Will I be able to reach Master level?

Put another way, I had a couple OTB performances that were +2400. I'm not a +2400 player. At my best, I was close to 2200 overall.

I'd have to check, but I think Caruana had a +3000 performance at Sinquefield a couple of years ago.

Cookie: Well, Fischer was a man of strong and often eccentric convictions.

My impression of Lasker was that he was a sly fox. He took a psychological approach and didn't expend more brain power than he had to win.

Lasker was also an accomplished mathematician who attracted the notice of David Hilbert, a giant of 20th century mathematics. He also wrote papers in philosophy.

Lasker was a serious, accomplished intellect -- not just in chess. Fischer was a monomaniac.

Fischer only managed to hold the WC title for three years. Lasker -- 27.

Put another way, I had a couple OTB performances that were +2400. I'm not a +2400 player. At my best, I was close to 2200 overall.

Smyslov: But *if* you played at your peak you would be a 2400 player.

You have convinced me you are about a 1500 critical thinker.

I'd have to check, but I think Caruana had a +3000 performance at Sinquefield a couple of years ago.

Smyslov: If so, it would have been close if he had played the 2950 Capablanca.

And isn't that amazing? If you believe Dr. Regan, at his best Capablanca was playing almost a century ahead of his time.

MorraMeister: Beautiful!

That's where I go.

Cookie: True enough, but the Regan software doesn't care about who Lasker may have dodged. It simply evaluates down to a depth of 13-ply how well Lasker's move choices compared with the top chess engines of the 21st century.

Morra: Agreed.

As far as I'm concerned, Capablanca was the most gifted chess talent ever. I suspect, but don't know for sure, he worked harder than he let on. But make no mistake. Capablanca was something we have not seen again.

We have had some wonderful, prodigious players, but we haven't had another Capablanca.

Lasker never said that "anyone can make master", by the way. 

What he DID say (in his book COMMON SENSE IN CHESS) is that given two hundred hours of training, he (Lasker) could take any averagely intelligent man, and get him to the level where he can play a master without receiving any odds (not even a pawn). This should probably compare to around 2000 level - a master wouldn't really consider giving odds to an 2000 player, or maybe 2050, or maybe 1960... you get the idea. 

Yes, there is a chance that you might become a master of any level. But I can say for sure that you won't become a grand master. Sorry, for being rude but if you study all the GMs you can find that all the GMs are born with specific ability. The key is in their Genes. You can reach at certain level by hardwork but after that you will need born skills to go further. 

If memory serves, Carlsen (although I do like the variant Carlson - even if it's borne off phone correctors) had a 3002 or 3001 or something like that performance in Nanjing, 2010 - and Caruana performed at about 3104, give or take, at Sinquefield 2014 - starting on 7.0/7 and rounding off with three draws to clinch easy first. 

By the way - I have recently listened to a lecture by GM Igor Smirnov in which he demonstrates how engines actually miss important resources in both tactics and strategy, so long as you don't use them up to about 18-ply (in the case of Komodo), 24-ply (where Houdini is concerned) or even 30-ply (Stockfish). 

Talk about a sobering blow!

Smirnov uses as examples the following types of positions:

1) complex endgames, where the win is patently obvious to any reasonable folk, but takes so many moves to actually effect, that the old "horizon effect" still takes place, and - 

2) attacks with investment of material, where some of the attacking forces arrive very late on the scene - and especially where the attacker can get a perpetual. The machine often evaluates these at 0.00 because it sees the perpetual but not the decision - until the ply-count is sufficiently high. 

It's really amazing if Regan's "Intrinsic Rating" idea, which follows so closely the actual standard of play of so many people, would really be based only on a 13-ply analysis. 

One could claim, of course, that the errors in such a "shallow-level" analysis would cancel each other out - i.e. errors in favor of Capablanca would cancel out errors against Capablanca - but this isn't really a reliable argument, as you could make the same argument on a roll of dice - which clearly won't produce anything like Regan's results...

So I wonder - did he really base it on 13-ply

<Cookie monster>

So - if "master" in Lasker's day meant something like today's 2000 player - than "the player who can play a master without odds" probably becomes something between 1800 and 1850. People lower than that will just drop anything they have on the first occasion (and no offense guys :-) ). 

