The Polgar approach to chess mastery

Blah blah blah, stop trying to twist other peoples words in an attempt to appear superior to someone else on a forum. It's lame.

Doesn't the story go that their father wanted to see if chess masters could be "made" provided that they started at an early age with appropriate training. His conclusion was that yes chess masters can be "made".

So far this has been proven time and time again by juniors who have no inherent talent for the game that then receive training and later become FMs, IMs, and occasionally GMs.

Master after just 1 year?! That's funny.

Chigorin, Rubinstein, Korchnoy started too late, by common senses!

Aren't you capable of comprehending what I am writing? I've told you what my initial argument meant repeatedly, and you still prefer to argue against one you have made up for yourself and attributed to me in order to argue against it. Are you stupid or just unwilling to concede a point in an internet argument? On reflection, is there a difference? Why continue to ignore the post I already repeated?

The reason the Polgar sisters all became masters is that their father pushed them from a young age. That does not lead to the conclusion that all people pushed from a young age will become masters, or that it is impossible to start later and reach master level.  As I already stated, that is possible, but it takes longer and maximum potential is lower.   And it does not mean their peak potential is unrelated to inherent cognitive ability as I have clearly and repeatedly stated for you to ignore. The only reason you could view these statements as mutually incompatible is if you lack basic logic skills.

Are you attempting to deny young children learn faster than adults, that a developing brain is more flexible than a developed one? I notice you cut the last part of my question to you, no doubt because an honest answer would force you to admit to agreeing with my assessment.

>>Can't masters be made from a later age with appropriate training?

Yes.

That has nothing to do with what Mr. Polgar was aiming to discover.

>>How many youngsters receive appropriate training and never attain master?

I have no idea. Though I would say it's not many. Every single one I have seen has atleast made Candidate Master.

I have made no such conclusion even remotely similar to the one you are claiming I have made. It's a poor assumption and you created it on your own.

Sure there are factors other than age that play a part in becoming a master, what does that have to do with anything?

Is it possible that if the polgar sisters were mentally retarded or brain damaged that they may not have become masters regardless of their training? Sure it is. So what?

One obvious problem with Mr. Polgar's "experiment" is that nobody can know whether or not the daughters were born geniuses other than by inference when he implies that they weren't. Maybe they were just the same and the method won't work with everyone. The so-called "limiting factor" you reference might just as easily be a difference in work ethic, interest or maybe just in IQ. The point is that unless you know that the girls weren't geniuses to begin with at chess it's impossible to say that genius isn't born. My experience is that people are born with intellectual gifts of greater and lesser degree. Some people with less of a gift might make up for their shortfall with hard work and training, but others may receive the same result with little to no effort.

I grew up in an era when strategists were viewed as the ultimate authority. Books on tactics were few and most of the middlegame books we had dealt with positional elements. Somehow a lot of players became masters anyway.

How did they do it? They played solid openings, were well-versed in both strategy and tactics, knew their endings and played over a lot of GM games from books and magazines…paper ones; there wasn’t any such thing as the Internet.

I never saw the glut of gambits and other assorted weird openings that are recommended today. It wasn’t until the early 60’s (I think it was) that US Senior Master Ken Smith started giving advice that if you were below 1800 your first, last and middle name should be "Tactics" and you should play gambits. But then of course Smith had his own publishing company and he authored and published a lot of those booklets.

As for the age factor, I don’t know. When I played in my first otb junior event I was, at 15, one of the youngest players. Players under 21 and over 2000 were rare. Most of my opponents, who were in their late teens, were 1800-1900. Not at all like you see in junior events today!

Noone attains mastery of chess with little or no effort, and the Polgar sisters never claimed to.  I think simple probability allows us to state with reasonable certainty that they were not born three 'chess geniuses' who just happened to be born to a father planning to push them along the path of their natural genius.  That stretches credulity well past breaking point.  I agree that work ethic/interest is another factor in limiting the peak achievement though, personal motivation along with cognitive capacity would be incorporated in the term innate ability.

Unless you know they aren't geniuses to begin with you can't say it's simply the hard work. The fact is that a lot of people have attempted the hard work from an early age and got nowhere near GM strength.  It's likely that it's not that great a stretch since they share genetics. Had they all been adopted from different natural parents I might agree with you.

