7 ms·

I have some personal experience that gives me a different perspective. I learned chess when very young (~5) but I failed to be a successful prodigy -- my rating

I have some personal experience that gives me a different perspective. I learned chess when very young (~5) but I failed to be a successful prodigy -- my rating capped out around 1100 USCF. Every few years I would pick the game back up and play a few tournaments, and each time I improved a bit. I love chess, but it's never been anything like the central focus of my life. In my late 20s I moved to California and also started playing again after a few years of drought. My strength was about 1950 USCF. In the Bay Area 80% of the players I play in tournaments at that strength are kids -- the median age is perhaps 11. At first I thought it was shocking that they could be 1950 at 11 years old, and I was like 1200, or whatever. That's a pretty huge gap in what you might think is "talent". But then I started looking at the tournament history of my opponents. I was astonished to find that the majority of them had played substantially more total chess at age 11 than I had managed to play by my late 20s. For example, here is someone I have played several times: http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlMain.php?15250088 http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlMain.php?15250088 He's 10 years old and 2055 USCF. He has played in 175 tournaments in the past 5 and a half years. That's almost three per month, every month! If you don't regularly play in chess tournaments, they are frequently a serious commitment -- the better part of a day, or for big ones, multiple full days. Perhaps his average tournament might involve 10 hours of serious chess. How many adults work so hard on their hobby? Is that degree of return on investment even surprising? I've only played in 129 tournaments since 1992 and I am the same strength. The player above is not at all an outlier in this regard. I never yet observed a kid who achieved an impressive degree of skill in chess without spending this kind of time. So while I continue to be impressed by the dedication and ability of young kids who are really strong, I stopped thinking that they are magic learning machines whose age makes them unreachably capable. The author's daughter at least has regular coaching, which I suppose the author doesn't have. Does he even spend more time on the game than her? I bet he doesn't.

