterwhich bad habbits / misconceptions may need to be corrected before further learning takes place.  Meanwhile the guy who it clicked for has gotten there in 2 weeks, and has had the benefit of 5 and a half months worth of "ah-hah" moments ahead of you.

En extreme example maybe, and for the sake of argument.

My POV fits so nicely with my personal experience that I think you're ignoring the details of how you learn.  But being that it's my POV judged off of my experience there's certainly room for bias

That's my impression though.

wafflemaster:

In my experience, I have sometimes had things "click" (in chess as well as in other areas) only after many, many years...

I used to work for a chess company where ther owner is an IM. I once said to him that I don't have talent for chess. He said: "But you have a talent for WORKING!"

The same IM told me that when he earned his IM title in the early-mid 1990s, he made 7 IM norms in the time period before FIDE conferred his title (since the FIDE congresses are held only a few times a year). I was amazed at this achievement. He told me: "Once you have the knowledge, it just goes and goes."

Exactly.  The more you know, the more you're able to learn I believe.

If an IM seems to claim that his achievements are due to hard work, he must think everyone else terribly lazy.  People like this and Elubas don't seem stupid otherwise, so I'm probably not understanding their POV.

"Either we're all working very poorly,"

Perhaps this is obnoxious, but I actually take this part rather seriously.

Wafflemaster, I agree that some people learn things more easily than others; my point is that hard work has a higher weight. I have given this example before, so I will do so again so you can understand my POV:

Let's say a chess player can be judged with (unequal) criteria of talent, and ability to work in the best way possible (which of course could in itself be argued to be talent, but we won't do that for the purposes of this example), on a scale of 1 to 5.

If Player A has a 5 in talent, 5 in hard work, and Player B has a 4 in talent, and a 5 in hard work, I say Player A wins out, despite the fact that both study equally well.

So you see, I am not giving talent a value of 0 here. However:

If Player A instead had a 5 in talent, and a 4.5 in hard work, whereas Player B had a 2 in talent (he had a "late start"; perhaps he was not one of those four year olds with a 2000 rating) and a 5 in hard work, I give the long run edge to Player B.

Obviously these numbers are just an example; what I am saying here is that talent can largely be compensated by smart, hard work, even though talent must exist.

I will give you an example in my case: I know kids who were younger than me, and had a higher rating than me; they were perhaps prodigies of some sort. I would wonder what their reasoning is behind a move, and they would be like "obviously this fails to bla bla bla"... I would ask, "but did you check this line?" Generally they would still turn out to be right, but they often didn't check "that line." I think I inquired more than they did, despite being a weaker player even at an older age.

I have a feeling that, though I may have had some disadvantage that gave me a lesser start than these kids (one in particular), my superior maturity to learning the game probably gave me a long term advantage. That kid has plateaued at 1800 while I continue soaring on into the mid 1900s. Sure, that kid doesn't have the same passion for chess these days, although that's sort of the point -- once things stopped coming easily to him, he just stopped. I on the other hand have refused to let that stifle my progress; it seems like slow and steady won this race.

Now if that kid worked as hard as me, as maturely as me, yes, he would be stronger than me. The point is, it takes a certain kind of person to do that. In fact, perhaps I was actually the one with the better "talent," indeed the talent or attitude of being able to look at what one doesn't know and embrace it. I don't think this can be determined simply based on IQ tests or memory tests or how they do at chess when they are five. I think that's too superficial of a way to look at chess talent.

Again, none of this is proven and rather biased due to personal experience; but perhaps you didn't believe my POV went quite like this. For example, I don't deny the existence of talent, but instead question its significance in the long run.

My apologies because I know we've been over this before, but I coudln't remember your specific reasoning.

I'll agree for similar "talent scores" (so to speak from your post) that work is what matters.  But I think there are larger categories of people for which hard work will not cross boarders.  I don't know your age, but I'm sure there are titled players years younger than you.  If they quit studying today will you surpass them?  It's not impossible, you may, but I hope you see my point.  There must exist individuals who you cannot surpass even if they stopped working today.

A problem with your example is that you don't take into account what happened before college. It's quite plausible that they both have totally different backgrounds in whatever subject it may be. So in fact, when I conceded to this example, perhaps I didn't have to. However, for the purposes of argument, we can assume that your example does indicate talent.

