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This is a very factual article explaining how to become a grandmaster, but I feel like it needs a disclaimer: I know that Hacker News likes the idea that if yo

This is a very factual article explaining how to become a grandmaster, but I feel like it needs a disclaimer: I know that Hacker News likes the idea that if you work hard enough then anything is possible [especially when there's so many easily available resources], but when it comes to becoming a grandmaster it has to be said that it's painstakingly hard. If you actually intend to become a grandmaster you'll essentially have to make your full life be devoted to chess for years. We're talking about making it your full-time job for at least 10 years. Yes, that's how hard it is. Today there are countless of IMs (the title just below GM) that has played since they were small kids, won a bunch of tournaments when they were teenagers and yet they realize that becoming a GM is so much work that it's not worth it. If you like chess, then play chess! It's a fun game with an amazing depth and a huge player base. But if you're just starting out: Please forget about having "becoming a grandmaster" as a goal.

publicola1990 5y ago
Actually I think there are seperate titles for correspondence chess, and these might be easier to get.
- judofyr 5y ago
  That's a good suggestion! Chess also has a very decent rating system (either the official FIDE rating or the ratings on online chess servers) so another way of setting yourself an achievable goal is to pick a rating (i.e. 1700 on Lichess) and then work towards that. Rinse and repeat!
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    I’d be happy with 1000. I keep getting close and then falling back into the 800s
300bps 5y ago
I used to play Scrabble daily and got pretty good. Memorized all of the two letter words, memorized a good number of the three letter words and thought about playing in a tournament. Then someone gave me the book Word Freak and I lost any interest in playing in a tournament. The people that win Scrabble tournaments memorize dictionaries as their full-time job hoping to make $20,000 in tournament prize money per year. I can't compete with that. It's still amazing to me though that the winner of the 2015 French Scrabble Tournament didn't speak French. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/21/424980378/winner-of-french-scrabble-title-does-not-speak-french https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/21/424980378... All of his strategy tools and anagram skills would've helped him but he still had to memorize 386,000 French words that he didn't know the meaning of.
- at_a_remove 5y ago
  This reminds me of when I got front row tickets to see Michael Moschen, a world-class juggler, perform. I knew just enough to understand how much he outclassed ... everyone. And then I stopped trying for any of the harder tricks.
  - yupper32 5y ago
    It's strange to me that so many of you seem to stop when you realize you're so far away from being at the top of the top of the top. I know the chances of me being on the PGA tour or being an Olympic level skier are basically 0%, but that doesn't stop me from improving myself and even competing in golf tournaments sometimes (I'm not a good enough freestyle skier yet to compete, but that doesn't mean I think it's impossible). It's not about winning the tournaments, it's about constantly improving myself and testing myself at the highest level I can qualify for. It's so confusing to me when I see people completely write themselves off. "Oh I'm 30, there's no way I'll be [a scratch golfer, able to do a backflip on skis, etc]". Maybe it won't happen, but why completely write yourself off before you even try?
    - CydeWeys 5y ago
      It depends why you're doing it. I have no illusions that I'll ever be anything close to an Olympic level skier, but I still find skiing fun, thus I do it. Similarly, I find Chess fun enough to the point that I will occasionally play a quick recreational game in situations where a Chess board is present. But if improving oneself involves doing lots of practice that itself isn't fun, then that's exceeded the limit of what I'm willing to do recreationally. I'm only putting that level of effort in something I don't find fun into one thing in my life: work.
      - yupper32 5y ago
        Sure, if you find the required work unfun, then so be it. I get it. I was more talking about the attitude of the person I responded to. They saw someone world class perform and then "stopped trying for any of the harder tricks." I don't understand that attitude. It's basically "I don't think I'll ever be world class, so why try anything at all?"
paulcole 5y ago
> We're talking about making it your full-time job for at least 10 years I played pretty high level scrabble and devoted 3 years of full-time effort to it (while holding down a menial job). I wasn’t particularly talented but I was willing to put the work in. Until one day I woke up and realized it was a total waste of time and moved on with my life. During that time I heard it put even more pessimistically about chess. That 10 years of dedicated effort allowed you to maybe see most of the game. There are people who devote their whole lives to Scrabble, poker, chess, backgammon, basketball etc. Many are horribly adjusted people and some of them end up incredibly skilled at a game. And a few of those people can end up making a living at it. The average person just can’t comprehend the skill gap between the people who live their lives around a game and themselves. There was an NBA benchwarmer named Brian Scalabrine who said about good YMCA basketball players, “I’m closer to LeBron James than you are to me.” It’s nearly impossible to even fathom how good truly top-level game players are.
- kemiller2002 5y ago
