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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

#151

Post by dirktheman »

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…

I'm fairly certain that projecting your own insecurities onto weaker victims is the main reason why bullies bully.

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

#152

Post by ehejsbbejsk »

I was doing this with Go and I kept stalling at around 5k. I don’t know about chess but Go servers can be pretty intense and competitive (especially Asian servers). Unless I devote a lot of my time into the game I doubt I will ever reach the dan level.

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

#153

Post by _the_inflator »

xuki wrote: post #111
_the_inflator wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there fellow AoE II player! Cool, to hear from some decent player. What time did you play? Around 2002? Since I was a 2k player at the time, let me assure you, that the top dudes at the time (Koven, Sheriff for example) were already so called pro gamers who got payed/sponsored and they were exceptionally good. The true story is, that many folks above 2k+ did what was called "points trading" back then. Koven once…

As someone who could never break 1750 on Zone, hat off to both of you. Even though I no longer play, I did follow the scene closely for a while until a few years ago. To my surprise DauT is still a top player, although one of his teammate is clearly the indisputable No. 1 by a distance compare to anyone else.

Yes, the Viper is truly the Hamilton amongst his fellow peers. Impressive! And he is now showing his tricks to his already AoE II infected girl friend Debbie! This is so cool! Way too few women play this game.

1750: This is also a great ranking. Competition there is pretty tough. Congrats! I remember playing lots of 1700er dudes whenever I started out with my smurf accounts, and I had plenty off em.

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

#154

Post by westwing »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #145
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…

You are giving them too much credit. Humans only observe really local information and are, in most cases, unable to grasp the actual dynamics of the society, let alone 'what is beneficial' for it. Chess can be used as a means of showing that any skill can be learned [1]. [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200507/the-grand...

I'm not talking about complex societies, but about the kind of small tribes that we evolved in, where such information is local. School classes resemble such tribes.

If bullying was simply dominating behavior, it should be generally directed at anyone, yet it more commonly affects the stereotypical nerd.

In any case, this isn't to give credit to bullies. There is no credit to be given for behavior that I consider innate.

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

#155

Post by westwing »

dirktheman wrote: post #151
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…

I'm fairly certain that projecting your own insecurities onto weaker victims is the main reason why bullies bully.

That fails to account for the fact that many bullying victims aren't physically weak and that bullying can also be entirely void of physical aspects.

What makes you so certain about it? Is this not simply what you would like to believe, because you desire some form of cosmic justice?

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

#156

Post by noir_lord »

globular-toast wrote: post #104
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate instead of just dropping a sharp comment? I'm curious about what you mean.

Sure. I see it almost every time I visit HN. I've encountered many people with a slightly warped sense of reality but none more so that on this website. There are two broad patterns I often see: The first is where they think everyone on the planet is somewhat like them. You'll see comments like "everyone should be able to program" or even "everyone should program". I've even seen people claim that ability to program…

On the flip side you have people like me, I grew up working class poor in the north of England in the 1980's - worked minimum wage jobs in my late teens/early twenties and managed through hard work and luck to escape that life into a successful career as a software engineer.

While I'm sure a decent subset of users would fit your description, that's certainly not the case for every user.

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

#157

Post by _the_inflator »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #40
windowshopping wrote: post #28

I did something very similar with an old strategy game called Age of empires II. Over the course of two years I went from a 1300 rating to 1850. I don't play chess, so it's hard for me to compare the scales, but I will say the highest players were rated around 2600. I think being 1850 put me around 90-95th percentile for active players-- there were less than 50 players over 2300, and only a few hundred over 2000. My…

> Eventually I decided that I no longer wished to prioritize the game over other things This is what I unfortunately found as well. I reached Legend in Hearthstone (The top rank, no clue what percentile it was) a while back and top 3-5% in StarCraft II a couple of years ago. In both games I stopped playing shortly after reaching that level because the time investment just didn't seem worth it to me. I love games, but…

I sacrificed around 1 year during university to Age of Empires. Wasn't my most productive year at uni.

Anyone remembers DBD_Jinx? For very long the only western dude to compete with the Koreans in 1vs1. However he also confessed, that he had partly sacrificed his private life for it.

I trained a lot. I trained hours a day on 2X speed hunting, build order. I played under many smurf accounts, to then foster my primary account(s). MrFixIt forums as well.

I played 1vs1, team games, I played DM as well.

After intense 2 years (time zone shifts as well, many sleepless nights) I decided to never ever play online in a community again in order to prevent my lazy/fun loving side to be sucked in again in clans, games etc.

No Warcraft nothing. To this day I keep the vow. Only game I play still from time to time is AoE II: DE.

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

#158

Post by _the_inflator »

dreamer7 wrote: post #139
xuki wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who could never break 1750 on Zone, hat off to both of you. Even though I no longer play, I did follow the scene closely for a while until a few years ago. To my surprise DauT is still a top player, although one of his teammate is clearly the indisputable No. 1 by a distance compare to anyone else.

To me, DauT is the Mikhail Tal of AOE while Viper is Bobby Fischer. I've watched endless videos of DauT and Viper playing AoE. ZeroEmpires has done a lot to popularize AoE streaming. Here's his YouTube channel if anyone is interested - https://www.youtube.com/user/ZeroEmpires

T90official is also suuuuupercool!

He also started as a pretty mediocre player and now deserves his rank among the best players! He shares a lot of his secrets and is also #1 commentator now for AoE II:DE related games: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZUT79WUUpZlZ-XMF7l4CFg

Also watch his Twitch account.

Spirit of the Law is also a great resource: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChzLZJo-SxuPHz-oYKAIC_g

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

#159

Post by llarsson »

bvcvbuiy wrote: post #92
cupofcoffee wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of Nietzche: "Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.”.

You can add 'a parent' to your list.

That is exactly why I would consider 2 hours daily to spend on mastering a game a luxury.

Before kids? Sure. After the kids are old enough to basically be on cruise control? Likely. But now? Not even close.

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

#160

Post by PartiallyTyped »

westwing wrote: post #154
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are giving them too much credit. Humans only observe really local information and are, in most cases, unable to grasp the actual dynamics of the society, let alone 'what is beneficial' for it. Chess can be used as a means of showing that any skill can be learned [1]. [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200507/the-grand...

I'm not talking about complex societies, but about the kind of small tribes that we evolved in, where such information is local. School classes resemble such tribes. If bullying was simply dominating behavior, it should be generally directed at anyone, yet it more commonly affects the stereotypical nerd. In any case, this isn't to give credit to bullies. There is no credit to be given for behavior that I consider inn…

Apologies, by credit I meant to express that the causal relationship you are looking for may not exist.

> If bullying was simply dominating behavior, it should be generally directed at anyone, yet it more commonly affects the stereotypical nerd.

But then you risk a coalition that will shun you. A nerd is perceived as 'the weakest' of the tribe, this enables the rest of the tribe to bully the nerd by proxy, you give them somebody to look down on, without the risk of the nerd retaliating.

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