Chess is a horrible mistress to have, I keep coming back to chess again and again.
At the same time, chess can bring such highs. This high comes not only from winning, but also from a well played game(even lost one).
Sad thing is, unless you get most of your 10,000 hours of "deliberate practice" at chess from the ages of 10-18, you'll never get any good. I am 2400 FIDE, but I missed ages 14-16, doing other things. The neural pathways in my brain are hard wired now, the basic tactical sense will never improve substantially, no matter how long I practice.
I am yet to find a counterexample, that is someone who started after age 25 and became a GM.
I might have meant "real good", that is GM strength and up (2500+).
However, if we define "any good" as 2000, then, as you said, even that level is hard to reach at a later age.
My point is as follows: almost anyone can reach good strength in chess if they put a lot of deliberate practice at the early age(case in point, Polgar sisters). Conversely, at a later age, it is much, much harder to progress.
Put a 25 year old on an island for 20 years with only a chess computer and chess literature, and they are unlikely to make more progress that a 12 year old would make in 2 years.
Chess is not unique in this regard, in fact, many passtimes/sports/hobbies have the same limitation. However, I think chessplayers often prefer to ignore this facet of chess.
50% of adult chess players with a USCF rating (who already tend to be more dedicated to chess than most chess players, who tend not to have a rating at all) have a rating of only 1400 or below.
With a rating of 2400 you're getting up around the 99th percentile. You could easily crush virtually every chess player with a USCF rating. Of course, there are chess players who are even better, but they are the elite of the elite.
(Note: I wasn't able to find the equivalent FIDE rating information, so I have to use USCF ratings here. But you can bear in mind that a player with a given FIDE rating is generally stronger than a player with the same USCF rating)
Chess is an enjoyable game regardless of what other entities are better than you at it. It is a recreational activity first and intellectual object of interest second. Really, should I give up drawing just because I'll never be as good as da Vinci?
Once you're good enough, the tactics melt away and you just think about the strategy. This is true with any competitive game. It takes a long time, and a lot of effort[1] to get to the level where you can have this "fairness epiphany", though. Strangely enough, a good documentary on the process exists in the form of a manga/anime series, Hikaru no Go, following a Go player as he is first guided through games, then plays, struggling, himself, until he finally has the epiphany and realizes he needs no help from a computer (or, in this case, ancient spirit) to make him better.
> Once you're good enough, the tactics melt away and you just think about the strategy.
That just isn't true. Remember the famous game where Kramnik got mated by the computer? It is impossible to play chess without ever searching the game tree. Different players search it to different extents, but there's nobody who is so good that they know all the tactics in a game by instinct.
By the way, thanks for linking to that site. I saw that "playing to win" article a while ago, and was really impressed by it, but then I forgot the title.
One of the fashions among chess players in these days of computer dominance is to talk about how chess is actually all tactics (or, as they like to put it, all "calculation").
I'm not big into playing chess on a computer, but it is fun to play against a friend once in a while. Just because something is better suited for a computer doesn't mean that you can't enjoy doing it yourself.
Go is significantly more strategic and it is possible to do well at the amateur level with middling tactical skills but a good strategic sense (the best, of course, are excellent at both). One of the most important lessons that I have the hardest time getting through to my students with is you must ask the question every time you put a stone down "what does this gain me? Is it more important for me to play here, or to play somewhere else?".
You can crush someone with good tactical play who wastes moves locally in this fashion. The difference one stone can make is astounding.
where are you getting the idea chess isn't incredibly strategic, or that not every move in chess counts and has to be considered carefully for what it gains?
amateur chess players are mostly terrible at tactics, by the way. non-masters hang a piece every game, pretty much. (but usually their opponent doesn't notice)
Bobby Fischer was widely attributed as saying he played chess because he liked to crush the other guy's ego. That's really the attraction of it - beating someone up with your mind.
Bobby Fischer was not exactly your typical chess player. Even other chess players generally consider Fischer to be immature, obnoxious, offensive, and mentally ill.
I would not use Fischer as a gauge for anything but genius and madness.
There are literally millions of chess players, and the source of their enjoyment of chess likely varies from player to player as it does for any other human activity.
In his prime, Fischer was the archetypal chess player. Just because he was an insane genius does not mean that all the things he said were wrong.
Because he was so good, he could say things about the game that were controversial, but deep down a lot of patzers knew that what he was saying was right.
Sure, one's source of enjoyment from chess varies between players, but what both Scott McCloud and Fischer were pointing out is that winning a game of chess makes you feel wonderful, and losing one makes you feel bad.
