Learning Chess at 40 (2016)
nautil.us
Learning Chess at 40 (2016)
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Re: Learning Chess at 40 (2016)
#2Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11653538
Re: Learning Chess at 40 (2016)
#3I wonder if learning to program at age 40 vs age <10 would be similar?
Re: Learning Chess at 40 (2016)
#4I have some personal experience that gives me a different perspective. I learned chess when very young (~5) but I failed to be a successful prodigy -- my rating capped out around 1100 USCF. Every few years I would pick the game back up and play a few tournaments, and each time I improved a bit. I love chess, but it's never been anything like the central focus of my life.
In my late 20s I moved to California and also started playing again after a few years of drought. My strength was about 1950 USCF. In the Bay Area 80% of the players I play in tournaments at that strength are kids -- the median age is perhaps 11.
At first I thought it was shocking that they could be 1950 at 11 years old, and I was like 1200, or whatever. That's a pretty huge gap in what you might think is "talent". But then I started looking at the tournament history of my opponents. I was astonished to find that the majority of them had played substantially more total chess at age 11 than I had managed to play by my late 20s.
For example, here is someone I have played several times:
http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlMain.php?15250088
He's 10 years old and 2055 USCF. He has played in 175 tournaments in the past 5 and a half years. That's almost three per month, every month! If you don't regularly play in chess tournaments, they are frequently a serious commitment -- the better part of a day, or for big ones, multiple full days. Perhaps his average tournament might involve 10 hours of serious chess. How many adults work so hard on their hobby? Is that degree of return on investment even surprising? I've only played in 129 tournaments since 1992 and I am the same strength.
The player above is not at all an outlier in this regard. I never yet observed a kid who achieved an impressive degree of skill in chess without spending this kind of time. So while I continue to be impressed by the dedication and ability of young kids who are really strong, I stopped thinking that they are magic learning machines whose age makes them unreachably capable. The author's daughter at least has regular coaching, which I suppose the author doesn't have. Does he even spend more time on the game than her? I bet he doesn't.
Re: Learning Chess at 40 (2016)
#5I've started relearning chess after having played it a bit with my dad who learned from Microsoft chess. I came back and was ranked around 800 in December and have increased to around 1300 on lichess. Making sure to try to figure out what my opponent is wanting to do on his next move (to stop my own blunders) and learning the most common variations to an opening for each white and black contributed to a massive increase in rating. I imagine more focus on not blundering and learning some of the opening traps I tend to get caught in will probably get me to 1800 online.
Re: Learning Chess at 40 (2016)
#6I have some personal experience that gives me a different perspective. I learned chess when very young (~5) but I failed to be a successful prodigy -- my rating capped out around 1100 USCF. Every few years I would pick the game back up and play a few tournaments, and each time I improved a bit. I love chess, but it's never been anything like the central focus of my life. In my late 20s I moved to California and also…
We should play again sometime
Re: Learning Chess at 40 (2016)
#7I have some personal experience that gives me a different perspective. I learned chess when very young (~5) but I failed to be a successful prodigy -- my rating capped out around 1100 USCF. Every few years I would pick the game back up and play a few tournaments, and each time I improved a bit. I love chess, but it's never been anything like the central focus of my life. In my late 20s I moved to California and also…
This is something I've found fairly shocking as a parent of an 8-year-old: the deep commitment on the part of other families to really commit to a specific sport or hobby. I don't know if I just grew up in too small of a rural town to have access to these opportunities (or if they're even healthy).
As an example, one of the girls on my daughter's volleyball team is on 3 separate volleyball clubs simultaneously. She plays 5 days a week at least an hour a day.
Re: Learning Chess at 40 (2016)
#8I have some personal experience that gives me a different perspective. I learned chess when very young (~5) but I failed to be a successful prodigy -- my rating capped out around 1100 USCF. Every few years I would pick the game back up and play a few tournaments, and each time I improved a bit. I love chess, but it's never been anything like the central focus of my life. In my late 20s I moved to California and also…
A famous competitive programming prodigy is tourist[1]. You can find his rating graph starting from 2006 on topcoder when he was just 12 years old: https://www.topcoder.com/members/tourist/details/?track=DATA...
He's now indisputably the best competitive programmer in the world. But it's comforting to know that he too had to slowly grow over many years starting from a mere mortal 1200 rating.
Re: Learning Chess at 40 (2016)
#9Learning chess is a very time consuming skill. I don't think there is any other way besides playing lots of games against players better then you, or to endlessly drill problems, to get any better.
I am not sure how this fact lines up well with a 40yo lifestyle. This is usually the time of life where you are raising kids or making career moves, so I am not sure just how many available hours one has for study.
Re: Learning Chess at 40 (2016)
#10I highly recommend lichess. Create an account and bookmark it and play endgames when you need a "distraction": https://lichess.org/training