  Years ago I watched a documentary on the World Series of Poker. They asked one of the top players if he was a gambling addict. His response was essentially, "To reach our level of play, you pretty much have to be." This is true to be the best in really anything. I've had the privilege to meet people who are considered the best in the world in a couple of different disciplines. They all see to have similar traits, bad home life, most of the alcoholics, obsessive. Losing everything else seems to be the price of greatness in a discipline.
  - paulcole 5y ago
    For the most part I agree. But that said, there are definitely exceptions. Some truly world-class scrabble (and poker) players are well-adjusted, nice, friendly people, who seem otherwise normal.
    - kemiller2002 5y ago
      No, you're absolutely right. There are a number of people who are phenomenal at what they do, and balance their personal lives as well. edit: I would say some (not a lot) great people. I really do think it is an exception, but they are out there.
shantnutiwari 5y ago
> We're talking about making it your full-time job for at least 10 years. Yes, that's how hard it is. Very true An uncle of mine is a state chess champion in India, has often reached national level, but finds it hard to compete for this reason. He says most people who play and win at national level have sponsorships--so they practice chess full time. So its hard to even become a national level player without doing this either full time, for for many many decades (decades, not years)
bijant 5y ago
Even if you’re willing to devote 10 years of your life to chess you will not become a grandmaster unless you’re starting out as a child. You might be some kind of Ramanujan level chess prodigy, but those are rare these days and in any case You would find out quickly if you had that degree of talent. The accessibility of chess databases and engines that even the world champions of yore did not have means that anyone with a smartphone can train at the highest level. The best Ballerinas start dancing quite young, the greatest Chess Players have to start even younger. The case of the Polgar Sisters [1]is quite instructive. So even if your ambitions to become a GM might be doomed, you’re Children might just realize what you never will. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/László_Polgár https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/László_Polgár
- belter 5y ago
  On "The Man vs. The Machine" https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-man-vs-the-machine-fivethirtyeight-films-signals/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-man-vs-the-machine-...
- js8 5y ago
  I really admire Laszlo Polgar, and I agree that everybody can be raised a genius, but there is a caveat in it too - it takes a lot of effort on part of parents to groom children that way. Maybe it's easier than to become a chess GM, but in practice, lot more effort than most people are willing to (or even can) afford.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    With Olympics going on, this is very relevant. China has a training camp to dominate all aspects of the Olympics and training at young age is absolutely crucial. https://youtu.be/8-OGKGmxSbw https://youtu.be/8-OGKGmxSbw
- yboris 5y ago
  Thank you so much for sharing László Polgár! I have not heard of him before - I love his work now! I believe his claim: if we tried, we could turn "any healthy newborn" into "a genius". László Polgár raised his children focusing on chess. His two daughters became the best and second-best female chess players in the world.
me_me_me 5y ago
There is a great quote of Paul Morphy "The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." Only with age I can appreciate how true that quote is. There was an article that came up not long ago about GMs selling games for others to earn their GM norms. And the sad truth is being GM in chess doesn't put a food on the table. The very peak of the players can make a living some as coaches or streamers but not everyone can be a 'winner'.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  >> make a living some as coaches or streamers And in those jobs being good at chess is only part of the equation. You have to be personable, someone that people aspire to. Physical attractiveness is also never a bad thing in the world of streaming. I once chatted with concert violinist. She was not happy about trends in the soloist community. "The moment I saw an exposed midrift in a concert hall, I knew I would never be a soloist."
  - colmvp 5y ago
    > Physical attractiveness is also never a bad thing in the world of streaming. That's life in general. Even at my company when choosing photos of people to profile to for recruitment posts on LinkedIn, it's pretty clear they lean towards attractive people. I also notice that with Company Profile page, where who they show is not really indicative of who comprises the company.
    - alasdair_ 5y ago
      >That's life in general. Even at my company when choosing photos of people to profile to for recruitment posts on LinkedIn, it's pretty clear they lean towards attractive people. There have been several studies on this. Apparently being an attractive woman is a net negative when it comes to being hired by other women (6% fewer callbacks than the same resume with less attractive photo attached in one particular study). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1705244 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1705244
polytely 5y ago
Something also to keep in mind is that even if you become a GM making a career out of playing chess tournaments is REALLY hard, it is sometimes hard to break even because you have to pay travel costs to go from tourney to tourney. Hikaru made a really enlightening video about the economics of pro chess playing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hWlbsAVRN0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hWlbsAVRN0
- V-2 5y ago
  Out of playing tournaments, sure, but that's not the only source of income they have. Not even the main one. Tutoring is likely among the best options.
oldspleen 5y ago
