the Polgar experiment actually disproves the hard work theory

All three of them are. Judit has one of the highest IQ's in the world (170 ish?). You think her sisters are floatin around with the rest of us at 120-130?

Well IQ as the basis of your argument is a bit iffy to me.

According to some website that can't hardly spell "IQ" no doubt.

Kasparov took a real IQ test.

He scored 135.

No, it was 135. The German magazine Der Speigal did a piece on it, don't be a smart ass.

At night he fights history professors while wearing spandex.

Something really hard, that's for sure... but not necessarily hard work.

ahahah pfren you kill it everytime

It's like singing almost everyone can do it but not everyone can become very good at it.

Training at chess has low to almost nil risk of injury, and can be done as much as anyone wants in a single day. Tennis or other more physical sports have high risk of injury for people who over train.

Because of this training plays a more important role in something like chess than tennis or any other physical sport, thus comparisons between them aren't very useful.

Also there isn't just one way to train in chess. There are thousands of training methods, and if you spend 10000 hours doing a very poor training plan you wont get anywhere close to master. So you need to train, but also train the right way. I am also of the opinion that having the right attitude and mindset can further improve the benefits of training. If one is focused and involved in their training, they will have better results than someone who is disinterested and just going through the motions of training.

Certainly, training will improve a player. 

But the Soviet experiment which trained millions of chess players from a very young age demonstrates the limits of training. The Soviet Union created far more GMs and IMs than any other nation, but that was still a very small number compared to the number of players who strove to become GMs. 

And, Soviet trainers knew that there were exceptionally talented players whose brilliance shone from very early on. Tal, Keres, Kasparov and others had a secret ingredient that hard work alone could not solve. There was something special about their ability that made them stand out. 

Yes, proper training is essential, but it's not sufficient by itself to produce a brilliant player such as Tal or Kasparov.

I think Rogue King would probably say that it's not really proper training just because a kid was put through the program. They probably had to have a certain attitude during the program. Which you could say is genetic or something... maybe, but in a very different way from just a high IQ or something. So anyway it seems like there is a lot of overlap.

Kasparov seems to sum that up pretty well when he said that you need high talent, but being able to work really hard is actually a big part of that talent!

"Tal, Keres, Kasparov and others had a secret ingredient that hard work alone could not solve."

Seems like just conjecture to me.

There's more to it than attitude and material. Obviously some people get better than others, even if they're not as serious.

Going back to the Polgars, they said it always came easiest to Sofia... the one who quit. Before she quit though, she was obviously doing more with less effort for her sisters to evaluate her like that.

I think many (most?) people who have gone though a skill building process like this have a sense for there being that "secret ingredient," whatever it is.

It's just a very complex issue. For example, it might be that what it means for it to "come easy" to a player is that they simply aren't as annoyed at looking at the complexities in the position. Which can make some sense, as you can look at chess complexities as either fascinating or depressing (since they require a lot of mental energy). But what that means is that if you change your attitude, you can start to appreciate a lot of those same complexities that someone else who says "it's easy" does.

In other words, a person to whom it comes easy may in fact already have the right attitude without even trying. Sofia maybe had the right attitude, but then decided that she would spend her time doing something else.

All of this is just a theory, but that's really anyone else has come up with anyway, which is sort of my point. How much we don't know about improvement so we try to simply make up an explanation that we can understand, even if the one we can't comprehend is actually the correct one.

"I think many (most?) people who have gone though a skill building process like this have a sense for there being that "secret ingredient," whatever it is."

I might be an exception though. Because I have actually started to think that it was simply an illusion when I thought certain chess concepts or skills were unlearnable or beyond my capacity -- which is largely what talent tends to describe when it's used, right? But now it's like, yeah, to increase my level of play, my blunder rate has to get extremely low... but now I'm simply willing to do it. Before I just wouldn't accept such a reality. But is that really getting smarter so much as a change in attitude?

"Obviously some people get better than others, even if they're not as serious."

In some sense it's hard to say how this could be false. But perhaps it's just so vague/general that it's not particularly useful?

Hmm... so for example, a person to whom it comes easy may have figured out the "efficient way" to get to, say, 1400 -- maybe he just looks at tactics and it works. Whereas another player does a very different approach, and for a while is behind this guy in rating. But then he gradually moves ahead of this 1400 guy while the 1400 doesn't change.

It might be tempting to say "the 1400 guy had more talent, and he would have gotten up higher if he worked as much as the other guy." But I'm not sure that's true given his approach to the game. His early 1400 rating in this case defines not his talent, but his approach to the game. Just because he got to 1400 earlier than the other guy, doesn't imply that he can cure this by simply more time put in, because more time spent doing his method might keep him at his plateau. It worked for him to get to 1400 quickly, but getting to an early start superficially is not a recipe for actually mastering the game. It's a gimmick.

...So basically what I just did there is I came up with a story in which the guy who got good early wasn't even necessarily more talented -- instead, he just had a way of thinking about the game that was good in the short term but terrible in the long term. Yet, when one talks about the game "coming easy" to a person, that 1400 would have been looked at that way. It was deceptive in this case. But it goes to show how hard it is to talk about this kind of open-ended stuff, where who knows how many plausible theories one could come up with.

So just for fun, I can propose an alternative explanation for a person getting good at something early: they simply found a better way of looking at the game than most others, and executed it. Sort of like, they discovered something, and took advantage of its secrets. (So note that this is not simply the hard work theory. I'm not saying that person put in more hours, but that the hours put in worked better because their approach to learning and understanding was better.)

That happens sometimes, doesn't it? You just get sort of epiphanies about a game and after that, things come faster. But these epiphanies happen at fairly random times and so are hard to control. Getting more of them might not mean you were more talented, but simply that you got lucky.

I don't know, just some stuff to throw out there. It's partially devil's advocate type stuff, but why not talk about it.

Yeah, that's my theory basically... but I don't say attitude or "they found a better way of looking at the game" I say the way they naturally process information, the things they naturally find exciting, happen to be the right things to get better at chess.

In the beginning maybe this is being excited about finding all the pieces your opponent attacks, and this person appears like a really talented beginner because they hardly ever hang pieces. It's not that they're disciplined, it's just that even when there's probably something better to do, they're looking for what cheap shots their opponent might have.

So lets go up to something like 2300. Of course I can't say how they play, but I assume those who get there much faster than others, do it because they have mental habits and preferences that happen to be useful for getting better at chess in general.

"Yeah, that's my theory basically... but I don't say attitude or "they found a better way of looking at the game""

The reason why I make that distinction is that it means that the "talent" a person has can be replicated the instant a person adapts that same way of looking at the game.

So for example, now I get interested in what I have missed, rather than frustrated. So in that sense I have acquired the same talent, the same disposition, as those who once had that over me. I know of course that people don't want to think of talent as something that can be acquired, but I'm saying that this is something that a person would call talent, because it's a mental habit or preference, yet that mental habit or preference might suddenly become present in you when it didn't before.

And then to explain why those guys are still higher rated than me? Simple. Because they worked under that disposition for longer than me. Perhaps we spent the same time on chess, but the time spent under that particular disposition was longer for them. 

Again, I don't know, there can be overlap. Is the fact that it took me longer to have such and such disposition a question of talent in itself?