I think you can get near the 2000 level without any opening theory (just natural opening technique). I think the opening side of things comes naturally once you are around 2000 and start to study openings after some 2200+ players start beating you with solid opening technique and theoretical lines.

There is the case of William James Sidis, the "made" super-genius.

His father was a Harvard Professor of Psychology, who decided to tutor his son intensively from an early age. While the father was obviously highly intelligent, he didn't lay any claims to genius himself. His son, however, is often cited as one of the most intelligent (in terms of IQ) people who has ever lived, with estimates around 250-300 IQ points.

He spoke many languages fluently from an early age, and gave a lecture in four-dimensional bodies at Harvard when he was only twelve years old. Would he have been so intelligent had he not been trained so rigorously? As in the old debate between the influences of nature and nurture, I think we can say with some confidence that he would not have possessed such a wide-ranging intelligence and knowledge base without the intensive tuition and encouragement of his parents. This is not to say, however, that he didn't possess innately anything above 'normal' intelligence.

The same tension between nature and nurture applies here, in the case of the Polgar sisters, as well. Just as they may well have innately had a predisposition towards pattern-finding and matching, this alone would not have been likely to have allowed any of them to attain a GM-level of chess playing. So, if we take that to be true, then we must lend some credence and efficacy to their father's method of teaching (namely, a tactics-heavy method).

It is also generally held to be true that the human brain has a range of peak efficiency in forming new neural connections, and that after a certain age (around 20 years old, approximately), this capacity for connection-forming diminishes exponentially.

So, if you want your children to attain chess mastery (perhaps, let's not forget, at the cost of other learning, such as social skills, etc.), your best chances are to implement a rigorous and effective training regime from an early age. I'm 24 now, so my chances of reaching a high level of chess are much lower than if I'd started early, but they are not non-existent.

I’ve watched the likes of Reshevsky, Browne, Miles, Benko, Shamkovich et al analyze in the presence of IM’s and ordinary masters and those fellows just left the mere mortals scratching their heads.

I’ve seen IM’s struggling with analysis only to have a so called "weak" GM point out the right move in seconds. I’m convinced there’s more to it than just hard work and study. I don’t know what it is, but they seem to have an ability that’s unique to chess.

The Genius just born to be oneself! But most of them not find oneself, at all life of searching own ways!

 The family and good teachers can sharp and help to catch your tally-dream bird, or pull you down on own levels...

Greg

I've never actually heard of anyone having intensive lessons like the Polgar's did and failing to become good players, though it could of course happen, as I already said, if they lacked application or were retarded.  It remains a huge stretch to suggest the highly speculative genetic genius for chess that just happens to be born to a parent keen to push chess, and then to extend that to three non-identical siblings.  The Polgar's aren't the only example of a chess player being made by pushy parents.  You know one of the Polgar sisters 'only' made it to IM?

Indeed, it is the commonly held belief that with enough practice anyone (assuming no mental retardation) could make it to IM level. It takes a little extra to become one of the GMs of the world.

I guess, but I also think there are a lot of IMs that are much stonger than some of the GMs. Getting the GM title is a lot about having the opportunity to make GM norms, and some IMs live in places where it is hard to get that opportunity. There are some weak GMs out there for sure. And some REALLY strong IMs.

 The Chess School of M. Botvinnik baked a great students, including A. Karpov and Gary Kasparov!

Later Kasparov just kick out from School old M.Botvinnik, for not having Chess Coach Licence...

There is now also "Master your chess with judit polgar" which is the book form of the series of courses by Judit Polgar and Andras Toth on chessable.

It is a very good quality advanced beginner book would call it. I am quite an experience club player, maybe FIDE ~2000ish, but have found it very useful and helpful. Have been struggling with quite advanced books from Quality chess and elsewhere, and with my current lack of OTB for sometime, the direct attacking and other core/basic ideas are honestly more at my current ability level.

It also should be said that some of the material is by no means easy, for example explains Kasparov's Queen sac from a  '94 blitz game with Kramnik in the Petrosian Kings Indian.

#1
"where did their GM-level knowledge of positional play and openings come from?"
++ The Polgar family travelled from tournament to tournament, they played and analysed.
The Polgar sisters did not go to school, but their parents home-tutored them.
It is no coincidence that the younger sister went farthest and the elder sister least far.
They paved the way for each other.

This is factually incorrect, I think you are confusing Susan and Sophia.

The other thing is: the question was asked more than 13 years ago. Answering it now is bizarre.