> I know that Hacker News likes the idea that if you work hard enough then anything is possible [especially when there's so many easily available resources], but when it comes to becoming a grandmaster it has to be said that it's painstakingly hard what do you have to say about this article? https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200507/the-grandmaster-experiment https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200507/the-grand...
- curiousllama 5y ago
  The Polgar sisters are very well known. The more you learn, the more you will agree "painstakingly hard" is an apt description. Hard work will get you there, and in their case, hard work meant they were literally born and raised as human chess-playing experiments.
- scott_s 5y ago
  That article agrees with what the parent poster said, based on my skimming it. That article documents the great lengths those women, and their parents, went through to achieve their mastery. It also indicates their may be cognitive differences between high-level chess players and good amateurs.
TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
I suspect it's even harder than that. Chess GMs have a certain kind of mind, and no amount of training will give you that if you're not born with it. I honestly don't understand the "If you work hard enough you can do anything" mindset. To me it's clearly, obviously, objectively wrong - because otherwise you'd be able to take take absolutely any random child and turn them into a chess prodigy, a musical prodigy, an art prodigy, a literary prodigy, a sports prodigy or a STEM prodigy just by hot housing them. There's no doubt a lot of talent is wasted by circumstance. But does anyone really believe that at the top levels, hard work will compensate for lack of aptitude? Edit: Polgar experiment. Inconclusive without a bigger sample and a control group, surely.
- nvilcins 5y ago
  I think the problem is that people interpret the "do anything" part as "become #1 at anything" (i.e., "prodigy" as per the parent post). I would say something like "get to the 80th percentile at anything" (or even 95th) would be much more accurate, though, that doesn't sound as catchy. Heck, in many areas you don't even need to work _that_ much or hard to get to the top 20% or so, it's just a matter of a reasonably informed and structured approach, exercised over time.
  - lovecg 5y ago
    Obligatory Dan Luu reference on how 95th percentile of anything is not that impressive https://danluu.com/p95-skill/ https://danluu.com/p95-skill/
    - WJW 5y ago
      The article mentions that chess GM level is probably more like 99.9th percentile. At that level you need to be both very talented and practice very hard.
  - The_Colonel 5y ago
    > I would say something like "get to the 80th percentile at anything" (or even 95th) would be much more accurate, though, that doesn't sound as catchy. In many areas (sport, art etc.) being in the 80th or even 95th percentile means failure.
foobarian 5y ago
So basically same as becoming a hardcore nerd-level software engineer :-)
- edgyquant 5y ago
  I’d say it’s easier to make money as an engineer. Hikaru is an amazing player but he has to stream to make good money
  - agarden 5y ago
    Hikaru was making six figures before he ever took up streaming. He was sponsored by Red Bull back then.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  Well, no - if you'd become a "#100 ranked in the world" quality software engineer, you'd be making bank, and if you'd be in the top 10%, you'd still be very comfortable. If you'd be a #100 chess player, you might support yourself with chess somehow (e.g. coaching), but you have to really be at the top and win tournaments to get any meaningful money just by playing; and if you're top 10% then you're likely spending money to play chess and need a different profession to afford that. So unlike software engineers, you have to be among the few very best in order to make it your profession, that's a big difference.
paulddraper 5y ago
Watch grandmasters. Especially playing bullet/blitz. These are just a different species of human. The "I'm intelligent and I know the rules" is rated 800. The "I'm pretty good at chess" is rated 1200. A 1600 player will beat a 1200 player 9/10 times. A 2000 player will beat a 1600 player 9/10 times. A 2400 player (grandmaster) will beat a 2000 player 9/10 times. People like Eric Rosen and Levy Rozman base their entire career around studying, playing, and teaching chess on Twitch and Youtube. Hours and hours a day. They are really, really good and play in competitions. But even they are not at the grandmaster level. EDIT: To use an analogy, reaching grandmaster status is comparable to playing in the NBA.
- jpeter 5y ago
  A 2882 player (Magnus Carlsen) will beat a 2400 player 9/10 times. A 3544 engine (Stockfish) will beat a 2882 player 10/10 times.
  - t0mbstone 5y ago
    Maybe not fair to say "beat". Probably more fair to say "beat or draw"...
    - snarkypixel 5y ago
      Why? At equal level, sure, but when so far above it'd be surprising not to win.
    - CydeWeys 5y ago
      I think the context here is it's an average win rate across multiple games (i.e. playing both white/black an equal number of times per player).
    - paulddraper 5y ago
      A draw counts as "half beaten." So 8 wins and 2 draws is winning 9/10. --- A 660 point difference between Stockfish and Carlsen should be a 1 - 10^(-662/400) = 98% win rate for Stockfish. More than likely, that's 96% win, 4% draw, 0% loss.
axus 5y ago
It sounds a lot like playing professional sports, but without "Chess scholarships" in college.
- slyall 5y ago
  There are inter-college Chess competition. A few US Universities are serious about it and they do have people getting scholarships to play on the chess team. Source: Local (non-US) player got one of these.
zeteo 5y ago
Great, a top comment that aims to discourage people from even trying. It's unclear where you got this stuff from (maybe you're a grandmaster too?!) but this is well beyond what the author says. He mentions 2 hours per day for 10 years and that it's about consistency, not total time spent.
