Children reproduce and there is no talent in reproducing

All of this only raises the question what a "Wunderkind" is really all about. They are usually the project of their parents. In piano you got to force your 4 year old child to practice for 10 hours each day and it will be a master pianist at the age of 7. In chess, you can have it trained in opening theory by some washed up GM and make him memorize engine printouts and your child will be GM at the age of 12.

That is if the child can imagine the board like a diagram with eyes closed. Let's not "kid" ourselves. In order to become successful at chess, you need to have the physical ability to play blindfold, which only a few people seem to have. Without this core ability, you can still become a strong player on club level of course.

Besides that, I don't really care about children achieving something special. What's the point in it? They don't stop growing older and who knows how much they will improve in the future. Leko was a child prodigy, Bacrot and Ponomariov too. 15 year old Radjabov even beat Kasparov. Nowadays with the exception of Radjabov these guys don't even get invited to the absolute top events anymore. Nowadys it is Giri's turn and that young chinese. I don't even care about their games, because it's 100% engine prep up until move 35. It doesn't matter if Giri plays the line first or Adams or Caruana. They are all using the same engines anyways. In fact they could even set up the games like they set up fights in wrestling. It's a travelling circus after all whey the same guys play each other over and over again all year long.

Children are humans too and there is nothing special about it when children achieve something, because they couldn't have done it without massive support by their parents. The parents pay the teachers and without teachers those kids achieve nothing. We all think of children as being somewhat mentally ******ed and that's why we are impressed when the accomplish something. But really, who cares?

If your dog brings the newspaper it's quite impressive, but all you have is your newspaper. Big deal! If a 12 year old can memorize a forced draw in the Najdorf Poisoned Pawn, all you got is a draw. Big deal!

I may change my opinion once one of these Wunderkinders wins a top class chess960 event.

Besides that, I went though an old game Burnoiu-Grigore, Romania 2001 in the Be3-Najdorf with an engine. I thought my engine had found a huge improvement and in fact a quite forcing line that leads to equality. Well, that moment of joy was quite short, because it turned out that Ponomariov had played the exact line against Shirov already in 2007. Is that the sign for talent on his part? Not really, I guess his Rybka simply showed the same evaluation. Shirov didn't deviate from the engine-line either. The question is if they really played chess that day or just compared their analysis over the board.

Imagine you are the tournament director or even the sponsor and you pay two guys who do nothing but reproduce 47 moves of engine analysis and agree to a draw. Wouldn't you feel cheated?

Chess on the highest level has become an absolute joke where some autistic nerds examine each others memory. Thank god for Carlsen and Nakamura who try to stay away from forced draws at least.

Went from a crackpot cheating thread to a crackpot opening theory thread. Good stuff.

Sure there is. What do you think evolution by natural selection is about?

Ignoring the ridiculous exaggerations, you could be right. That's what László Polgár thought and he created one of the best chess families in history, after saying in advance he would, from three girls. They did much more than memorizing openings, but then that's one of the ridiculous exaggerations.

Is that true? I figured anyone, or most people, of reasonable strength could do it, even if some of them might not think so. I was playing blindfold when I was <1600 USCF, and I'm nowhere close to GM. I've played blindfold with people (also blindfold) who were <1600 USCF adults at the time and don't seem to be much more than good club players. Sure, 1600-strength is "few" in some sense, but not in the sense you seemed to mean.

How many of those are even held?

And against who would they have to play to prove themselves? Kortchnoi?

In the past the common assumption was that players reach their peak in the 30s, because it would take them about that long to master opening theory or to be more precise to develop their own theory. Nowadays you can skip that part almost completely with an engine. They didn't really beat Fischers record as youngest GM in history, they just found a cheap shortcut.

Natural selection only works if humans don't interfere. There is no natural selection between Wunderkinders and normal kids. The normal kids just play with their toys while Wunderkinders receive training from adults and get beaten up when they fail.

Not only did the Polgars show that Wunderkinder can be manufactured, they even managed to do it with girls, of whom public opinion believes to be an especially stupid form of human children.

