Adult Beginner(?) to FM

[Roger de Coverly]

There's another self improvement blog.
https://andycouchmanchess.wordpress.com/

I don't think he's played any ECF graded chess yet.

The 10,000 hours to master a subject is raised again. If you count actual playing time, you can reach that target over time. Say a game lasts three hours but triggers another two hours before and after in preparation and analysis. At 100 games a season, you would reach 10,000 hours in 20 years.

As getting an FM title is about gaining a rating of 2300, learning how to beat people has to be important. We may see how effective is his training when he starts posting games and analysis.

[MartinCarpenter]

Well we know for a stone cold, enormously verified fact that merely playing games can't possibly qualify towards that 10,000 hours thing

10,000 hours of absolutely strongly directed learning perhaps if you've a lot of talent to start with but have somehow avoided the game in your youth.

[Roger de Coverly]

Well we know for a stone cold, enormously verified fact that merely playing games can't possibly qualify towards that 10,000 hours thing

Perhaps it's a personal preference, but if intent on learning an unfamiliar opening, I would want to put in some mileage by playing it in five minute games. Afterwards you check the theory and analyse with an engine for ideas seen and ideas missed. I agree that many of the most active adult players rarely increase their grade or rating from one year to the next. I'm never quite sure why, perhaps it's a reluctance to take time out from playing to investigate why they failed to win, draw, or even trouble their opponent.

[James Plaskett]

I emailed that bloke, Roger, yesterday, after he befriended me on Twitter.
I asked him if he´d like to take online coaching from me (!?)

Now THERE´s a coincidence, eh?¿!!

[Jonathan Bryant]

10,000 hours of absolutely strongly directed learning ...

That’s tautology since the 10,000 hours in the 10,000 hours idea is 10,000 hours of strongly direct learning not just 10,000 of any kind of activity related to the thing in question. Which is why we’re all still rubbish despite putting in well over 10,000 hours at the game.

As per Roger’s post, I don’t think it’s a mystery why adults don’t improve. It’s pretty simple isn’t it? We don’t do the things you need to do to improve. We don’t do them because proper practice "strongly directed learning" as you put it is hard and unpleasant. It isn’t fun at all.

[Roger de Coverly]

We don’t do them because proper practice "strongly directed learning" as you put it is hard and unpleasant. It isn’t fun at all.

Someone who did put in the hours on tactics training was Steve Carr of Liverpool, who posted about it here from time to time. It benefited his ECF grade as it's now over 200. I encountered him at the North Wales Open this year. I contrived to follow a game in a very sharp line of the King's Indian that I had previously lost to Simon Williams. He didn't play it as aggressively as Simon, preferring to prop up pawns on e4 and g4 with f3, rather than Simon's Bf3 (There's still a Knight on g1). Later he offered a draw at move 20, which I declined, almost on principle. According to engines, I was a bit worse at this stage. Later in an ending at move 36, he again offered a draw, which I accepted because I couldn't see a good continuation. Again according to an engine, there was one and I could plausibly play for a win, had I spotted it.

[Jonathan Bryant]

Someone who did put in the hours on tactics training was Steve Carr of Liverpool, who posted about it here from time to time.

Yes, I was thinking about that chap when I read this thread - although I confess I couldn’t remember his name. If I recall correctly he said once he was spending 3 hours a day on tactics. That’s an extraordinary amount of time to spend on something that you’re not being paid to do.

3 hours today is not a problem. 3 hours tomorrow harder. 3 hours all of next week is trickier still. 3 hours each day next month and most of us will have dropped out. Which is why they’re aren’t many Steve Carr’s and there are loads of the rest of us. And that’s before you get into it having to be purposeful practice and not generally dicking around.

FWIW, I’m pretty sure we all could be 200 ECF if we wanted. That’s an untestable opinion of course but I’m pretty sure it’s true. I’m pretty sure we could all be grade 8 piano players as well for that matter (an opinion I’ve heard from more than one piano teacher). It’s just a question of motivation and putting in the hours on a consistent basis over a long period of time. Most of us just don't’ want to do the practice. We’d rather hang out on internet forums, write blogs or what have you.

I’m less confident we could all be FMs, btw. That’s another notch further, Credit to the chap who is the subject of the thread for starting out. I’ll be impressed if he lasts a year let alone 15.

[IM Jack Rudd]

I could get anyone to FM if I controlled the tournaments they entered closely enough. Of course, this would not be a meaningful exercise.

[JustinHorton]

FWIW, I’m pretty sure we all could be 200 ECF if we wanted. That’s an untestable opinion of course but I’m pretty sure it’s true.

Are we varying at all for age here, and if so, how much? I think that it would be significantly harder (and perhaps impossible) for somebody aged 65 to get from, say, 150 to 200 than for somebody aged 25.

There's a fair few retired chessplayers out there (In the sense of retired from employment rather than retired from chess). I wonder how many, if any, have made serious attempts to increase the playing strength significantly, and whether any have succeeeded for any length of time?