munificent 5y ago
This Neal Stephenson quote is relevant too, I think: Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad. When you're young, to some degree, anything is possible. But everything isn't. You gotta pick how you spend your time and once that choice is made, the time doesn't come back.
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  So true. Professor. Husband. Father. Now I'm just trying to eek in GMing a tabletop adventure. That is the extent that my time+ability will allow...and I'm not sure I'm that good at any of them (impostor syndrome)
blindmute 5y ago
What makes it even harder is that chess elo is a zero sum game. You not only have to reach a certain level of skill, you have to be better than other people and beat them. Those other people have also been training for 10 years since they were four years old. There has never been a person who became a GM who started chess older than 17; other than him it's almost exclusively under 14. If you aren't top 5% (~1900 FIDE) within the first year of starting to play, you don't have the talent. I cannot stress enough how impossible it is for anyone as a late teen or older to decide to become a GM. It has never happened. You might as well be 22 and decide you're going to start training for the olympic ice skating team. It's just not going to happen.
- bjourne 5y ago
  A Croatian player named Stjepan Tomic is trying to do exactly what you are claiming is impossible: https://www.youtube.com/c/HangingPawns/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/HangingPawns/videos The odds are clearly against him, but we'll see how it goes.
  - blindmute 5y ago
    I know, I watch his channel a lot. He has been training hard for three years and is still only 19XX elo. He doesn't have a chance. He may get a FM title eventually though.
    - bambax 5y ago
      I just watched his most recent game (153) where he makes a mistake he says he "can't explain" (starting at 18 minutes) and that after having made it he immediately resigned (apparently not even waiting for his opponent to play). He also says at other moments in the video that he was "terrified" of this or that. Isn't it possible that superior players simply have "better nerves" and self-confidence that let them stay calm in stressful situations, and avoid mistakes that other players make sooner or later?
      - bsder 5y ago
hrasyid 5y ago
so for people who likes chess: What level/rating is a good target for playing chess as a hobby, without trading away your life as would be needed for GM or other high statuses?
- tedsanders 5y ago
  Your question has no answer. Different people have different aptitudes and desires and time to devote. There's no rating above which everyone should feel proud and below which everyone should feel ashamed. People should play chess for fun and if they want to set targets, it's likely most fun to set them on a personalized basis, a bit above wherever they are now. Hobbies are supposed to be fun. Each person should do what they judge is fun. :)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
password321 5y ago
Not just painstakingly hard, I think for many it is impossible. Many IM's do think it is worth the effort but just can't reach it.
lcall 5y ago
I know someone (a little) who is a grandmaster. He obtained the title maybe around age 17 (+/- 2y) after doing it basically full-time through his youth, with strong family support, after showing strong promise at age 3. I'm pretty sure he and his family are glad of it, and it was a lot of work. His brothers and father are also very good at chess and have taught (rated, but not IMs I think). I'm very glad (AFAIK) he didn't have to abuse his body etc to get to that point. That doesn't seem worth it.
- lcall 5y ago
  (update: it was age 16. And a correction: his dad & bros might be rated; I heard a # for one of them once)
robomartin 5y ago
> If you like chess, then play chess! It's a fun game with an amazing depth and a huge player base. But if you're just starting out: Please forget about having "becoming a grandmaster" as a goal. I could not agree more. You can waste your entire life becoming excellent at chess and that's all you will gain, being excellent at chess. It is a myth that chess makes one smarter or more intelligent at other things in life. The skills are not transferable. That said, sure, there's a lot to chess that does transfer, such as: learning to concentrate for an extended period of time, accepting losing, learning to consider multiple possible solutions and uncertainty, etc. However, I feel that if one just plays chess and nobody makes some of these connections to real life some of these skills simply don't translate. My kids and I play almost every day. They love the game, try to win but I taught them not to care about winning or losing at all. It's much healthier that way. There have been cases when one of my kids might lose eight or more games in a day and not win a single one. Someone who is invested in this game could easily crumble and have a bad week because of something like that. In his case, he could not care less, he knows that sometimes you win and other times you do not. The following day he might have ten wins in a row, and that's fun enough. The other problem is that, in order to ascend through the ranks you have no option but to become a human database. This is what can consume a lifetime of study. Just learning a few openings, counterattacks and end-game strategies can elevate someone in ranking. That isn't super hard and I still consider it fun "sport" chess learning. To get much beyond that you are going to go up against people who devote every living minute to shoving a database of games and strategies into their brains. Which means you have to do the same. To what end? I often say that if you are going to study that hard for nothing you might as well study something like medicine and actually get something of value in exchange.

