Excellent topic and superbly written chuddog!
Top-secret method for chess improvement that THEY don't want you to know about!
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Jul 11, 2017
0
#63
VladimirHerceg91 wrote:
I'm just a bit confused about your title. How is it that you're rated over 2400, but have only been awarded the FM title. At that rating shouldn't you be an IM or a WGM?
You need norms for the titles not only the rating, that's why it's so much harder
Jul 11, 2017
0
#64
chuddog wrote:
dpnorman wrote:
This is good advice. However, the OP was, according to his own profile, 9th grade national champion and a top scholastic player as a kid. It would be a little more convincing to hear this advice from someone who wasn't a prodigy, who mastered the craft as an adult.
But I like his message and I don't dispute that Chuddog worked very, very hard to improve. The posts about openings, quick fixes, blitz, etc, on these forums, as he points out, probably never helped anyone improve.
I did work hard. I don't dispute that talent is a real thing, but the effort you put in gets you further.
As it happens, I was mostly away from chess for a number of years and have gotten back into it recently, in my 30s. So now I am an adult trying to improve. Here is an image of my USCF rating graph over time. Notice the long period of stagnation and decline, followed by improvement starting ~2011 and especially starting in 2016. Do you know how hard it is to gain 60-70 rating points around the 2400 level? Last year I also had my first OTB tournament win with black over a grandmaster.
I've also started focusing more on chess writing and am working on that too. In 2016 one of my articles in Chess Horizons was nominated for a Chess Journalists of America award.
So I think I practice what I preach.
Somehow I missed this excellent post the first time around.
i loved the tone and humor of the first post in this thread, but this one goes into detail a bit more and addresses the need for both talent and work.
Nice post, chuddog. Laziness is commonplace these days and not just in chess. Everyone wants shortcuts and while there are effective training regimens for every level of player out there, there are no shortcuts. Nice to see a titled player make a post like that here where the forums are so clogged with ignorance from beginning players. Cheers
Pulpofeira wrote:
All titled players hate him!
VladimirHerceg91 wrote:
I'm just a bit confused about your title. How is it that you're rated over 2400, but have only been awarded the FM title. At that rating shouldn't you be an IM or a WGM?
WGM might be a little tough, as i am a man. 
Regarding IM, others have answered it well and explained about norms. Norm tournaments are hard to come by, and were even more so when I was a scholastic player and didn't have a "real life" to take care of, only school and chess, and played a lot more.
An example: in the 1997 Chicago Open, I got 4.5/7, with 2.5/5 against 4 GMs and 1 IM and two wins against masters. I would say that's an IM-level performance. But, the tournament didn't have norms, so I didn't get one.
Jul 11, 2017
0
#69
Perfectly written chuddog!!!
But, although (or maybe because) you have disclosed this secret, there won't be more people
that will improve.
And don't forget to see your friends, listen to music and have a "real life" - 'cause you only live once.
DjonniDerevnja wrote:
mickynj wrote:
PaullHutchh wrote:
It's like with anything you try and get good at. It just takes time.
You mean that with sufficient time I will a) Pitch a perfect game. b) solve Fermat's Theorem, c) Play the Beethoven Violin Concerto, and d) Become a chess master. What a relief! I was afraid that these accomplishments might require talent, but now I know it's just a matter of time!
Talent is needed, or else its impossible to get enough time. Most of the kids that starts competing in otb-chess are very talented, I guess most of them are top five in mathematics in their school-class. They know they have talent, and therefore they have the confidence to step into chess-competing and believing they can do it well.
Maybe a talent can learn one lesson in an hour, while a normal person needs three hours. That talent can make IM in ten years, while 30 years is not enough for the normal, because the learningcapasity slows down when getting older.
From what I see, the better you are at math, the WORSE you are at chess. I'm decent at math, but i'm relatively good at chess(I say relatively because i'm 12 and probably have different standards then the people reading this.). Anybody else see that or is it just me?
chuddog wrote:
VladimirHerceg91 wrote:
I'm just a bit confused about your title. How is it that you're rated over 2400, but have only been awarded the FM title. At that rating shouldn't you be an IM or a WGM?
WGM might be a little tough, as i am a man. Regarding IM, others have answered it well and explained about norms. Norm tournaments are hard to come by, and were even more so when I was a scholastic player and didn't have a "real life" to take care of, only school and chess, and played a lot more.
An example: in the 1997 Chicago Open, I got 4.5/7, with 2.5/5 against 4 GMs and 1 IM and two wins against masters. I would say that's an IM-level performance. But, the tournament didn't have norms, so I didn't get one.