zawerf 7y ago
A famous competitive programming prodigy is tourist[1]. You can find his rating graph starting from 2006 on topcoder when he was just 12 years old: https://www.topcoder.com/members/tourist/details/?track=DATA_SCIENCE&subTrack=SRM https://www.topcoder.com/members/tourist/details/?track=DATA... He's now indisputably the best competitive programmer in the world. But it's comforting to know that he too had to slowly grow over many years starting from a mere mortal 1200 rating. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gennady_Korotkevich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gennady_Korotkevich
- person_of_color 7y ago
  What a waste of brain cycles.
  - tomcooks 7y ago
    Writing such a snarky comment? Oh yes.
  - justwalt 7y ago
    Aren’t most things?
  - organsnyder 7y ago
    I see no reason to criticize people that compete in this sort of thing. No different than any other intellectual sport. I would be quick to criticize any claims that success in these sorts of competitions predicts success at delivering business value (which, unfortunately, is exactly what TopCoder's home page seems to be implying).
- icr0 7y ago
  sometimes I read this guy's wikipedia page for inspiration
- vymague 7y ago
  The wikipedia article says he qualified for the 2006 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) at the age of 11 and got a silver medal. His 2006 starting point was already beyond most mortals.
- soup10 7y ago
  Never really liked the structure of Topcoder and similar competitions most of the "skill" is just memorizing the algorithms that show up frequently and practicing typing out the solutions fast. A great mathematician would be able to finish a math exam quicker and more accurately than a student. But someone that spends all their time practicing speedrunning math exams would smoke him, only a fool would say the speedrunner is more talented at mathematics than the mathematician that understands the material deeply and has innovated and contributed to the field.
nezaj 7y ago
We should play again sometime
michaelbuckbee 7y ago
This is something I've found fairly shocking as a parent of an 8-year-old: the deep commitment on the part of other families to really commit to a specific sport or hobby. I don't know if I just grew up in too small of a rural town to have access to these opportunities (or if they're even healthy). As an example, one of the girls on my daughter's volleyball team is on 3 separate volleyball clubs simultaneously. She plays 5 days a week at least an hour a day.
- choeger 7y ago
  Without proper training (i.e., taking care of all the stuff that is not Volleyball but supports you playing it, like back muscles, shoulder mobility and stability, stretching, school), it is certainly not healthy at a certain level/age. Otoh, playing five hours of volleyball alone a week is not that much if the level is not too demanding.
- atupis 7y ago
  There was pretty good econtalk about this topic http://www.econtalk.org/david-epstein-on-mastery-specialization-and-range/ http://www.econtalk.org/david-epstein-on-mastery-specializat... . But generally there are these sports with very narrow skills like chess which you has to specialize very early. Then there is these sports with very width skills like soccer where generally get best outcomes when you specialize rather late like 16 year old.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    It’s a wonderful episode and I’m sure it’s an interesting book but I’d take it with more than a pinch of salt. Most people can’t get to a world class level in anything, whether they specialise early or not. I’d be more inclined to read K. Anders Ericsson’s book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, Stuart Ritchie’s Intelligence: All That Matters, or both. For most areas of human expertise we don’t have the kind of knowledge about what to do and why, or the coaching infrastructure for youth prodigy breeding grounds like sports or playing a musical instrument. The number of doctors who started preparing for their career in any real fashion before they were twelve might be numbered in the hundreds, ditto financiers. Most things you can start at as an adult.
DumbBoy 7y ago
This is California you are talking about. They get the best of everything, least they can do is be good at their meaningless pursuits.
- EForEndeavour 7y ago
  > They get the best of everything Yeah, like a total lack of earthquakes, and pleasantly temperate summer temperatures!
ycombinete 7y ago
I only picked up chess in my mid 20's, and fell completely in love with the game. At 32 now I barely ever play, and am far happier for it. Through chess, I came to a number of realisations about myself, and what I want from games/hobbies in general. I moved to Dubai recently, and started attending local meetups here. I even started my own mini-club. I quickly realised that the guys I was playing with were almost all much better than me. That they put more time in, and they had more history with the game. From this I saw that, just in order to get good enough to have any fun at these meetings, I would have to put in more time and effort than I even had available to me. I found myself having less and less fun. Winning felt okay, and losing felt like dying. I have since moved on to other board games. Competitively: Magic the Gathering. And many other Euro-style board games that are not based on such zero-sum 1:1 competition (e.g. Caverna). MTG especially has been a god-send for me, as anyone can win a magic game, due in a large part to the randomness that is an essential part of the game. On top of the randomness there is the theme that is built into every card, and every magic colour in the game. This balances out the pure calculation of deck building and sequencing play with a healthy dose of imagination. I grew up eschewing randomness at all costs, being fiercely competetive and hating the idea of winnin/losing as a result of something as seemingly arbitraty as a die roll, or card draw (heck I even refused to play 30 seconds with a die). But I've come to love randomness. When I sit down to play a game of magic my skill level is highly important in the outcome of the game, but so are the cards which I draw. That means that people of all skill levels can sit down and compete with each other. In chess a 300-500 ratings difference basically means that one player has close to 20% chance of winning. For a game that I would want to pursue as an after work activity those odds really just aren't good enough for me. 1. So I guess I've learnt that I need to keep in mind that I pursue any hobby purely for enjoyment. 2. That it's easy to lose sight of that. That, for me, enjoyment must come from more than just winning. 3. That I can't get this from chess in the long run. That I am not willing to put the time and effort into any game where it is 100% skill vs skill, as this is too competetive. 4. The games I play need some element of randomness to bridge those skill gaps, and add flavour to encounters. 5. Theme is so important, to keep my imagination involved in the game, not just calculation. Why should I just move abstracts around a board when I can play against other people, while imagining a small family of dwarfs, collecting goods, tending their farm in the forest, growing their little family, and building their home in the caves they dig out of the mountain. I still play the odd game of chess on lichess.com, but every time I do all of the above comes back to me, and I remember why I stopped playing chess.

zawerf 7y ago

A famous competitive programming prodigy is tourist[1]. You can find his rating graph starting from 2006 on topcoder when he was just 12 years old: https://www.topcoder.com/members/tourist/details/?track=DATA_SCIENCE&subTrack=SRM https://www.topcoder.com/members/tourist/details/?track=DATA... He's now indisputably the best competitive programmer in the world. But it's comforting to know that he too had to slowly grow over many years starting from a mere mortal 1200 rating. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gennady_Korotkevich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gennady_Korotkevich

person_of_color 7y ago
What a waste of brain cycles.
- tomcooks 7y ago
  Writing such a snarky comment? Oh yes.
- justwalt 7y ago
  Aren’t most things?
- organsnyder 7y ago
  I see no reason to criticize people that compete in this sort of thing. No different than any other intellectual sport. I would be quick to criticize any claims that success in these sorts of competitions predicts success at delivering business value (which, unfortunately, is exactly what TopCoder's home page seems to be implying).
icr0 7y ago
sometimes I read this guy's wikipedia page for inspiration
vymague 7y ago
The wikipedia article says he qualified for the 2006 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) at the age of 11 and got a silver medal. His 2006 starting point was already beyond most mortals.
soup10 7y ago
Never really liked the structure of Topcoder and similar competitions most of the "skill" is just memorizing the algorithms that show up frequently and practicing typing out the solutions fast. A great mathematician would be able to finish a math exam quicker and more accurately than a student. But someone that spends all their time practicing speedrunning math exams would smoke him, only a fool would say the speedrunner is more talented at mathematics than the mathematician that understands the material deeply and has innovated and contributed to the field.

