Study vs. Play time?

I'm sorry, is that "yes", you agree, or "yes", you're confused?

Emphatic agreement, dampered by period instead of !

It's good to catch these blunders in post-comment analysis.

@jamesRook, read the two players articles here, Jemery Silman and  Natalia_Pogonina is just show you how hard is it just to get to the top.

Of course James is not too old to be a titled chess player.. He is 23 for crying out loud. He won't be magnus carlsen, but he can be damn good. Maybe in 5 years or less after sticking with chess (no quitting) and studying he could be titled. Also, for all of you who say you gotta be a GM to make money with chess. You're all wrong. Chess is a business. You can make money in lots of different ways like any other business. You don't even have to play chess to make money from it... It would help though if you had a passion for it...

Seems like jamesrook has given up on the chess dream

Too bad. I guess he’s about 32 now. Maybe he will return.  By now he might have kids and a career to juggle. I still have the unlikely dream of NM and I am also 32. It’s all about the journey. Inch by inch and when I have time...

It may  be still possible to become an IM, very unlikely to get GM someday, but you'll have to learn to disipline your mind, and for that you should study something else that intensely challenges your brain for a few months.

The reason is that chess is primarily a logic puzzle, but you need a challenge that works many parts of your brain's thinking ability. Especially important is the ability to memorize stuff.

Take certifications. There are lot's of things you need to get a state license for. Do a online self study course. The primary challenge is to memorize the manual for the certification. I mean REALLY memorize it. The secondary challenge is being able to use that knowlege to answer logic problems. A big thing in the certification exams is to have 2 seemingly correct answers out of the 4 to choose from. You will have to know the specifics of different laws in different sections of the manual to know which one of the two answers is correct for how the question was asked.

Yes, the exact wording of a question can stipulate which law correctly applies to the question. In one question, the only difference between the question pertaining to one law and not a different law was a single character in word in the question.

Specifically, they use legal terms, and if you misread biennually as biannually, you would be thinking once every 6 months instead of once every 24 months in the question.

No update from our boy James?

I came across this post today. Curious to know the outcome 10 years later.

If I saw the post 10 years ago I would agree with the age factor plays a big role in this thing. My son attended the state championship in 2019. There are 2 kids with GM title when they were 11 and 12. They told me that they started at age 4 and since then their life is full of chess. My son started at age of 4. But I doubt I will want him to go down this path as he would miss out many other great things in life. Everything comes with an opportunity cost. We have to face the reality.  

I think everybody at James age that time has a chance. Just a matter of age advances chance diminishes. These days this race starts from age 3-4.