If you're starting play at age 30, sure, there's not likely to be very many players who make the 2200 threshold. That would be interesting to crawl through the

If you're starting play at age 30, sure, there's not likely to be very many players who make the 2200 threshold. That would be interesting to crawl through the USCF database to check, though without birth years there'd be a good amount of manual checking. Your original question was however, who started at age 25 and made GM. My own bias was as a competitive junior, who had several of my peers reach 2000-2100 before they were in high school (some as early as age 10). Several of these kids had languished for a few years with mediocre progress, before taking on serious study habits and effective coaching. Almost to a person, they stopped playing in high school because of academic/athletic/college time demands. Again, maybe there's some biological/scientific reason why people late to the game of chess cannot perform the pattern recall that is central to chess. But, I'm still inclined to think that the demands of "real life" are a key reason why players starting at an older age are unlikely to reach master strength. Yes, there are many adults who devote time to the game. But, how many are able to devote the same amount of time and energy that a schoolkid is?