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On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years
281–290 of 342 posts
Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've always found the Polgar story a bit weird, despite the way their father obviously characterised it. Was their chess education really that different from any other resulting chess pro?
Well,his method is not that different of what I have seen other parents have done with their talented kids. Tiger Woods, Ichiro Suzuki, Son Heung-min, Andre Agassi, the Williams sisters, among others, were coached relentlessly since they were almost babies. You can discuss how healthy it is, but the results are there. Judit is by a ridiculous margin the strongest female player in the history.
I suppose my point is, it just feels slightly patronising that the story is presented as this weird brain experiment when I don't think we bat an eyelid at the same upbringing for male players. This is (for better or worse) what it takes to reach 2700.
Also, do you categorise the gulf between Polgar and Hou Yifan as a ridiculous margin (about 50 Elo)? Obviously Polgar was better at her peak, stayed there longer, and clearly had a dedication to the game than Hou never seemed interested in, but I think on the level of natural talent they'd actually be close.
Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years
#283I 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…
I got into AOE soon after it was released in 1997. Especially early on, when we didn’t know much, it provided a rich universe of interesting economic, tactical, and strategic problems to solve. I spent countless hours studying the game, practicing, competing, and hanging out on the MrFixit forum. I once played one AOE game after another nonstop for 33 hours. Like you and many others, I eventually concluded it was too much of a distraction and uninstalled it permanently in order to focus on other endeavors. That was about 18 years ago. It’s nice to see there are still plenty of people enjoying the game.
Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years
#284I 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 stopped playing RTS entirely some years ago because of that.
I used to love RTS but...
1. Rushing is stupid, all RTS seemly suffer from allowing it even when devs attempt to curb that down, I remember in AOE for example people training on how to build towers on the enemy base in 2 minutes or how to win with villager rush. (also knew a guy that relentlessy tested ways to rise to the second age faster)
2. Singleplayer often the AI is super cheaty, after a while I got bored with that, because I couldn't use actual strategy to win, for example the match that made me realize that was when the last AI was on an island, I conquered the rest of the map, was careful in my usage of the market to stockpile all resources for myself and deny the AI... then whenever I attacked with the 200 unit limit, the AI defended itself successfully, after I got bored of hours stuck on this stalemate, I used cheats and found out the AI stripped the whole island bare but was still pumping units non-stop AND knew where I was going to attack, so they always had perfect defense.
3. Multiplayer is a matter of how fast you click and how good you are with pattern matching and some other training-related things, intelligence for example isn't that important, rote learning, time to practice, etc... that is.
So I concluded that basically multiplayer RTS is a huge timesink, and to me, unfun. And singleplayer RTS after the campaign is done is or too easy (because the AI is utterly dumb) or too hard (because the AI cheats), I never found out a difficulty I enjoyed playing against the AI.
Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Why would new users start at 1200? Aren't most beginners below 900?
Not all new users are beginners
Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years
#286Earlier 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.
IQ test is bullshit and has been debunked a number of times. Nowadays anyone bragging about their IQ should be considered a moron and left talking to themselves. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3oUqKUx2o0 (first thing that came off my head)
IQ tests are universally accepted in psychology as the most robust psychometric ever developed. The idea that IQ tests are "bullshit" is nonsense pop psychology. Some people might try to over-interpret IQ tests as meaning more than what they do, but they are very good at measuring what they measure, and they predict a lot of things.
That said, I agree if you brag about your IQ you're a moron.
Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
a test in isolation cannot be bullshit. when people talk about iq test many people imagine the person believes an iq test is a rigorous measure of all intellectual talent. or course it is not that. but it is also wrong to suggest it has no meaning at all. it does have some predictive power. imperfect measures are not always useless, which is goof since all measures have some error.
> a test in isolation cannot be bullshit. A test trying to measure something we can't even properly define is kinda flawed in it's whole premise. As such the best an IQ test can do is measure how well somebody prepared for a test like that, but it will struggle to properly catch any knowledge or skill domains not covered by the test, of which there are a lot.
IQ tests don't even attempt to measure any knowledge or skill domains at all. I don't think you understand what an IQ test even measures.
Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years
#288Earlier 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…
And a bunch of oil drillers wouldn't be the best people to send to an astroid headed for earth. Since when does Hollywood have to be realistic to be entertaining or good? In fact, making it unrealistic often makes it more entertaining.
Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years
#289I thought about learning chess and what it actually involes when i watched the new netflix show. i came to the relisation that it actually involes becoming good in a very very big search space by having a lot of experience and being fast in calculating and remembering chess moves. Especially when i see how many people read up on grand masters, i came up with the theory: The normal person is running behind or trying t…
> I thought about learning chess and what it actually involes when i watched the new netflix show.
>i came to the relisation that it actually involes becoming good in a very very big search space by having a lot of experience and being fast in calculating and remembering chess moves.
I wish I was this confident. Remembering chess moves, why didn't I think of that?
Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's funny because I found the opposite to be true if it's a single bishop / knight endgame. No matter what you found, it has been statistically proved that a Bishop (against a Knight), and especially a Bishop pair is stronger than a Knight/Knight or Knight/Bishop .
Wow, I didn't know that! Thanks so much. Bishop pair is clear, of course, but I literally would look for a single knight/bishop ending (where I would have the knight), thinking it gave me the advantage. Maybe it was a placebo effect. Ha! Thanks again!
Not _just_ placebo. If you tend to favor very closed positions, or end up placing pawns in ways that make your bishops useless, then the knight might be better sometimes, even though the general idea of bishop > knight is correct.