If you can play blindfold, you have the basic ability to become GM. If you can throw 90mph, you have the basic ability to become a MLB-pitcher. It's not the only ability needed, but probably the most important one.

That it didn't work out for you has other reasons. Maybe you didn't get proper coaching. Maybe you didn't read the right books. Maybe you were not dedicated to it. Maybe you are playing the wrong openings. Maybe you didn't play enough strong opponents. You can't expect it to come naturally.

Your ability only put you in the group of those who have a realistic chance. You still need to be successful within that group to achieve the final goal. Others were that successful and became GM by beating you.

I don't know and I don't care. All I know is that I probably couldn't compete in chess960, since my main strengths are opening theory and endgame technique also.

While there is arguably a lot of room for speculation on the subject of cheating, this doesn't hold true for opening theory anymore. You can switch on an engine and get a stable evaluation on Elo 3400-level that can hardly disputed by experts, because they are using the same engines and get the same results.

The latest trend in top level preparation is to work with databases from engine-rooms and correspondence chess and that's obviously an area that is totally dominated by amateurs.

My comment about natural selection had nothing to do with child prodigies, only you saying that "there is no talent in reproducing".

Fair enough, I know I wasn't that dedicated to chess. Still, I don't think blindfold play is anywhere near as rare an ability as throwing 90mph. I don't expect an above-average (for adults who occasionally compete for fun) baseball pitcher to randomly be able to throw 90mph, but I've had a <1600 adult able to play blindfold with me, never having done it before.

So do you think GM potential is way more common, or blindfold ability way more rare, than I do? I'm guessing the first.

Also, what do you base your claim that blindfold play indicates GM potential on?

It seriously just takes practice to play blindfolded.

Ok, here is my "basis" for this claim.

It all started with myself obviously*. When I close my eyes it's all black. I cannot produce colorful images of chess boards or whatever in my imagination. When I try to play blindfold I can "see" somewhat of a fog and a very small parts of the board, chunks of 4x4 squares for instance, and only important pieces, that have moved recently. In my mind the chessboard is more like a cabinet with 64 drawers. I know where every piece is, but I can't actually "see" them. It's like the stuff in your house. You know where you left it, even if you don't have a visual imagination of it.

At first I thought this was normal, but then I asked around in my club and on tournaments and I got totally different results. Some guys had the exact same problem that I had while others could see the board like a diagram, crystal clear like in a book.

Now here comes the "discovery": Every GM I asked (actually I only know three of them, so it's not that big of a samplesize) could see the picture crystal clear. Every IM could see it too. Some FMs could see it, some couldn't. Nobody below 2200 could see it at all. The lower the ratings were, the more I got the answer with the fog. It was a linear result!

You are free to do the same experiment with the people you know. Let me know about your result. I am actually very curious, although I predict that it will be similar.

Once again, too see the picture is not enough, if your chess algorithm is bad.



* My peak rating was 2240 back in the 90's and my style is ultra solid. In fact in 2004 I even won the "Drawmeister"-title in a rapid state championship in Germany. I forfeited the first game, because I arrived late, won 1 and drew 11. After the event I could recall every single game and enter it in Chessbase.

Taking a poll of who can "see" a chessboard in their head is not even close to support for that claim. It simply shows who has worked on it and who hasn't. Sure, for some people, it may take more work, but pretty much anyone can work on it and get better at it. I couldn't do it until I practiced it, and most people are the same way.

You know what, I don't give a **** about your opinion. How about that? Unless someone with Elo 2500+ confirms that he cannot see the board (aka cannot play blindfold), I trust my own theory on the subject.

It is not my goal in life to convince you

I'm cool with that. I certainly think you are full of crap and don't care what you think either. Congratulations on one of the dumbest threads I've ever seen. Enjoy the rest of your life.

lol

I'm <2200 and I'm in between. I can visualize the whole board blindfold if I focus (and I've also experienced this better-than-usual visualization when calculating ahead in some of my better tournament games), but otherwise only part of it and the rest is "fuzzy".

