the Polgar experiment actually disproves the hard work theory

i have often seen people say the whole Polgar experiment that their father did, is proof that chess is mainly "hard work" over "natural talent"

but that's not the case...Judit became the stronger player, no disrespect to Susan, but again  Judit was stronger so that actually disproves the whole goal of the experiment if you think about it

maybe judit worked harder?

Just because one sister is stronger than the other two does not "disprove" the theory. It only shows that "among 3 people, you can always pick the strongest at chess". This is completely normal, in the same way you can say "among 3 girls, there will be one that is most pretty".

As for the "theory", well I believe originally it's supposed to be about "intense education & hard work". The result is spectacular, in the sense that *all* 3 sister developed into exceptional chess players, way above their peer. It's the "way above their peer" part that proves the theory, not the part that says "they must be equal to each other and beat men too".

The father skewed the results from the start. He was an avid chess player and brilliant scientist and he selected a spouse who was similarly brilliant, and dedicated to the same cause. 

The Polgar sisters are an excellent case of nature and nurture combining to create three world-class chess players.

Both of them are in the top 10 all-time women list.

Let us assume that a kid is trained in Math or Computer Science from a very young age in this style - the kid should (most likely) able to make it to the top 0.001 percentile. That is good enough.

work smarter, not harder. :)

The Polgar experiment neither proves nor disproves the hard work theory. The sample size is far too small; also, we know nothing about similarly obsessed fathers and industrious daughters who never amounted to a hill of beans.

Which is the basic problem with the hard work theory - to back it up, you need to show that, say, the majority of piano students who put in 10,000 hours become concert pianists. The most I've seen actually demonstrated is that the majority of concert pianists were students who put in 10,000 hours. That proves something quite different: "if you want to make it, you must put the hours in", and not "if you put the hours in, you will make it".

Both Zsuzsanna (Susan) and Zsófia (Sofia) were in the top 10.
Susan has a peak rating of 2577, and Sofia has a peak of 2505.
Kind of pointless to argue about who is better when they both reached heights that only a couple hundred could in the whole world (including all male players as well).

"That proves something quite different: "if you want to make it, you must put the hours in""

True, but even that says a lot.

 Polgár's experiment wasn't entirely about chess and/or making top players. It could have been anything else, as well.
But do you really belive that all three girls would have become top players of their time, if there was no experiment at all, if they only had their natural talents and nothing else?

I don't think so.
All the girls speak multiple languages, for example, fluently, so much so that they publish papers in multiple languages, written books in them, and two of them even lives outside Hungary and make their living there.
This also puts them in the who-knows-how-small-percentage of people who do this.

Studying languages was also part of the experiment.
Do you think they'd have just picked those up as well by natural talent?
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There are some gray area in Polgár's experiment, and some things we will never know.
But he was right. He actually proved that he could raise geniuses.
Sure, some say that there is no definite answer and that all the girls had natural talents, but then again, can you name any other siblings that excelled and dominated in the same field as much as these girls, all becoming top players of the whole world?

That there is a system behind all this is pretty obvious.

Three masters out of three kids? I would say that is pretty impressive. Rather unlikely that all three of them were born as geniuses.

The real problem with the 'hard work' theory is that in certain fields like chess 10 000 hours of work as a kid is not the same like 10 000 hours as an adult. 10 000 hours starting at the age of 5 = maybe IM. 10 000 hours starting at 30 = maybe 2100 FIDE.

It's not necessarily unlikely that out of the whole world this might happen somewhere, sometime. It's quite extraordinary, yet our world is quite large and can "fit" a certain amount of such unlikely occurrences. I'm not totally sure which factor is stronger, here.

There is a name for this - it's something to do with the idea that we would not be talking about this in the first place unless Polgar senior had been successful.

Again, we don't have statistics about the hordes of pushy chess parents and their disappointed offspring to compare with Polgar and his daughters. Do they not exist, did they flat-out not try hard enough, or did they find that despite their best efforts they couldn't get there?

That might be right.I am sure there are a lot of kids without any talent, or without adequate training who never become strong players.

However, if talent were the decisive factor, it would be more likely that Susan would reach maybe 2200, Sofia 1700, and Judit 2700. The fact that ALL of them managed to break 2500 means that either all of them are born geniuses (which is statistically pretty unlikely), or that other factors are more important than talent.

Survival bias.

As far as I know, the ultimate goal of father's Polgar experiment was to create a world champion in chess regardless of gender. He wasn't far away from it but nevertheless he failed

Does it mean Nigel Short is right about women in chess?

in my opinion chess ability relies 95% on how much and how well you train yourself. training is very hard though, not many do it very seriously or consistently. Quite a few strong players just stop after a certain point even if they were focused and consistent for a few years. In a sense chess improvement is exponential, the more you learn the easier it is to learn new things. If you are putting in the work and getting ahead of others in this area it's hard to catch up.

Just two examples, but in tennis Serena Willams is stronger than Venus, and Judit is stronger than her sisters. The youngest became the strongest both times. 

Givem something to play with.