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On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

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Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#241

Post by entropicdrifter »

barry-cotter wrote: post #87
will_pseudonym wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And since it is a game, someone can also just have fun playing it, too, and meet people along the way too as an added bonus.

If you have heard of K. Anders Ericsson or deliberate practice you’ll know this has limits. The fastest way to get great at anything when you’re already good is not play. It’s deliberate practice. You work at the edge of your ability, doing something you are just barely capable of doing, trying to get to competent. Once you’re competent you move on to the next frustrating thing that you can’t quite do reliably. It’s…

That's the fastest way to grow, but to retain that growth it's also worthwhile to have some 'fun' with each new skill shortly after becoming competent at it and periodically (say, monthly at a minimum) thereafter. At least, that's how it is in my experience with shred guitar techniques. The higher level stuff gets rusty faster than the fundamentals

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#242

Post by dreamcompiler »

hackerNoose wrote: post #103
sedivy94 wrote: post #31

Highly, highly recommend "The Queen's Gambit" on Netflix. Like wow.

It's not very realistic when it comes to the chess, except the actual games. I also found it frustrating that they obviously were inspired by Bobby Fischer whose real life would have made a great story, but decided he wasn't hollywood friendly.

How is it unrealistic? I've read several articles like [0] that say the chess is quite realistic.

[0] https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/11/queens-gambit-a...

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#243

Post by georgeoliver »

cambalache wrote: post #240
georgeoliver wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not very realistic? I thought the depiction of tournament play was spot on, with the obvious exception of a few 'dramatic moments'. Have you played OTB tournaments?

Have you seen the top 100 chessplayer list? Now, 10 years ago?, 50 years ago? Have you see the women top 100 list? The few American women there are Asian-Americans or FSU. Only in Hollywood a cute WASPY girl is the GOAT of chess, and yes I know this is based on a 1980s novel.That does not make it realistic. It's like making a movie where the best 100m sprinter in the world is a Guatemalan woman. Nice story, 0 credibi…

I understand your point, I guess I'm not one to feel that 'realistic' in the sense you described is a very important metric when critiquing media. For example, would anyone say that the musical Hamilton is 'realistic'? Probably not, but that hasn't decreased its massive popularity.

As a tournament player myself (of course, a rather shoddy amateur) I felt the series got the details of tournament play right. The fact that the prodigy was a teenage girl was besides the point.

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#244

Post by sharker8 »

westwing wrote: post #140

Here's a theory on why nerds get bullied: Bullies instinctively realize that there's an unusually smart person in their tribe who is wasting their gift on fruitless endeavors, thus reducing the survival chances of the tribe. Of course, our modern society can afford to have smart people play chess. However, there is no evidence that chess skill transfers to other areas. Therefore, until proven otherwise, developing ch…

Funny you should mention the phenomenon of nerd bullying. Can't help but be reminded of Trump, a bully, who hosted a poker tournament in his failed casino. True to form, when asked if he was good at poker, he said he would be, if he had the time to commit to it. Later, an actual poker pro explained why his style in business and life indicates he would be a very terrible poker player, and might get lucky a few times, but then be defeated. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/07/12/what-donal... Funny how his career is now mimicking his nonexistent yet bragged about hypothetical poker career. Stories like these give me hope that maybe there is a game with transferable lessons and skills. But I am still searching for such a game. One other point on our failed leader: he also is fond of verbally abusing people who are actual masters of their craft (scientists). Probably not a coincidence.

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#245

Post by jstanley »

blub wrote: post #115

I would recommend chess for kids/teens, because it's an interesting way to teach certain self-control and tactical/strategy concepts which can be applied in real life. As an adult, chess is a time sink with very little upside if you want to be at least decent, especially at longer time controls. I've been playing chess for more than a couple of decades, but recently decided to stop partly because of the pandemic, but…

Before the pandemic, I played 1 season of chess in my local chess league, and I loved it.

It's a great excuse to spend a couple of evenings a month going out, meeting new people, and considering interesting positions in interesting games. We normally played 80+20 time control (each player has 80 minutes for the game, with an additional 20 seconds added to their clock after each move), which gives way more time for in-depth analysis of the positions that you can get with the default time controls on lichess.

Chess becomes a negative experience if you put too much importance on winning, which I have done a couple of times. If you can make winning important enough that you try hard, but not so important that losing is crushing, then I think it's a great hobby.

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#246

Post by Galanwe »

screwt wrote: post #135
C1sc0cat wrote: post #132

For non chess player what does a rating of 650 mean?