[Jonathan Bryant]

FWIW, I’m pretty sure we all could be 200 ECF if we wanted. That’s an untestable opinion of course but I’m pretty sure it’s true.

Are we varying at all for age here, and if so, how much? I think that it would be significantly harder (and perhaps impossible) for somebody aged 65 to get from, say, 150 to 200 than for somebody aged 25.

Good question. I suppose be "we all" I meant people like me and you. People like most of us on the forum - i.e folk who’d played quite a bit of chess and never amounted to anything (no offence).

As for age - it all depends I think.

I have 5-10 years on the guy who was the original subject of this thread and certainly I struggle with retaining information these days. I struggle with tiredness at the end of games and during tournaments. From that point of view it’s tougher as you get older sure ...

But then again...

A person of 25 may have a five figure debt to pay off after graduation and be paying enormous sums in rent. Having to earn the money to service the cost of living could prevent him or her from doing much chess work. I suspect a lot of retired and semi-retired people - a certain constituency of that age group, anyway - are rather comfortable and with time available. Maybe in some sense that gives an opportunity the younger person doesn’t have.

Of course for some folk retirement = poverty and reduced circumstances but I suspect there are a fair few in their 50s who would be quite happy to retire/semi-retire and find something else to do with the time (and are financially able to do so). I’m not sure that demographic really existed before. They also have information and access to strong coaches undreamed of when we started playing.


As for people improving and maintaining improvement later in life: Terry Chapman springs to mind. I think it would not unreasonable to consider him a special case, though;

[MartinCarpenter]

FWIW, I’m pretty sure we all could be 200 ECF if we wanted. That’s an untestable opinion of course but I’m pretty sure it’s true.

I'm not sure about 200 actually. With the regrading its maybe more 205-210 territory nowadays, but you really are pushing into the thin parts of the normal distribution there. Think it might need a fair bit of natural aptitude.

[JustinHorton]

I suspect a lot of retired and semi-retired people - a certain constituency of that age group, anyway - are rather comfortable and with time available. Maybe in some sense that gives an opportunity the younger person doesn’t have.

Of course for some folk retirement = poverty and reduced circumstances but I suspect there are a fair few in their 50s who would be quite happy to retire/semi-retire and find something else to do with the time (and are financially able to do so). I’m not sure that demographic really existed before. They also have information and access to strong coaches undreamed of when we started playing.

That's why I wonder whether there are any people of that demographic currently undertaking any such scheme of improvement, however tightly or loosely defined, or whether any have done so in the last generation, say: and if so, how they got on.

[stevencarr]

FWIW, I’m pretty sure we all could be 200 ECF if we wanted. That’s an untestable opinion of course but I’m pretty sure it’s true. I’m pretty sure we could all be grade 8 piano players as well for that matter (an opinion I’ve heard from more than one piano teacher). It’s just a question of motivation and putting in the hours on a consistent basis over a long period of time. Most of us just don't’ want to do the practice. We’d rather hang out on internet forums, write blogs or what have you.

I am now doing piano more than chess. I got my ambition of reaching 200+, beating a titled player and winning a weekend Open. I'm only grade 1 at present on piano.

One problem with the guy who is going from beginner to FM is that he is getting older.

If he is like me, he will find it harder and harder to remember theory.

I think a lot of people could hit 200 if they tried hard. It is really not a high standard. I make a load of mistakes.

[Jonathan Bryant]

... you really are pushing into the thin parts of the normal distribution there. Think it might need a fair bit of natural aptitude.

Why? By which I mean why assume that a guy who is, say, high 160s and has been playing chess for 30 years is not at 200 because he lacks natural aptitude when he has a 30 year history of not undertaking any structured or meaningful work on chess whatsoever?

The normal distribution is a distribution of a population that mostly doesn’t work. At all. Go to the right hand end and you’ll find people who’ve done loads of work. I don’t see why you assume natural aptitude would come into it at 200.


Not that I’m dismissing 'talent' as a concept. The problem with the 10,000 hours concept as originally explained is that while it may be true that the top level violinists have practiced a thousand or two thousand hours more than those the next notch down, it’s rarely considered that the top fiddlers possibly practiced more because they were more talented in the first place. It’s nice to practice things that you’re good at, after all. Less amusing to practice things you’re not good at.

[IM Jack Rudd]

Not that I’m dismissing 'talent' as a concept. The problem with the 10,000 hours concept as originally explained is that while it may be true that the top level violinists have practiced a thousand or two thousand hours more than those the next notch down, it’s rarely considered that the top fiddlers possibly practiced more because they were more talented in the first place. It’s nice to practice things that you’re good at, after all. Less amusing to practice things you’re not good at.

That was the problem I had with the hypothesis when I read the book in question: the author seemed to be dismissing talent as a possible explanation for anything, but he was doing so based on experiments that would never have shown a big talent-related effect anyway (for example, the much quoted examples from music schools: music schools deliberately select based on perceived talent, so the sample will have a very narrow talent range whether or not talent really exists).