This is obviously much better visualization than is necessary for blindfold play, as I'm pretty sure I couldn't do this when I was <1600 and playing blindfold. (This also indicates that it improves with increasing skill, rather than being a hardwired limitation of some sort.) And seeing the board clearly all the time would be better still. That's apparently what you were talking about all along, rather than merely being able to play blindfold.

Also lol at you getting your implication backward. I'd be shocked if any GMs couldn't play blindfold. But there's no way every blindfold player has GM potential, but you didn't mean that anyway.

Not everyone who can play blindfold will become GM, but all GMs can play blindfold. There you have it!

The ability to play blindfold enables you to do calculations of infinite depth, which isn't needed that often, but it's a powerful weapon nevertheless. It all fails of course if you cannot spot good moves, because your move search algorithm is bad.

Take guys with 1600 playing blitz for instance. Their hand keeps wandering all over the board. For them almost every legal move looks "ok" or at least comes into consideration. They cannot evaluate a position correctly, in fact they don't even come close. Even if they could calculate really well, the amount of variations to calculate simply goes way over their head.

The better your algorithm gets, the more obvious the best solution becomes and the less candidate moves you consider. That's why there is a point where a good algorithm can overcompensate the lack of physical ability. Once you get beyond that point, it is all about calculation again.

Yep 1600 players consider every possible move on the board. They have to remind themselves which moves are legal and which aren't

In this position I calculated the variation 1. Kh1 Nxe4 2. h4 Nd2 3. Kh1 Nb1 4. Qf6 a6 5. Kg1, with an advantage, but I turned that down due to 4.-Kf7! 5. Ka5 (forced) Rb8, winning material.

I'd bet virtually all 2000s, and a majority of 1600s, can play blindfold. Not with perfect diagram-like visualization, but well enough to be able to complete a blindfold game.

Wat. That's not how I remember being 1600. Maybe every legal move looks OK for 600s.

Oops, the hornet nest of 1600 got touched. Sorry guys, didn't mean to insult you.

It was just an "observation" that the hand of weak(er) players usually wanders all over the board before touching a piece. Anyways, it doesn't really matter on this subject.

Personally I don't remember what it feels to play with Elo 1600 rating, because when I grew up, Elo-ratings started at 2200 and below that every chess federation had their own system.

I don't remember the details, but 200 points difference is roughly a 75% chance of success. 400 points is about 98% or something? So I guess I am supposed to score something like 99.9% against 1600s. Well, I may very well win over the chess board, but it seems to be rather difficult beat you guys on the forum.

Lol my last official uscf rating is higher than your peak and my last official fide is around ur peak. If you want to bring ratings into the table, as a 2200 I highly disagree with almost every statement you've made.

I'm also almost certain most IMs and GMs will have the same opinion the "1600"s have.

Grudge match incoming.

Using my weekly "one time" for it, too.

Doesn't that exactly prove that it gets better with practice. I don't find it easy to go over a whole game blindfolded, but now that I tried I could visualize a 3d board and pieces easily and swirl it around. Some people are having more trouble with seeing things in their mind. My question is, if you can see anything visually e.g., cars or women? I don't think you need to be able to see anything too complicated though while playing chess. As long as you can calculate further, in any way, it is enough.

Except USCF is about 100 points higher than Elo and 2240 back in 1991 is different than 2240 today.

For me it didn't get better with practice, in fact after a certain age, it gets worse. On the other hand, I can play chess almost without any calculation. Needless to say I prefer closed positions where everything revolves about pawn structures. I can produce 20 top-engine moves in a row, but when it gets complicated, I will inevitably make a red move and blow it. That's why I basically retired about 10 years ago and worked as a trainer. Back in the day I was known to outplay FMs and even IMs on a regular basis and yet losing the game with a single gross blunder in the end.

Anyways, I can imagine stuff without a picture, because I know how it looks. I don't exactly see sharp pictures with eyes closed, I see them like they are somewhat transparent, similar to a reflection on glass. On the other hand, I have a somewhat extraordinary pattern recognition, especially when it comes to faces. I also used to have a very good memory, although it faded a bit with age. There are different forms of intelligence. You can't compare Ivanchuk with Nakamura and you can't compare Navara with Svidler either. I am fully aware that I don't fit into the usual categories.