7 ms·

It absolutely re-kindled my interest in chess. I played as a child, but never took it seriously. Got a chess board for my 4-yo, but unfortunately she isn't a pr

It absolutely re-kindled my interest in chess. I played as a child, but never took it seriously. Got a chess board for my 4-yo, but unfortunately she isn't a prodigy. Who'd have thought. Still has fun arranging the pieces and make up stories with them, though. And I'm playing on the Chess.com app. The puzzles especially are a neat way to get your brain running, and they're a better attention sink than Twitter / HN.

srtjstjsj 6y ago
The vast majority of grandmasters didn't play chess at age 4.
- thiago_fm 6y ago
  That's incorrect. I did a lot of ending puzzles and knew a lot about openings and variations at age 5, learned mostly because a father of a friend was very enthusiastic about it. I quit playing around age 7 because some kids there were really out of my league and there wasn't enough government or support for me to continue playing given that I wasn't the best. I still play to this day, but mostly amateurish and very sporadically. Of course if you just want to do it for fun, it's fine. But if you can to become a GM and make a living playing chess, the bar is pretty high and it's very likely that you suck. You can start to play a bit later and become a GM, but it's a big gamble with your future. Most people I know who continued with chess nowadays are in the low 2K range, one made it to IM... all share extremely good memory and logical thinking and could just have been instead a lazy CS student and get top grades, eventually become a software engineer and enjoy a good life. But instead have a shitty life playing the same game all over again and have a hard time leaving it now to do something else, as it's the thing they dedicated their whole life to.
  - YinglingLight 6y ago
    Chess is like Boxing. Pays nothing. The workload is insane, the natural talent is insane, your competition is global. Only the very top 0.5% get name recognition (money). And like Boxing, these athletes could get paid more had they devoted their life literally ANY other pursuit with their work ethic and talent. With far less punishment involved. Concept of Talent Stacking: https://personalexcellence.co/blog/talent-stack/ https://personalexcellence.co/blog/talent-stack/
    - ofrzeta 6y ago
      Work ethic ok but talent is domain-specific, isn't it?
      - beagle3 6y ago
        Read on Magnus Carlsen[0] and Josh Waitzkin[1] - both have top spots in other fields, (and I'm sure others do too, these are from memory). Either talent is less specific than you'd think, or work ethic is more important than you'd think. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Carlsen#Personal_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Carlsen#Personal_life [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Waitzkin#Martial_arts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Waitzkin#Martial_arts
        ofrzeta 6y ago
        I don't see this with Carlsen. Fantasy football? Well ... Waitzkin may be successful in martial arts but still that's the exception not the norm. Also I would claim that talent is domain-specific insofar that very few people have a mental and a physical talent at the same time. For instance there are professional athletes who are very good in some other sport but I know of no one who is also very good at chess.
        beagle3 6y ago
        You may discard Fantasy Football, but it is not easy to be a top player - there are thousands of people who spend a few hours a day practicing, and have been for years. It’s been a while, but when Magnusen rose from “not playing”’to the top spot it was impressive and unusual. Emanuel Lasker was iirc a very noted mathematician. As I mentioned, this is from memory. I’ve known a person who had both made the national swim team as a 19-year old, and was a national bridge champion in his thirties (not in the US). I don’t know to separate talent from work ethics, but my layman’s impression is that that these aren’t simple, and definitely not independent, measures across fields.
      - bsder 6y ago
        The Polgar sisters are the counterexample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r
  - dkural 6y ago
    Magnus Carlsen, the world champion, learned the rules of the game at 5 years old. Hikaru Nakamura started playing chess at age 7.
  - gk1 6y ago
    > But instead have a shitty life playing the same game all over again and have a hard time leaving it now to do something else, as it's the thing they dedicated their whole life to. That's called an addiction, or more generously an obsession.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
drw 6y ago
Something we work very hard on at chess.com is the rating of the individual tactics puzzles. Some of you might enjoy looking at the distribution of our puzzle ratings. Truly hard problems are precious, and we would always like to have more at the high end. The distribution is multimodal because puzzles of different lengths have different modes. +----------------+---------+ | ratings_band | count | |----------------+---------| | 100-199 | 5320 | | 200-299 | 2542 | | 300-399 | 31542 | | 400-499 | 10282 | | 500-599 | 4539 | | 600-699 | 7644 | | 700-799 | 6017 | | 800-899 | 5288 | | 900-999 | 5109 | | 1000-1099 | 5187 | | 1100-1199 | 4905 | | 1200-1299 | 4369 | | 1300-1399 | 8164 | | 1400-1499 | 8969 | | 1500-1599 | 8430 | | 1600-1699 | 8007 | | 1700-1799 | 7795 | | 1800-1899 | 8143 | | 1900-1999 | 9116 | | 2000-2099 | 10551 | | 2100-2199 | 10261 | | 2200-2299 | 7057 | | 2300-2399 | 2446 | | 2400-2499 | 1225 | | 2500-2599 | 1067 | | 2600-2699 | 1055 | | 2700-2799 | 964 | | 2800-2899 | 888 | | 2900-2999 | 881 | | 3000-3099 | 917 | | 3100-3199 | 434 | | 3200-3299 | 282 | | 3300-3399 | 144 | | 3400-3499 | 206 | | 3500-3599 | 131 | | 3600-3699 | 104 | | 3700-3799 | 86 | | 3800-3899 | 114 | | 3900-3999 | 42 | | 4000+ | 5 | +----------------+---------+
- sudhirj 6y ago
  Ah, thanks. That explains how you manage to have so many available. I like the progressive / adaptive mechanism as well, it keeps the challenge at the right level. Thanks for a great product. There were some issues (crashes) with the videos on iPad, but I assume you’ve seen that in your logs already.
  - drw 6y ago
    The iOS team doesn't see any recent crashes that associate to viewing videos. If you want to follow up, feel free to email me your chess.com username and the approximate date when you had trouble; the team could look up crashes which happened to that username. Both my personal and chess.com email addresses are in my profile.