publicola1990 5y ago

Actually I think there are seperate titles for correspondence chess, and these might be easier to get.

judofyr 5y ago
That's a good suggestion! Chess also has a very decent rating system (either the official FIDE rating or the ratings on online chess servers) so another way of setting yourself an achievable goal is to pick a rating (i.e. 1700 on Lichess) and then work towards that. Rinse and repeat!
- edgyquant 5y ago
  I’d be happy with 1000. I keep getting close and then falling back into the 800s

300bps 5y ago

I used to play Scrabble daily and got pretty good. Memorized all of the two letter words, memorized a good number of the three letter words and thought about playing in a tournament. Then someone gave me the book Word Freak and I lost any interest in playing in a tournament. The people that win Scrabble tournaments memorize dictionaries as their full-time job hoping to make $20,000 in tournament prize money per year. I can't compete with that. It's still amazing to me though that the winner of the 2015 French Scrabble Tournament didn't speak French. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/21/424980378/winner-of-french-scrabble-title-does-not-speak-french https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/21/424980378... All of his strategy tools and anagram skills would've helped him but he still had to memorize 386,000 French words that he didn't know the meaning of.

at_a_remove 5y ago
This reminds me of when I got front row tickets to see Michael Moschen, a world-class juggler, perform. I knew just enough to understand how much he outclassed ... everyone. And then I stopped trying for any of the harder tricks.
- yupper32 5y ago
  It's strange to me that so many of you seem to stop when you realize you're so far away from being at the top of the top of the top. I know the chances of me being on the PGA tour or being an Olympic level skier are basically 0%, but that doesn't stop me from improving myself and even competing in golf tournaments sometimes (I'm not a good enough freestyle skier yet to compete, but that doesn't mean I think it's impossible). It's not about winning the tournaments, it's about constantly improving myself and testing myself at the highest level I can qualify for. It's so confusing to me when I see people completely write themselves off. "Oh I'm 30, there's no way I'll be [a scratch golfer, able to do a backflip on skis, etc]". Maybe it won't happen, but why completely write yourself off before you even try?
  - CydeWeys 5y ago
    It depends why you're doing it. I have no illusions that I'll ever be anything close to an Olympic level skier, but I still find skiing fun, thus I do it. Similarly, I find Chess fun enough to the point that I will occasionally play a quick recreational game in situations where a Chess board is present. But if improving oneself involves doing lots of practice that itself isn't fun, then that's exceeded the limit of what I'm willing to do recreationally. I'm only putting that level of effort in something I don't find fun into one thing in my life: work.
    - yupper32 5y ago
      Sure, if you find the required work unfun, then so be it. I get it. I was more talking about the attitude of the person I responded to. They saw someone world class perform and then "stopped trying for any of the harder tricks." I don't understand that attitude. It's basically "I don't think I'll ever be world class, so why try anything at all?"

paulcole 5y ago

> We're talking about making it your full-time job for at least 10 years I played pretty high level scrabble and devoted 3 years of full-time effort to it (while holding down a menial job). I wasn’t particularly talented but I was willing to put the work in. Until one day I woke up and realized it was a total waste of time and moved on with my life. During that time I heard it put even more pessimistically about chess. That 10 years of dedicated effort allowed you to maybe see most of the game. There are people who devote their whole lives to Scrabble, poker, chess, backgammon, basketball etc. Many are horribly adjusted people and some of them end up incredibly skilled at a game. And a few of those people can end up making a living at it. The average person just can’t comprehend the skill gap between the people who live their lives around a game and themselves. There was an NBA benchwarmer named Brian Scalabrine who said about good YMCA basketball players, “I’m closer to LeBron James than you are to me.” It’s nearly impossible to even fathom how good truly top-level game players are.

kemiller2002 5y ago
Years ago I watched a documentary on the World Series of Poker. They asked one of the top players if he was a gambling addict. His response was essentially, "To reach our level of play, you pretty much have to be." This is true to be the best in really anything. I've had the privilege to meet people who are considered the best in the world in a couple of different disciplines. They all see to have similar traits, bad home life, most of the alcoholics, obsessive. Losing everything else seems to be the price of greatness in a discipline.
- paulcole 5y ago
  For the most part I agree. But that said, there are definitely exceptions. Some truly world-class scrabble (and poker) players are well-adjusted, nice, friendly people, who seem otherwise normal.
  - kemiller2002 5y ago
    No, you're absolutely right. There are a number of people who are phenomenal at what they do, and balance their personal lives as well. edit: I would say some (not a lot) great people. I really do think it is an exception, but they are out there.

