When will I stop improving?

Ever since I picked up chess, it didn't take much for my playing strength to increase. All I had to do was play some games, watch some YouTube, and wait for a set amount of time... and then whoosh! I'm suddenly stronger by 100 elo points. I never even knew what it was that got better in my game ─ I just started beating opponents I struggled with previously and that's it. The improvement just... happened. And it still does! The only thing that changed from my beginner days is the amount of time that it takes for my rating to jump by 100 points ─ it used to take only a few days, then a week, then a couple of weeks, and now it takes about 1-2 months. But the process is exactly the same ─ I don't need to do much to get better.

The problem is, it can't go on like this forever. For example, I'm pretty sure there are no or close to no grandmasters who started playing chess as adults, and I started playing at age 20, which means that I will probably never get to grandmaster-strength. So my question to higher-rated players for whom this process of natural improvement has stopped is: when did it stop for you? When can I realistically expect it to stop for me? And once it has stopped, what will I have to do to get even better? Furthermore, what do you think the absolute upper bound is on when I will reach my equilibrium point, and what will it take to have a chance of reaching that upper bound?

For reference, at the time of posting, my rating is 2200 on chess.com, and I have never played rated OTB.

"That would simply make you pathological"

I guess that would also make my parents and brother ─ who literally taught me chess from scratch 3 years ago ─ pathological as well. But then again, seeing as you don't have much of a problem with making up hilariously implausible narratives (such as that I faked all of the hundreds of games that I played 3 years ago just so I could boast on the internet about how fast my progress was 2 years later) to justify your belief that my progress isn't legit, you'll probably just conclude that my entire family has a collective false memory or something like that lol.

"So your assertion that your rating "is still rising" is provably false."

It's provably true. For somebody who accused me of a deficiency in reading comprehension (which I promise you I don't have), this is pretty disappointing. I said very clearly that my ECF rating has been rising since I got my first non-provisional rating ─ not sure how you managed to miss that. I got my first non-provisional rating in November, and it was 1932. Since then, I have played 13 games over the course of 3 months; my rating rose in each of those 3 months and is now at 1956.

"So, why did I estimate your strength to be ~1500-1800?  Simple:  I was giving you the benefit of the doubt that you are just doing nefarious things online and that you actually have some basic skills."

Oh, so to answer my question of how you think my rating is 1950 and rising after 23 games despite being 1500-1800-strength, I just got, and continue to get, lucky 23 times in a row. Got it. In your defence, even this scenario is probably more plausible than your explanation for my early games on my maxkho account.

"Your tactical skills are terrible (I have seen 1200s with better tactical vision!).  Your openings are horrible.  Your endgames are bad.  Your time management is decent.  So where are you scoring, you might ask?  Well, that is what is interesting:  your advantage capitalization score is off the charts (higher than that of Magnus, Hikaru, and Fabiano)."

It's amazing what confirmation bias can do to a person. Do you not even consider the possibility that I'm not a cheater? And if so, do you realise how ridiculous this reads? I don't have a better advantage capitalisation score higher than the likes of Magnus and Hikaru lol, and my tactical skills are far better than those of every 1200 on Earth. Sure, tactics are a minor weakness of mine, and resourcefulness/conversion are major strengths, but nowhere near to the extent them you're making them out to be. My tactics are at the level of a Lichess 2200, not a 1200, and my conversion/resourcefulness are at the level of a Lichess 2700, not a 3100. And my endgames aren't bad at all; I don't where you got that from. I'm a better endgame player than the average 2400.

"So, how is it someone who misses simple tactics left and right in the opening and early middlegame can suddenly find extremely difficult resources and close out games with almost perfect technique?"

That's literally just blitz. Watch Eric Rosen's games, for example ─ they follow a very similar pattern: he'll hang a rook and miss basic tactics, but then proceed to win an endgame down a clean pawn by methodically squeezing water out of stone. 

"LOL.  Again, that is not how their process works.  Then communicate via email on those appeals."

So you think I lied about submitting an appeal to them? Lol, what a weird thing to lie about. No, that's exactly how the process works, and no, they don't send emails. Here is their appeals page. 

"They were saying "we understand you dispute this, but we stand by our analysis that you cheated."

No, they pretty explicitly said that there is "no way to determine" if I actually cheated or not. When I asked them how they could ban me without any evidence that I cheated, they didn't deny that they didn't have any evidence; they just said, "we are sorry but this account cannot be unmarked... this account is definitely lost but we will let you make another (final) account where you can play rated games".

"That was the lead researcher for the study explaining why they were doing the study, not his conclusion."

And I obviously never claimed it was their conclusion. That you thought I did is a poor display of reading comprehension on your part, not mine. That quote was their summary of the available literature at the time; once again, a single highly specific paper, which only focuses on brain activity and not learning speed, isn't going to invalidate that summary.