srtjstjsj 6y ago

The vast majority of grandmasters didn't play chess at age 4.

thiago_fm 6y ago
That's incorrect. I did a lot of ending puzzles and knew a lot about openings and variations at age 5, learned mostly because a father of a friend was very enthusiastic about it. I quit playing around age 7 because some kids there were really out of my league and there wasn't enough government or support for me to continue playing given that I wasn't the best. I still play to this day, but mostly amateurish and very sporadically. Of course if you just want to do it for fun, it's fine. But if you can to become a GM and make a living playing chess, the bar is pretty high and it's very likely that you suck. You can start to play a bit later and become a GM, but it's a big gamble with your future. Most people I know who continued with chess nowadays are in the low 2K range, one made it to IM... all share extremely good memory and logical thinking and could just have been instead a lazy CS student and get top grades, eventually become a software engineer and enjoy a good life. But instead have a shitty life playing the same game all over again and have a hard time leaving it now to do something else, as it's the thing they dedicated their whole life to.
- YinglingLight 6y ago
  Chess is like Boxing. Pays nothing. The workload is insane, the natural talent is insane, your competition is global. Only the very top 0.5% get name recognition (money). And like Boxing, these athletes could get paid more had they devoted their life literally ANY other pursuit with their work ethic and talent. With far less punishment involved. Concept of Talent Stacking: https://personalexcellence.co/blog/talent-stack/ https://personalexcellence.co/blog/talent-stack/
  - ofrzeta 6y ago
    Work ethic ok but talent is domain-specific, isn't it?
    - beagle3 6y ago
      Read on Magnus Carlsen[0] and Josh Waitzkin[1] - both have top spots in other fields, (and I'm sure others do too, these are from memory). Either talent is less specific than you'd think, or work ethic is more important than you'd think. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Carlsen#Personal_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Carlsen#Personal_life [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Waitzkin#Martial_arts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Waitzkin#Martial_arts
      - ofrzeta 6y ago
        I don't see this with Carlsen. Fantasy football? Well ... Waitzkin may be successful in martial arts but still that's the exception not the norm. Also I would claim that talent is domain-specific insofar that very few people have a mental and a physical talent at the same time. For instance there are professional athletes who are very good in some other sport but I know of no one who is also very good at chess.
        beagle3 6y ago
        You may discard Fantasy Football, but it is not easy to be a top player - there are thousands of people who spend a few hours a day practicing, and have been for years. It’s been a while, but when Magnusen rose from “not playing”’to the top spot it was impressive and unusual. Emanuel Lasker was iirc a very noted mathematician. As I mentioned, this is from memory. I’ve known a person who had both made the national swim team as a 19-year old, and was a national bridge champion in his thirties (not in the US). I don’t know to separate talent from work ethics, but my layman’s impression is that that these aren’t simple, and definitely not independent, measures across fields.
    - bsder 6y ago
      The Polgar sisters are the counterexample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r
- dkural 6y ago
  Magnus Carlsen, the world champion, learned the rules of the game at 5 years old. Hikaru Nakamura started playing chess at age 7.
- gk1 6y ago
  > But instead have a shitty life playing the same game all over again and have a hard time leaving it now to do something else, as it's the thing they dedicated their whole life to. That's called an addiction, or more generously an obsession.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

drw 6y ago

Something we work very hard on at chess.com is the rating of the individual tactics puzzles. Some of you might enjoy looking at the distribution of our puzzle ratings. Truly hard problems are precious, and we would always like to have more at the high end. The distribution is multimodal because puzzles of different lengths have different modes. +----------------+---------+ | ratings_band | count | |----------------+---------| | 100-199 | 5320 | | 200-299 | 2542 | | 300-399 | 31542 | | 400-499 | 10282 | | 500-599 | 4539 | | 600-699 | 7644 | | 700-799 | 6017 | | 800-899 | 5288 | | 900-999 | 5109 | | 1000-1099 | 5187 | | 1100-1199 | 4905 | | 1200-1299 | 4369 | | 1300-1399 | 8164 | | 1400-1499 | 8969 | | 1500-1599 | 8430 | | 1600-1699 | 8007 | | 1700-1799 | 7795 | | 1800-1899 | 8143 | | 1900-1999 | 9116 | | 2000-2099 | 10551 | | 2100-2199 | 10261 | | 2200-2299 | 7057 | | 2300-2399 | 2446 | | 2400-2499 | 1225 | | 2500-2599 | 1067 | | 2600-2699 | 1055 | | 2700-2799 | 964 | | 2800-2899 | 888 | | 2900-2999 | 881 | | 3000-3099 | 917 | | 3100-3199 | 434 | | 3200-3299 | 282 | | 3300-3399 | 144 | | 3400-3499 | 206 | | 3500-3599 | 131 | | 3600-3699 | 104 | | 3700-3799 | 86 | | 3800-3899 | 114 | | 3900-3999 | 42 | | 4000+ | 5 | +----------------+---------+

sudhirj 6y ago
Ah, thanks. That explains how you manage to have so many available. I like the progressive / adaptive mechanism as well, it keeps the challenge at the right level. Thanks for a great product. There were some issues (crashes) with the videos on iPad, but I assume you’ve seen that in your logs already.
- drw 6y ago
  The iOS team doesn't see any recent crashes that associate to viewing videos. If you want to follow up, feel free to email me your chess.com username and the approximate date when you had trouble; the team could look up crashes which happened to that username. Both my personal and chess.com email addresses are in my profile.