What's a Reasonable Goal for Middle Aged Novice?

I'm a novice/beginner in my mid to late 30's.  What a reasonable long-term goal to work towards as far as Elo rating?  If I play and study as a hobby for the next five years, what Elo rating should would be something attainable, yet a stretch to work towards?

Thanks!

Well, if impossible to predict, perhaps you can give me a range of what is typical?

  I prefer a quick death over a slow one

Rating and strength are not the same, but just aim to increase your rating to the next 100 points. 

As rating is volatile you might want to measure it in a variety of ways:

1). lowest rating was last year

2). highest rating achieved last year

3). average rating

etc.

Nick 

Work on the fundementals of Chess, Tactic training, Basic End game technique, and opening principals.

Do that and your rating will rise in a natural course.

"What's a Reasonable Goal for Middle Aged Novice?"

To make it to old age.

people are created equal... but some are more equal than others

You can aim for 1500 standard rating for the next few years. That's a reasonable goal.

(the following are OTB ratings, not website ratings)

We had a 70 year old beginner. After about 7 years he was 1300-1400. Not that he was studying a lot, but he bought Fritz, played in tournaments, watched some videos, etc. Oh, and played a lot.

Anyway, I like to think of 1600 as a good milestone. Heisman mentions it as a rating you can't achieve without consistent blunder checking (he calls it not playing hope chess: where you make a move and hope your opponent can't immediately win).

That's also the rating where I felt like I started to grasp long term-ish plans in almost all positions. The moves didn't feel so isolated anymore. Not that I always chose a good plan or anything like that, but at least I had a sense of it.

That doesn't mean 1600 is your limit... or that you wont quit before then. But if you want someone to throw out a number for you, that's what I'd pick. If you're a typical person (with a job and relationships to maintain) then I expect it to take at least a few years. Shorter term goals can be to add 100-200 points.

My $0.02

for sure expert- 2000.  I think thats quite ambitious for an adult learner.

but then again many are not naming ratings.  Just like the guy who was despairing cuz' we all thought he couldn't be a gm if he starts chess at 18... trying to improve in chess for ego sake is hopeless.

you have to do so much losing and difficult learning.

instead, real chess improvement starts when you make legitamite efforts to learn new skills- and long term rating goals take a backseat, to more immediate goals and productive goals.

learn a given endgamem,  master a set of tactic puzzles, work your way through an instrucive book,etc.

if you think about it- it hardly matters where you end up if you can do this, start winning against stronger opponents.  the sense of accomplishment is the motivation, not some guesstimate of what a strong chessplayer's rating is.

cuz for sure, when you get to x- strong chess players will always seem like x+100

And this is why I think nobody wants to give you a number...

you can always pull a betteroffsingle and be numero uno. Note that in his case, there is no question of success. I'm almost certain he's a bit older than you as well.

I somewhat fit your situation age-wise.

I started playing again about 8 years ago, after having played in HS. I had a provisional 2 game rating of 1250-ish. Quickly dropped down to the 1100's when I started playing tourneys.

Took me three years to really get inot a groove (had a real problem of playing too fast).  Finally broke 1400 at that time and just last year got to a peak rating of 1648. Have had a few poor performances and am at 1595 now.

I would like to think I can make it to 1800-ish in the next couple of years but who knows. I really need to play more tourneys and study more (and get a coach) 

1500-1700 USCF is a reasonably challenging goal if you don't play often.

test