"You have to train your brain to recognize (memorize) the patterns so you see them instantly.  That takes time - and there is no crossover from math, music, or language for that."

There is definitely a crossover; it's just that the crossover takes the form of tools, not wares, so to speak. That's why somebody who has previously learnt a language will also pick up new languages faster, even if they are completely unrelated to any languages they already know: they will have built a general mental framework for the process of learning languages which will enable them to learn any language more efficiently ─ they will know what the general difficulties are and how to overcome them, what aspects of language learning to prioritise, etc. An even more general framework for intuition-building also gets established by activities such as learning a language or an instrument, and it can definitely also be applied to chess. In fact, that's pretty much the backbone of my coaching approach ─ applying the intuition-building framework that I've built over the years to my students' chess. I teach my students exactly what their intuition should entail, how to develop it, and how to solidify it. Since my framework is extremely effective, and is the predominant reason that I have been able to progress in areas such as chess, maths/statistics/data science, languages, and even sports such as tennis extremely fast, my coaching also happens to be very effective.

"As the saying goes, if something is too good to be true..."

That was the reasoning that chess.com used when they banned young Alireza for cheating. We all know how that turned out...

I played OTB only for years. I remember once in a tournament there was a new player, he just came out of the army and I don't think he'd really studied chess for more than a few months and he beat me. It was a close game, I probably underestimated him. I was a good player, maybe playing a bit below my best but the thing was, he continued to improve. And to improve very fast. Probably went up to about 2300 FIDE, like a rocket. And then, it seems, he died. I don't remember what happened to him and unfortunately, just at the moment I can't remember his name. He was a very unusual case. It may well be that you are ... well, I can tell by the way you write English that you're intelligent. I can tell by the way you have got into arguments with people here that there's something about you which must put some people on the defensive. That would explain what's happening here.

There's no reason why you shouldn't continue to improve. I don't need to know the truth in order to answer a simple question like yours and in my opinion, the answer is that it is perfectly possible that you will continue to improve to about 230 Old BCF, which is about 2450 FIDE. To get an IM title you have to play OTB and that's an entirely different kettle of fish. You may not be able to do it and maybe you will. I think you if you continue to improve the way you are, you should reach the verge of IM status. Then you might encounter resistance.

Courtesy of voice typing.

Thank you for not going along with the mob and actually answering my question! Your input is highly appreciated.

I agree with you that I regrettably have a pretty argumentative personality; even genuine questions or innocuous comments that I make often seem like arguments. In this case, though, I think one guy (PawnTsuanami) accused me of cheating and lying and everybody else just followed along ─ I think that because virtually nobody in the 200+ comment thread accused me of cheating before his comment.

I've actually talked to a friend of mine who has played chess ever since he was a kid, and he also expressed a similar sentiment: he thought I could make IM at some point in the future, but said it would be hard to progress from there unless I started trained full-time. Of course, even IM would be wildly impressive and it's still a very optimistic prediction! So I guess your username checks out!

Thank you for not going along with the mob and actually answering my question! Your input is highly appreciated.

I agree with you that I regrettably have a pretty argumentative personality; even genuine questions or innocuous comments that I make often seem like arguments. In this case, though, I think one guy (PawnTsuanami) accused me of cheating and lying and everybody else just followed along ─ I think that because virtually nobody in the 200+ comment thread accused me of cheating before his comment.

I've actually talked to a friend of mine who has played chess ever since he was a kid, and he also expressed a similar sentiment: he thought I could make IM at some point in the future, but said it would be hard to progress from there unless I started trained full-time. Of course, even IM would be wildly impressive and it's still a very optimistic prediction! So I guess your username checks out!

Make a new account. Your lies should be--" An OCD that has 100 chess books and studies chess 10 hours a day". It will be believable. Trust me. Your claims that never had a deliberate study of chess will get you burned all the time.

@PawnTsunami Can you message Michael Adams, and GM David Howell. Inform them there is a United Kingdom's new discovery.  

Someone once said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." There is a lot of the former, and none of the latter coming from Max.

The thing is, I know what he's talking about because to some extent I've experienced it. I took up chess age 36 and was a busy person at the time. Ten years in, one day I might be playing blitz and not seeing anything. Another week I might work out a positional pawn sac in an opening I hadn't played before, over the board or play an endgame otb with the precision of a GM. Rating depends completely on consistency and not on peak performance. Quality of play often depends on having perfect mental clarity which lasts the entire game. Making good arguments here also depends on mental clarity. Very often, those without mental clarity don't understand the arguments of others if they're a tiny bit complex. I assume that's your problem.

There's no reason why you shouldn't continue to improve. I don't need to know the truth in order to answer a simple question like yours and in my opinion, the answer is that it is perfectly possible that you will continue to improve to about 230 Old BCF, which is about 2450 FIDE. 

😂 Yep, lack of intelligence and mental clarity is my problem here 🙄

I get that you are trying to pick a fight to make it all about you, but try elsewhere.