English Chess Forum

is.... Keith Arkell

http://www.englishchess.org.uk/ecf-play ... more-29665

Well done Keith, fully deserved. Nice to see Beckenham's Alan Fraser matching scores with Matthew Sadler in eighth spot, which is fair. Matthew won the Open at Blackpool in March, while Alan took the Minor. But it's Alan's 283 graded standard play games (beating his 276 from the previous year) that puts him in the picture, a figure that's way out of sight of any other League or Congress player in England at the moment.

David Gilbert wrote: But it's Alan's 283 graded standard play games (beating his 276 from the previous year) that puts him in the picture, a figure tha's way out of sight of any other League or Congress player in England at the moment.

Something that baffles me a little about players with astronomic totals of games in a season. If you improve with practice and experience, how come many of these players never improve their grades? Is it that they don't every so often take a break and review why they aren't getting better results?

I think it is more to do with their age. Alan is 81, only a couple of years younger than me. It's not easy to improve ones grade at that age.

Roger de Coverly wrote:Something that baffles me a little about players with astronomic totals of games in a season. If you improve with practice and experience, how come many of these players never improve their grades? Is it that they don't every so often take a break and review why they aren't getting better results?

I think it’s because you don’t improve with practice and experience. Not necessarily, anyway. Children get better just by playing. That’s for sure. Adults not so.

I’m no expert, but I suspect it may have something to do with how plasticity of the brain changes as we age.

Jonathan Bryant wrote: I think it’s because you don’t improve with practice and experience. Not necessarily, anyway.

But I get better by playing you Jonathan - well, my grade goes up at least...

Jonathan Bryant wrote:

Roger de Coverly wrote:Something that baffles me a little about players with astronomic totals of games in a season. If you improve with practice and experience, how come many of these players never improve their grades? Is it that they don't every so often take a break and review why they aren't getting better results?

I think it’s because you don’t improve with practice and experience. Not necessarily, anyway. Children get better just by playing. That’s for sure. Adults not so.

I’m no expert, but I suspect it may have something to do with how plasticity of the brain changes as we age.

That's probably correct according to the comments surrounding the theory of "10,000 hours to Genius"

http://www.research-live.com/news/10000 ... 97.article