shantnutiwari 5y ago

> We're talking about making it your full-time job for at least 10 years. Yes, that's how hard it is. Very true An uncle of mine is a state chess champion in India, has often reached national level, but finds it hard to compete for this reason. He says most people who play and win at national level have sponsorships--so they practice chess full time. So its hard to even become a national level player without doing this either full time, for for many many decades (decades, not years)

bijant 5y ago

Even if you’re willing to devote 10 years of your life to chess you will not become a grandmaster unless you’re starting out as a child. You might be some kind of Ramanujan level chess prodigy, but those are rare these days and in any case You would find out quickly if you had that degree of talent. The accessibility of chess databases and engines that even the world champions of yore did not have means that anyone with a smartphone can train at the highest level. The best Ballerinas start dancing quite young, the greatest Chess Players have to start even younger. The case of the Polgar Sisters [1]is quite instructive. So even if your ambitions to become a GM might be doomed, you’re Children might just realize what you never will. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/László_Polgár https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/László_Polgár

belter 5y ago
On "The Man vs. The Machine" https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-man-vs-the-machine-fivethirtyeight-films-signals/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-man-vs-the-machine-...
js8 5y ago
I really admire Laszlo Polgar, and I agree that everybody can be raised a genius, but there is a caveat in it too - it takes a lot of effort on part of parents to groom children that way. Maybe it's easier than to become a chess GM, but in practice, lot more effort than most people are willing to (or even can) afford.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  With Olympics going on, this is very relevant. China has a training camp to dominate all aspects of the Olympics and training at young age is absolutely crucial. https://youtu.be/8-OGKGmxSbw https://youtu.be/8-OGKGmxSbw
yboris 5y ago
Thank you so much for sharing László Polgár! I have not heard of him before - I love his work now! I believe his claim: if we tried, we could turn "any healthy newborn" into "a genius". László Polgár raised his children focusing on chess. His two daughters became the best and second-best female chess players in the world.

me_me_me 5y ago

There is a great quote of Paul Morphy "The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." Only with age I can appreciate how true that quote is. There was an article that came up not long ago about GMs selling games for others to earn their GM norms. And the sad truth is being GM in chess doesn't put a food on the table. The very peak of the players can make a living some as coaches or streamers but not everyone can be a 'winner'.

sandworm101 5y ago
>> make a living some as coaches or streamers And in those jobs being good at chess is only part of the equation. You have to be personable, someone that people aspire to. Physical attractiveness is also never a bad thing in the world of streaming. I once chatted with concert violinist. She was not happy about trends in the soloist community. "The moment I saw an exposed midrift in a concert hall, I knew I would never be a soloist."
- colmvp 5y ago
  > Physical attractiveness is also never a bad thing in the world of streaming. That's life in general. Even at my company when choosing photos of people to profile to for recruitment posts on LinkedIn, it's pretty clear they lean towards attractive people. I also notice that with Company Profile page, where who they show is not really indicative of who comprises the company.
  - alasdair_ 5y ago
    >That's life in general. Even at my company when choosing photos of people to profile to for recruitment posts on LinkedIn, it's pretty clear they lean towards attractive people. There have been several studies on this. Apparently being an attractive woman is a net negative when it comes to being hired by other women (6% fewer callbacks than the same resume with less attractive photo attached in one particular study). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1705244 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1705244

polytely 5y ago

Something also to keep in mind is that even if you become a GM making a career out of playing chess tournaments is REALLY hard, it is sometimes hard to break even because you have to pay travel costs to go from tourney to tourney. Hikaru made a really enlightening video about the economics of pro chess playing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hWlbsAVRN0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hWlbsAVRN0

V-2 5y ago
Out of playing tournaments, sure, but that's not the only source of income they have. Not even the main one. Tutoring is likely among the best options.

oldspleen 5y ago

> I know that Hacker News likes the idea that if you work hard enough then anything is possible [especially when there's so many easily available resources], but when it comes to becoming a grandmaster it has to be said that it's painstakingly hard what do you have to say about this article? https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200507/the-grandmaster-experiment https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200507/the-grand...

curiousllama 5y ago
The Polgar sisters are very well known. The more you learn, the more you will agree "painstakingly hard" is an apt description. Hard work will get you there, and in their case, hard work meant they were literally born and raised as human chess-playing experiments.
scott_s 5y ago
That article agrees with what the parent poster said, based on my skimming it. That article documents the great lengths those women, and their parents, went through to achieve their mastery. It also indicates their may be cognitive differences between high-level chess players and good amateurs.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