This was sort of my point. Just because someone got better than me at a younger age doesn't mean their approach to chess is necessarily more sound than mine; there are a number of possible reasons for that fact. It could be because of a better coach; or perhaps they do have some sort of "eidetic memory" that I don't. But in the long run, maybe my approach to the game will allow me to steadily move above them, while they plateau -- that's what happened in the case of my example.

This is all theoretical -- I probably wouldn't move ahead of them in reality; I'm just saying that being better than someone at a younger age doesn't prove that they are overall the better player, because those young players might have bad habits for example that haven't yet caught up to them.

The more I argue this, the more I take seriously the idea that everything is talent, but with "capacity for hard work" being one possible component of it.

"There must exist individuals who you cannot surpass even if they stopped working today."

Most likely, although I wouldn't be 100% sure. More like 99.9999% sure or something of this nature. But then again we are probably only 99.99999999999999999999% sure about gravity

I think hard work matters a lot.  It's just there are these exceptional cases where you get people who work less than you (or me) and achieve more... sometimes much much more.

So in practical living terms, I would probably agree with your original point, that as long as you focused on hard work and smart work, that you're guaranteed success, certainly above average.  I would just add one caveat, that the best can very well be someone who has worked less, sometimes much much less.

Anyway, seems like we agree on most of this :)

As I said in my talent hard work scales, if a great talent can get a 5 in both categories, then he is indeed untouchable. However, it's not clear if that would ever happen.

Maybe Carlsen has a 5.1(!) in talent and a 4.92 in hard work; perhaps some guy of the future will score a 4.999 in hard work despite his non eidetic memory (we'll give this guy a mere 4 in talent) and then everyone will be shocked when this "idiot" takes over the WCC! To be fair, Carlsen would probably be like 50 at that point...

Anyway, we'll see where my theory takes my rating. I'll come back to you in 20 years and report my results!

And what's kind of eerie... that last sentence of mine is rather reminiscent of the Polgar experiment...

But yeah, maybe we do just agree for the most part. What I often don't like is when someone only uses indications like "he was good at a young age." Like I have said, I think that, while it's an ok piece of evidence in itself, that it's rather superficial to base a conclusion solely on something like that, because there are so many other factors at play.

Maybe that's what I'm really arguing against. It reminds me of like a coach (could be for chess, maybe other things) who assumes you won't make it all the way because of a slow start (and thus doesn't want to "waste his time" with you), when in fact there might be long term attitudes that might actually favor the slow starter instead of the fast starter, but simply weren't visible from the start. Not every facet of talent is necessarily visible from the start.

I can agree with that.

I'm naturally coming in late to this thread, and I have no interest in reading every single post, but as a long-time teacher and a lifelong student--of chess, literature, piano, and other hobbies--I have an issue with separating talent and hard work. To me, the ability to work hard IS a talent.

As an English teacher, I had to read literally thousands of essays and term papers over the years. For 34 years I had to carefully parcel out my time--an hour here and an hour there--to get them all done in a reasonabl time frame. I marvelled at my colleagues who said they had done a marathon session of six hours or more in the evening or on a weekend. I could NEVER have accdomplished such a feat, and I still can't. I have seen students who, when asked to read silently for 15 minutes, immediately plunged into their books and disappeared, genuinely surprised when that 15 minutes went by like 30 seconds. Others in the class, though, could manage maybe one or two minutes before collapsing in a frenzy of nervous energy.

So maybe Bobby's focus and dedication and hard work were not merely the results of a phenomenal will. Maybe they in large part WERE his talent. Without the ability to sit for 10 or 12 hours at a time, focused like a laser beam, Bobby wouldn't have gotten where he did. Nor would Horowitz, Yo Yo Ma, Judit Polgar, or many others at the very top of any field.

Bobby was the greatest chessplayer that ever was and ever will be. And he was the greatest man of courage and true grit that ever was or ever will be.

MSteen: Yes, I have considered just molding hard work ability into talent -- it's not clear why there should be a distinction between the two terms. Talent may contain a variety of things, but hard work may as well be one of those things, as it may well be something that some people "just have," and others "just don't."