I worked out he answer to this tangentially about 10 years ago. My eldest son could give me a good game but was nowhere near getting a draw. I told him that if he joined my local club's junior section, which would involve 2 hours after school 3 or 4 days a week, then by the age of 16 he would be beating me comfortably. I hoped to appeal to his strong Oedipus complex but to no avail.Nigel_Davies wrote: Of course the question still remains as to why someone would want to work on their chess (maybe 5,000 hours for IM, 10,000 for GM !?) without any financial support or hope of much income in the future, when they could do something else where the rewards are much greater.
That got me thinking. The junior coach is about 2150. The club also has a GM and an IM who both do private 1-1 coaching. That is one GM more than the whole of the UK had when I was growing up. Surely if I'd had the opportunities modern kids have I'd have been at least an IM if not a GM? Then I thought, Tony Miles, who was a year older than me, became one of the top players in the world with no GM coaching (and possibly no IM coaching either). Miles went to Sheffield University to study maths. I went to Oxford University to study maths. I'm pretty sure I was more "intelligent" than Miles yet he became one of the best players in the world and I became a good club player (IMHO;-)).
So, what was the difference between us that made all the difference? Then, in "It's Only Me" I read that when Miles learnt to play "he played every day for a year" and I had the answer. He loved chess. Full Stop. I knew the feeling. I loved maths. At the age of 12 or 13 I stopped spending my pocketmoney on Biggles books and started buying maths books. For fun! I still have the first one I every bought - "Riddles in Mathematics" by Eugene P. Northrop - for one shilling from the second hand bookshop that used to be opposite the Priestman Building of Sunderland Polytechnic.
So, there you have it. "All you need is love" as the Beatles sang. If you want further confirmation it has been supplied by the American superstar basketball player, Kobe Bryant. I understand him perfectly. And so would Miles.