ELO ratings start at 600 for absolute beginner. With a good amount of effort, a dedicated amateur can reach ~1500 without too much difficulty, and at that level you'll beat any casual player. 2000 is international standard. Best human player is around 2700. Note - chess.com does not use ELO ratings - they have their own rating system which is more complex (includes an uncertainty factor based on how recently you have…

> With a good amount of effort, a dedicated amateur can reach ~1500 without too much difficulty

I read that kind of argument all over the place in the chess community, and that really strikes me as some kind of misplaced elitism.

ELO can be seen as a glorified indicator of where you stand in the distribution of a pool of players. Math aside, the ELO is a system that allows for the distribution of scores to evolve incrementally as matches are played.

All in all, if you want to interpret an ELO, you can always refer to the corresponding centile.

With an ELO of 1500 you are in the ~80 percentile of your pool (USCF). That places you as better than 80% of players (that are doing tournaments).

This requires a lot of work, and you would definitely not be a "regular amateur player".

The center of the distribution should be around 1200 ELO at the 50th centile.

Imagine what that would mean to be in the top 20% of all basket ball players that play tournaments.

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#247

Post by johnnyballgame »

caffeine wrote: post #162
hannofcart wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I advocate the same (teaching kids) Poker for the same reasons you mentioned (certain self-control and tactical/strategy concepts) but this is often greeted with controversy anytime I voice it. Learning to weigh the odds, exercising patience, taking calculated risks in the face of incomplete information, making allowance for the vagaries/emotions of your opponent all seem like great skills that would help one in life…

I am a grown up, but I'd love to hear your recommendations for how to learn poker for a beginner? Say I can dedicate about 3 hrs / week to this, what is the most efficient way to spend that time?

https://www.twoplustwo.com/books/

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#248

Post by unholiness »

mpol wrote: post #74

Two small notes, this seems not to be an official rating. The 1750 is reached at chess.com it seems. I play at lichess, where I am around 1700. My official rating is currently 1437, my highest rating ever was 1583 two years ago. So there is definitely inflation at lichess, and I would assume there is inflation at chess.com. So claiming 1750 ELO when it is not an official rating seems somewhat risky. Another note, he…

chess.com ratings are much less inflated than lichess ratings (partially because its new users start at 1200 ELO, not 1500). Not sure if there's a more exact conversion to FIDE ratings, especially because it looks like he's playing exclusively 3+0 blitz games, which play out much differently online than they do over the board.

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#249

Post by cambalache »

georgeoliver wrote: post #243
cambalache wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen the top 100 chessplayer list? Now, 10 years ago?, 50 years ago? Have you see the women top 100 list? The few American women there are Asian-Americans or FSU. Only in Hollywood a cute WASPY girl is the GOAT of chess, and yes I know this is based on a 1980s novel.That does not make it realistic. It's like making a movie where the best 100m sprinter in the world is a Guatemalan woman. Nice story, 0 credibi…

I understand your point, I guess I'm not one to feel that 'realistic' in the sense you described is a very important metric when critiquing media. For example, would anyone say that the musical Hamilton is 'realistic'? Probably not, but that hasn't decreased its massive popularity. As a tournament player myself (of course, a rather shoddy amateur) I felt the series got the details of tournament play right. The fact t…

That's fair. Do you know whose story would have been awesome, the Polgar sister's, specially Judit.

Their story demonstrates 2 things.

Within an specific limited discipline, "genius" can be manufactured if specialized long training and time is invested since childhood.

Individual variability still matters a lot. Out of all the 3 sisters, Judit was the only who went to become a truly world-class player.

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#250

Post by tutfbhuf »

jonwachob91 wrote: post #230
tutfbhuf wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23888814 > GM Hikaru Nakamura famously took the Mensa online IQ test and scored a very average 102 His elo peak rating is 2816. Just one example for an extraordinary strong player with average IQ (there are many other examples). I don't think that a high IQ is required to become a decent chess player (like 2000). It may help though.

> GM Hikaru Nakamura famously took the Mensa online IQ test and scored a very average 102 Nice clickbait. It you watched him take it on stream, you'd know that he was goofing around with his chat and ran out of time b/c he didn't know it was timed.

Fair enough, let me try again:

https://chess.stackexchange.com/a/24946

> The most comprehensive and recent publication I've found related to this question is The relationship between cognitive ability and chess skill: A comprehensive meta-analysis.

> The bottom line is that according to a meta-analysis of numerous studies, there is clearly a correlation between chess skill and cognitive ability, but cognitive ability explains only about 6% of the variance in chess skill (12% if you only consider numerical ability only). There must be other factors as well (e.g., training), some of which could be more important than cognitive ability.

From my personal observations I very much agree with 6%.

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