I suspect it's even harder than that. Chess GMs have a certain kind of mind, and no amount of training will give you that if you're not born with it. I honestly don't understand the "If you work hard enough you can do anything" mindset. To me it's clearly, obviously, objectively wrong - because otherwise you'd be able to take take absolutely any random child and turn them into a chess prodigy, a musical prodigy, an art prodigy, a literary prodigy, a sports prodigy or a STEM prodigy just by hot housing them. There's no doubt a lot of talent is wasted by circumstance. But does anyone really believe that at the top levels, hard work will compensate for lack of aptitude? Edit: Polgar experiment. Inconclusive without a bigger sample and a control group, surely.

nvilcins 5y ago
I think the problem is that people interpret the "do anything" part as "become #1 at anything" (i.e., "prodigy" as per the parent post). I would say something like "get to the 80th percentile at anything" (or even 95th) would be much more accurate, though, that doesn't sound as catchy. Heck, in many areas you don't even need to work _that_ much or hard to get to the top 20% or so, it's just a matter of a reasonably informed and structured approach, exercised over time.
- lovecg 5y ago
  Obligatory Dan Luu reference on how 95th percentile of anything is not that impressive https://danluu.com/p95-skill/ https://danluu.com/p95-skill/
  - WJW 5y ago
    The article mentions that chess GM level is probably more like 99.9th percentile. At that level you need to be both very talented and practice very hard.
- The_Colonel 5y ago
  > I would say something like "get to the 80th percentile at anything" (or even 95th) would be much more accurate, though, that doesn't sound as catchy. In many areas (sport, art etc.) being in the 80th or even 95th percentile means failure.

foobarian 5y ago

So basically same as becoming a hardcore nerd-level software engineer :-)

edgyquant 5y ago
I’d say it’s easier to make money as an engineer. Hikaru is an amazing player but he has to stream to make good money
- agarden 5y ago
  Hikaru was making six figures before he ever took up streaming. He was sponsored by Red Bull back then.
PeterisP 5y ago
Well, no - if you'd become a "#100 ranked in the world" quality software engineer, you'd be making bank, and if you'd be in the top 10%, you'd still be very comfortable. If you'd be a #100 chess player, you might support yourself with chess somehow (e.g. coaching), but you have to really be at the top and win tournaments to get any meaningful money just by playing; and if you're top 10% then you're likely spending money to play chess and need a different profession to afford that. So unlike software engineers, you have to be among the few very best in order to make it your profession, that's a big difference.

paulddraper 5y ago

Watch grandmasters. Especially playing bullet/blitz. These are just a different species of human. The "I'm intelligent and I know the rules" is rated 800. The "I'm pretty good at chess" is rated 1200. A 1600 player will beat a 1200 player 9/10 times. A 2000 player will beat a 1600 player 9/10 times. A 2400 player (grandmaster) will beat a 2000 player 9/10 times. People like Eric Rosen and Levy Rozman base their entire career around studying, playing, and teaching chess on Twitch and Youtube. Hours and hours a day. They are really, really good and play in competitions. But even they are not at the grandmaster level. EDIT: To use an analogy, reaching grandmaster status is comparable to playing in the NBA.

jpeter 5y ago
A 2882 player (Magnus Carlsen) will beat a 2400 player 9/10 times. A 3544 engine (Stockfish) will beat a 2882 player 10/10 times.
- t0mbstone 5y ago
  Maybe not fair to say "beat". Probably more fair to say "beat or draw"...
  - snarkypixel 5y ago
    Why? At equal level, sure, but when so far above it'd be surprising not to win.
  - CydeWeys 5y ago
    I think the context here is it's an average win rate across multiple games (i.e. playing both white/black an equal number of times per player).
  - paulddraper 5y ago
    A draw counts as "half beaten." So 8 wins and 2 draws is winning 9/10. --- A 660 point difference between Stockfish and Carlsen should be a 1 - 10^(-662/400) = 98% win rate for Stockfish. More than likely, that's 96% win, 4% draw, 0% loss.

axus 5y ago

It sounds a lot like playing professional sports, but without "Chess scholarships" in college.

slyall 5y ago
There are inter-college Chess competition. A few US Universities are serious about it and they do have people getting scholarships to play on the chess team. Source: Local (non-US) player got one of these.

zeteo 5y ago

Great, a top comment that aims to discourage people from even trying. It's unclear where you got this stuff from (maybe you're a grandmaster too?!) but this is well beyond what the author says. He mentions 2 hours per day for 10 years and that it's about consistency, not total time spent.

munificent 5y ago

This Neal Stephenson quote is relevant too, I think: Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad. When you're young, to some degree, anything is possible. But everything isn't. You gotta pick how you spend your time and once that choice is made, the time doesn't come back.