So probably "anyone can make 1800 or 1850 with proper training, dedication and hard work" is a more modest statement than "anyone can make master". 

Now there's a twist. 

You've worked hard and MADE 1850. Congrats. Now someone is going to tell you that you can NEVER make 2000?

And now you finally made 2000. So who's to say that 2100 is forever beyond your reach? That NOTHING you would EVER do would allow you to get there?

Hope you see my point. Nothing is really impossible for anybody - but some goals and targets become visible, possible, accessible only once you've already traveled a certain amount of the road. 

Talking about making master makes sense once someone is already at least 1800, probably - as that's more or less the level where he'll be able to see and understand some of the features of what makes a master a master. 

"anything you can see - you can be". 

<CookieMonster> I never purchased anything from Smirnov yet - although I do plan to get and do the "Calculate Till Mate" course. I'm only enjoying some free lectures which were given away by one of his friends - GM Demian Lemos - who is a very very nice young gentleman and extremely knowledgeable and instructive personality himself - I have a personal correspondence with him - and have followed a couple of his own free lectures. 

These people are very generous with their material, and I get this feeling that they really know what they're doing, and that if someone does what they say they will improve. I definitely plan on raising the standard of my game and approach the CM level, using their programs.

My only constraints are - you guessed it and I'm not even trying to be original :-) - time, money, other life priorities (which incidentally dictate what I do with my time and what I do with my money...)

And I will end this section (proper conclusion of my #286) by giving you this from Aaron Nimzowitsch - which is found on the very cover of the excellent "21-century edition" (which actually dates from the 20th) of his masterwork "My System" - 

"Thorough knowledge of the elements takes one more than half of the road towards mastery"

And what are the elements? 

Just get that book, open it, look at the table of contents - Nimzo talks about NOTHING BUT the elements in the whole first half of the book. 

The second half is dedicated to essential elements of STRATEGY, which if applies and understood, were certainly enough to make Master in Nimzo's own day, and I believe, are enough to get someone to the 1800-1900 level. I stablizied on that level and even began to slightly look down on it, after I've read that book three times. I had to do it as it was work - I was paid to translate it into Hebrew back in 2001. 

So I wonder - did he really base it on 13-ply

For the Smyslovs attending this discussion who don't understand the crucial two-letter word "if", many of my claims here are qualified, "*If* Regan's methodology is correct."

Yes, Regan said a depth of 13, which I took as 13-ply:

I'm not the first. I mean obviously Ivan Bratko and Matej Guid published a study with what I guess I would call my screening test methods. Not as thoroughly as I did. For instance, when they used Rybka 3, they stopped at depth 10 whereas I went to depth 13 which is about 12 times as much work per move. I think that's about the right tradeoff point for time versus the value of the data that you're getting. And I've done many millions more moves.

http://www.chess.com/blog/SamCopeland/an-interview-with-im-and-anti-cheating-expert-dr-ken-regan

I don't know if 13-ply is the best trade-off. Regan was analyzing hundreds, thousands of games overall and, given the combinatorial explosion, he had to set limits. If you write software or do any kind of engineering, you understand these kinds of trade-offs.

But no doubt, with better hardware, Regan will do his analyses with higher ply-count.

Maybe that will sitgnificantly change the IPRs he comes up with. Maybe not.

<ipcress 12> I just wonder how to reconcile Smirnov's hard data on the limitations on accuracy of engines at insufficient depth (and he shows them to you, and if you're a strong player and worked with engines, you've seen this yourself) - with Regan's no-doubt impressive results, having been reached on a patently insufficient depth of analysis (if 13 really means 13-ply, rather than 26-ply, which would be a wholly different kettle of fish).

If you read Regan's works carefully, you will find answers to why he used 13-ply. I am not sure, but I believe that today, the standard is now 20-ply for Regan's cheating detection work. 

Standards and technologies improve, and that's the beauty.

It would also be real nice to have "IPR evaluators" embedded in common day-to-day chess software, for the aspiring chess amateur to tap himself affectionately on the shoulder from time to time, draw a reverent glance at the mirror and slowly whisper that magic word to himself - 

"Master!"