If you come to Oslo the 29. September I by you a beer. Oslo Chess Festival already has 12 GMs on the startlist. If you play fantastic, I guess you will have a norm, but I am not sure. Its an open Swiss and you can end up playing many games against very good untitled players. Unfortunately I can not play this year, but I will hang around some days, http://turneringsservice.sjakklubb.no/enrolled.aspx?TID=OsloChessFestival2017-NordstrandSjakklubb In this tournament in 2016 Tor Fredrik Kaasen collected an IM-norm.
BobbyTalparov wrote:
Falconshot33 wrote:
From what I see, the better you are at math, the WORSE you are at chess. I'm decent at math, but i'm relatively good at chess(I say relatively because i'm 12 and probably have different standards then the people reading this.). Anybody else see that or is it just me?
Emanuel Lasker would disagree with you here.
I also think that world champion Max Euwe and GM John Nunn were/are good at math. I am also impressed by the calculating skills of the kids Amelia Nordquelle and Isak Sjøberg. GM Torbjørn Ringdal Hanssen tries to calculate one move further than his opponent. Chess is a calculating competition. A mathematic game.
Every goal in life can be accomplish if we are determine to persevere until we reach it, the problem is most people lack work ethic to accomplish their goals; and that include chess.
Jul 11, 2017
0
#75
whats the procedure to get a week free Diamond
membership as a referal?
president_max wrote:
I just wonder - what happens when chuddog meets stupidgm?
We've commented on each other's posts (not favorably). Since he only talks and doesn't play, I'm not going to meet him in person at a chess tournament. And it's not like I'm going to run into him at the grocery store or anything.
Jul 12, 2017
0
#77
chuddog wrote:
president_max wrote:
I just wonder - what happens when chuddog meets stupidgm?
We've commented on each other's posts (not favorably). Since he only talks and doesn't play, I'm not going to meet him in person at a chess tournament. And it's not like I'm going to run into him at the grocery store or anything.
Well just in case, from now on, I'm ordering groceries online ...
^ best post ever ^
"... Now I must justify myself because I never considered in detail, either in writing or in our conversations, Emanuel Lasker’s critical essay on the theory of relativity. It is indeed necessary for me to say something about it here because even in his biography, which is focused on the purely human aspects, the passage which discusses the essay contains something resembling a slight reproach. Lasker’s keen analytical mind had immediately clearly recognized that the central point of the whole question is that the velocity of light (in a vacuum) is a constant. It was evident to him that, if this constancy were admitted, the relative of time could not be avoided. So what was there to do? He tried to do what Alexnder, whom historians have dubbed 'the Great,' did when he cut the Gordian knot. Lasker’s attempted solution was based on the following idea: 'Nobody has any immediate knowledge of how quickly light is transmitted in a complete vacuum, for even in interstellar space there is always a minimal quantity of matter present under all circumstances and what holds there is even more applicable to the most complete vacuum created by man to the best of his ability. Therefore, who has the right to deny that its velocity in a really complete vacuum is infinite?'
To answer this argument can be expressed as follows: 'It is, to be sure, true that nobody has experimental knowledge of how light is transmitted in a complete vacuum. But it is as good as impossible to formulate a reasonable theory of light according to which the velocity of light is affected by minimal traces of matter which is very significant but at the same time virtually independent of their density.' Before such a theory, which moreover, must harmonize with the known phenomena of optics in an almost complete vacuum, can be set up, it seems that every physicist must wait for the solution of the above-mentioned Gordian knot – if he is not satisfied with the present solution. Moral: a strong mind cannot take place of delicate fingers.
But I liked Lasker’s immovable independence, a rare human attribute, in which respect almost all, including intelligent people, are mediocrities. And so I let matters stand that way. ..." - Albert Einstein (1952)
http://www.chessmaniac.com/albert-einstein-and-chess/
It's like with anything you try and get good at. It just takes time.
You mean that with sufficient time I will a) Pitch a perfect game. b) solve Fermat's Theorem, c) Play the Beethoven Violin Concerto, and d) Become a chess master. What a relief! I was afraid that these accomplishments might require talent, but now I know it's just a matter of time!
Talent is needed, or else its impossible to get enough time. Most of the kids that starts competing in otb-chess are very talented, I guess most of them are top five in mathematics in their school-class. They know they have talent, and therefore they have the confidence to step into chess-competing and believing they can do it well.
Maybe a talent can learn one lesson in an hour, while a normal person needs three hours. That talent can make IM in ten years, while 30 years is not enough for the normal, because the learningcapasity slows down when getting older.