I used to play under-16 tournaments before I gave up the game, and I found that there were two stages: - Experience. This would take you up to a certain level

I used to play under-16 tournaments before I gave up the game, and I found that there were two stages: - Experience. This would take you up to a certain level and you would beat less experienced players. At some point, however, the experience curve would just flatten out - Study. Once your experience benefit stopped growing, then studying past games and the theory from books would kickstart your growth again, and then that would flatten also - After those two had been exhausted, then the differences in people was up to that intangible that you could call talent, intelligence, focus or whatever So someone incredibly intelligent but without that initial experience would usually be beat by someone with some experience. And similar, experienced players would be beat by those that made the transition to studying.