nezaj 7y ago

We should play again sometime

michaelbuckbee 7y ago

This is something I've found fairly shocking as a parent of an 8-year-old: the deep commitment on the part of other families to really commit to a specific sport or hobby. I don't know if I just grew up in too small of a rural town to have access to these opportunities (or if they're even healthy). As an example, one of the girls on my daughter's volleyball team is on 3 separate volleyball clubs simultaneously. She plays 5 days a week at least an hour a day.

choeger 7y ago
Without proper training (i.e., taking care of all the stuff that is not Volleyball but supports you playing it, like back muscles, shoulder mobility and stability, stretching, school), it is certainly not healthy at a certain level/age. Otoh, playing five hours of volleyball alone a week is not that much if the level is not too demanding.
atupis 7y ago
There was pretty good econtalk about this topic http://www.econtalk.org/david-epstein-on-mastery-specialization-and-range/ http://www.econtalk.org/david-epstein-on-mastery-specializat... . But generally there are these sports with very narrow skills like chess which you has to specialize very early. Then there is these sports with very width skills like soccer where generally get best outcomes when you specialize rather late like 16 year old.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  It’s a wonderful episode and I’m sure it’s an interesting book but I’d take it with more than a pinch of salt. Most people can’t get to a world class level in anything, whether they specialise early or not. I’d be more inclined to read K. Anders Ericsson’s book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, Stuart Ritchie’s Intelligence: All That Matters, or both. For most areas of human expertise we don’t have the kind of knowledge about what to do and why, or the coaching infrastructure for youth prodigy breeding grounds like sports or playing a musical instrument. The number of doctors who started preparing for their career in any real fashion before they were twelve might be numbered in the hundreds, ditto financiers. Most things you can start at as an adult.

DumbBoy 7y ago

This is California you are talking about. They get the best of everything, least they can do is be good at their meaningless pursuits.

EForEndeavour 7y ago
> They get the best of everything Yeah, like a total lack of earthquakes, and pleasantly temperate summer temperatures!

ycombinete 7y ago

I only picked up chess in my mid 20's, and fell completely in love with the game. At 32 now I barely ever play, and am far happier for it. Through chess, I came to a number of realisations about myself, and what I want from games/hobbies in general. I moved to Dubai recently, and started attending local meetups here. I even started my own mini-club. I quickly realised that the guys I was playing with were almost all much better than me. That they put more time in, and they had more history with the game. From this I saw that, just in order to get good enough to have any fun at these meetings, I would have to put in more time and effort than I even had available to me. I found myself having less and less fun. Winning felt okay, and losing felt like dying. I have since moved on to other board games. Competitively: Magic the Gathering. And many other Euro-style board games that are not based on such zero-sum 1:1 competition (e.g. Caverna). MTG especially has been a god-send for me, as anyone can win a magic game, due in a large part to the randomness that is an essential part of the game. On top of the randomness there is the theme that is built into every card, and every magic colour in the game. This balances out the pure calculation of deck building and sequencing play with a healthy dose of imagination. I grew up eschewing randomness at all costs, being fiercely competetive and hating the idea of winnin/losing as a result of something as seemingly arbitraty as a die roll, or card draw (heck I even refused to play 30 seconds with a die). But I've come to love randomness. When I sit down to play a game of magic my skill level is highly important in the outcome of the game, but so are the cards which I draw. That means that people of all skill levels can sit down and compete with each other. In chess a 300-500 ratings difference basically means that one player has close to 20% chance of winning. For a game that I would want to pursue as an after work activity those odds really just aren't good enough for me. 1. So I guess I've learnt that I need to keep in mind that I pursue any hobby purely for enjoyment. 2. That it's easy to lose sight of that. That, for me, enjoyment must come from more than just winning. 3. That I can't get this from chess in the long run. That I am not willing to put the time and effort into any game where it is 100% skill vs skill, as this is too competetive. 4. The games I play need some element of randomness to bridge those skill gaps, and add flavour to encounters. 5. Theme is so important, to keep my imagination involved in the game, not just calculation. Why should I just move abstracts around a board when I can play against other people, while imagining a small family of dwarfs, collecting goods, tending their farm in the forest, growing their little family, and building their home in the caves they dig out of the mountain. I still play the odd game of chess on lichess.com, but every time I do all of the above comes back to me, and I remember why I stopped playing chess.