SubiculumCode 5y ago
So true. Professor. Husband. Father. Now I'm just trying to eek in GMing a tabletop adventure. That is the extent that my time+ability will allow...and I'm not sure I'm that good at any of them (impostor syndrome)

blindmute 5y ago

What makes it even harder is that chess elo is a zero sum game. You not only have to reach a certain level of skill, you have to be better than other people and beat them. Those other people have also been training for 10 years since they were four years old. There has never been a person who became a GM who started chess older than 17; other than him it's almost exclusively under 14. If you aren't top 5% (~1900 FIDE) within the first year of starting to play, you don't have the talent. I cannot stress enough how impossible it is for anyone as a late teen or older to decide to become a GM. It has never happened. You might as well be 22 and decide you're going to start training for the olympic ice skating team. It's just not going to happen.

bjourne 5y ago
A Croatian player named Stjepan Tomic is trying to do exactly what you are claiming is impossible: https://www.youtube.com/c/HangingPawns/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/HangingPawns/videos The odds are clearly against him, but we'll see how it goes.
- blindmute 5y ago
  I know, I watch his channel a lot. He has been training hard for three years and is still only 19XX elo. He doesn't have a chance. He may get a FM title eventually though.
  - bambax 5y ago
    I just watched his most recent game (153) where he makes a mistake he says he "can't explain" (starting at 18 minutes) and that after having made it he immediately resigned (apparently not even waiting for his opponent to play). He also says at other moments in the video that he was "terrified" of this or that. Isn't it possible that superior players simply have "better nerves" and self-confidence that let them stay calm in stressful situations, and avoid mistakes that other players make sooner or later?
    - bsder 5y ago

hrasyid 5y ago

so for people who likes chess: What level/rating is a good target for playing chess as a hobby, without trading away your life as would be needed for GM or other high statuses?

tedsanders 5y ago
Your question has no answer. Different people have different aptitudes and desires and time to devote. There's no rating above which everyone should feel proud and below which everyone should feel ashamed. People should play chess for fun and if they want to set targets, it's likely most fun to set them on a personalized basis, a bit above wherever they are now. Hobbies are supposed to be fun. Each person should do what they judge is fun. :)
deleted 5y ago
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password321 5y ago

Not just painstakingly hard, I think for many it is impossible. Many IM's do think it is worth the effort but just can't reach it.

lcall 5y ago

I know someone (a little) who is a grandmaster. He obtained the title maybe around age 17 (+/- 2y) after doing it basically full-time through his youth, with strong family support, after showing strong promise at age 3. I'm pretty sure he and his family are glad of it, and it was a lot of work. His brothers and father are also very good at chess and have taught (rated, but not IMs I think). I'm very glad (AFAIK) he didn't have to abuse his body etc to get to that point. That doesn't seem worth it.

lcall 5y ago
(update: it was age 16. And a correction: his dad & bros might be rated; I heard a # for one of them once)

robomartin 5y ago

> If you like chess, then play chess! It's a fun game with an amazing depth and a huge player base. But if you're just starting out: Please forget about having "becoming a grandmaster" as a goal. I could not agree more. You can waste your entire life becoming excellent at chess and that's all you will gain, being excellent at chess. It is a myth that chess makes one smarter or more intelligent at other things in life. The skills are not transferable. That said, sure, there's a lot to chess that does transfer, such as: learning to concentrate for an extended period of time, accepting losing, learning to consider multiple possible solutions and uncertainty, etc. However, I feel that if one just plays chess and nobody makes some of these connections to real life some of these skills simply don't translate. My kids and I play almost every day. They love the game, try to win but I taught them not to care about winning or losing at all. It's much healthier that way. There have been cases when one of my kids might lose eight or more games in a day and not win a single one. Someone who is invested in this game could easily crumble and have a bad week because of something like that. In his case, he could not care less, he knows that sometimes you win and other times you do not. The following day he might have ten wins in a row, and that's fun enough. The other problem is that, in order to ascend through the ranks you have no option but to become a human database. This is what can consume a lifetime of study. Just learning a few openings, counterattacks and end-game strategies can elevate someone in ranking. That isn't super hard and I still consider it fun "sport" chess learning. To get much beyond that you are going to go up against people who devote every living minute to shoving a database of games and strategies into their brains. Which means you have to do the same. To what end? I often say that if you are going to study that hard for nothing you might as well study something like medicine and actually get something of value in exchange.