I think virtually every chess player would be familiar with those feelings, and would concede that "crushing the other guy's ego" (or its corollary "not having my ego crushed") has a little bit to do with it.
Whether you are playing Spassky for the World Championship or a game of blitz with a friend, the emotions are the same.
I would agree that most chess players probably feel good when they win and bad when they lose.
However, there's a big difference between that and agreeing with Fischer's goal of "crushing the other guy's ego" or your earlier assertion that chess is about "beating someone up with your mind". I don't think that's true at all, or at least no more true of chess than any other game.
Also, I would strongly disagree with Fischer being "the archetypical chessplayer". From what I've read about chess players through the ages and from my personal experience, the overwhelming majority of chess players are nothing like Fischer.
Sure, you will occasionally find an obnoxious, childish, mentally ill genius, but that's the exception. Even non-genius chess players are generally no more childish or obnoxious than people in the general population.
And I see no evidence that the average chess player's motivation is anything like Fischer's motivation, except wanting to win and hating to lose. But that's the same for players of any competitive game.
I wouldn't say that most chess players are like Fischer personally, it's that chess has a tendency to consume players to some degree, the way it consumed him almost completely. That's what I meant by archetype.
Personally, I found the rush from winning a game of chess to have a different character to winning at some other competitive game, and I think ego has something to do with it.
Maybe I suffer from some of the same flaws Fischer did (without the same gifts).
Yes, I would agree that chess is a game that people tend to obsess over to a degree not found in most other games. Scott McCloud's story is evidence of this, and there are many others like it.
But even there, Fischer is in a class with few peers. There's obsession and then there's all-consuming passion, which is more of where Fischer fit in (at least until his resignation from the World Championship).
In my opinion finding a (sound) tactical chess combination is comparable to solving a mathematical proof. Chess tactics are logical, artistically beautiful, and devastatingly decisive. To gain an appreciation for them, try solving the problem below (it's a classic). Every move white makes has a specific purpose - no subjective, wishy-washy strategies here - just absolute truth on the chessboard.
This is the idea of correspondence chess. In many tournaments, computer aid is allowed for this reason. See the ICCF, which runs many sanctioned web-based chess tournamnets where computer aid is allowed. http://www.iccf-webchess.com/
And a powerful reminder of the profound differences between the minds of each and every one of us. I can no more understand this kind of obsession than a dog could understand calculus.
Not saying it's bad, mind you. Rather the opposite, I enjoyed it immensely. Just that .. I'm always struck by a sense of forboding by this kind of thing. I could never be like this, and the fact that someone is .. has implications I find unsettling. If such variation is possible - who's to say it's not the norm? Maybe being obsessed with chess is the norm and I was just dropped on my head one too many times as a baby or had alcohol in my blood-surrogate and I'm the sub-gamma who is too stupid to see the fascinating brilliance of chess.
Unless you play chess a lot for years, it's hard to really see the beauty in it.
In that way, it's sort of like mathematics. Few adults would find arithmetic very beautiful, and if that's all they knew of math they might wonder what mathematicians see in mathematics. It takes years of dedication and practice to learn enough math to get to the higher levels, where one begins to see the beauty in math.
Chess is the same. Playing it after just learning the basics might be fun, but it's only once you've put in a significant investment of time in to the game that you begin to get a glimpse of its depth and beauty. Don't expect to see it after merely learning the rules and playing a few games.
That said, something has to keep you going until you learn enough chess to begin to really appreciate it. And that something, for most chess players, is mere enjoyment. For us it's just fun, and that's enough.
I have a theory that there's a certain addictive quality not just in chess but in a lot of cognitive pursuits. Anything that has certain payoff either in terms of winning the game, or even in simply seeing the solution (correct sequence) to a given position as a sort of "Aha!" moment.
My parents came to the same conclusion when I was about 5 when Bobby was getting a lot of attention as a real brat of a prodigy. My father had taught me to play, and after a few months, I beat him. Never played me again. Took me a long time to understand what had happened, and longer to forgive him.
Sad thing is, unless you get most of your 10,000 hours of "deliberate practice" at chess from the ages of 10-18, you'll never get any good. I am 2400 FIDE, but I missed ages 14-16, doing other things. The neural pathways in my brain are hard wired now, the basic tactical sense will never improve substantially, no matter how long I practice. I am yet to find a counterexample, that is someone who started after age 25 and became a GM.