For me, it was understanding the concept of imbalance (thanks Silman). That basically every position has an imbalance, and that your plan for the game should revolve around those imbalances. That you can create a systematic way of thinking by looking at a position, and then from there, your ideas get better.

Also, generally the idea that you just have to keep fighting even in bad positions - some master once told me the key to reaching a high rating is to get points out of your bad positions, not just your good ones.

There's nothing embarassing about finishing last in a tournament. Comments like "once I reach XX rating online, I'll be ready to play a real tourney" or "once I finish studying YY opening, I will be ready to try it for real" are silly. Nothing is really on the line in your local club tourney except ego, so drop the ego and try everything.

Finally, a quote I once read from I think Shirov, which paraphrased said "when I consider my options, the faster the move tree expands, the more likely I'm going in the right direction".

There's also the very first thing you have to learn to get to a decent level: Your opponent will see it. Don't play moves hoping your opponent makes a mistake - make moves expecting your opponent to make the best possible reply.

Improving at chess is above all a SLOW process for most people. There will be a fairly direct relation between both talent and speed of improvement and invested hours in study and play and improvement. Also the first jumps, lets say from 1300 to 1500 and from 1500 to 1700 can go quickly because they are mainly based on improving (basic) chess knowledge. Further jumps I think are more in 100 elo point chunks than 200 and more hard work is required.

In order to improve a lot you need to play a lot and against increasingly stronger competition, study a lot, analyze your own games, identify and eliminate weaknesses, study basic tactics, study advanced, more intricate tactics with more and more complicated variation trees, study the endgame, study a few well annotated game collections for middlegame knowledge and thinking modes etc. etc.

After all that a few years will likely have passed and you will start to reach a level in the vicinity of your chess ceiling, one that is determined by a number of factors like natural ability, the age at which you started playing, the intensity of the effort you put in etc. At that point improving will be even harder and slower. But almost anyone should be able to reach at least 2100 FIDE with hard work. If you reach that level at age 17 after 4 years of chess you can likely become an International Master. If you reach that level at age 37 after 11 years of playing chess, you better invest further study time in poker as it is likely you are close to your chess ceiling.

One other thing in chess, as in poker, you have to find a playing style that comes naturally. Some players are far more comfortable in complicated tactical positions than others while other players wouldnt recognize the possibility of a succesful minority attack even if it was pointed out to them by kasparov himself. In accordance with your 'natural' style of play you should choose an opening repertoire that gets you into 'your' kind of positions.

In a nutshell, improving to a 1700 player requires effort but should not be too hard if you are minimally serious and dont have an IQ under 90. After that the rest of the above is applicable. As for myself, it was a combination of all of the above but in order to keep improving, ironically, you need to have a love for the game that goes beyond the desire of just getting better (results) IMO.

The concept of somebody having an inherent "chess ceiling" at 2100 has to be one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read.

Chess is very simple in one aspect. You get out of it what you put into it. If your definition of work consists of memorizing some openings and then flipping through Reassess your Chess while taking a **** then of course you will never improve, but that has nothing to do with "chess ceiling" or because you started when you were "too old". Improving at chess is difficult because it's work, a ton of work. And this work is not easy and for some people probably not the most enjoyable work either.

On the same note, in chess like poker there is one thing that's incredibly important: you need to take responsibility for your own results to improve. A chess player who blames his poor results on lack of talent, being too old or whatever is the exact same as a poker player who blames his poor results on running bad or the site being rigged. The only difference is that it's more socially acceptable to just say: "Well, I didn't have enough talent." as opposed to saying "Well, I'm just unlucky."

Hmmm...I'm pretty sure improving to beyond 2100 level, i.e. candidate master, Fide master or IM is just not attainable for everyone who tries. Apart from all the required hard work, you DO need a modicum of natural abilty. And there is no shame in that. Not everyone will run a 12 sec. 100 meters, a 5 minute mile or 2.30 marathon. Natural ability, or the capacity to understand and create on a deep level, is above all THE defining factor for those who reach the highest level of chess (or any other competitive field for that matter). or do you really think Akhobian is just 'just' 2600 and not 2750 because he is lazy?

Look, there is no way to prove this one way or the other. I will just observe one simple thing. If you ask a strong player why they are not stronger, they will almost invariably admit that it's simply too much work. This is something I have heard from numerous GMs. If you ask a weak player why they are not stronger, they will try to blaim lack of talent, starting too old, etc. They'll blaim anything external and out of their control, but almost never themselves. There is no way this is a coincidence. Somehow stronger players acknowledge that to become stronger they need to work more, yet weaker players make excuses.

The question is not WHETHER (any)one can improve, but by how much. I'm sure no matter what amount of hours you put into chess, you will not be a GM (neither will I), and I say that without knowing much about you. I'm also sure that no matter how much effort your decent but average 30 y/o 2450 IM decides to invest in chess, he will only have a very slim chance of attaining a 2600 rating. So while your message is optimistic (anyone can improve with hard work), it is also a bit misleading. Yes, there's always room for improvement, but for everybody it will probably stagnate at a certain level. The level of stagnation is strongly influenced by the factors you deny. And I don't see how ,,i didnt work hard enough" makes for a better excuse than ,,I had no talent". Any 1600 player who says he doesnt improve is being dumb, because a little hard work in the right direction will likely go a long way. A 2300 player saying he isnt any better because he doesnt work hard enough is probably denying the fact that he doesnt have much talent. Research and statistics show a very strong correlation between starting young with chess and growing to be (very) strong. You will not find ANY GM in the game who learned the rules of the game at the age of 20. Why is that? Likewise factors like natural ability, general intelligence, a good memory etc. are determining factors when deciding where a players ,,chess ceiling" is. How can they NOT be?

"Research and statistics" also show starting young in chess means you have a **** ton of free time, and likely parents trying to escape their failures and live vicariously shoving thousands of hours of coaching and training down your throat. Both very useful for improvement. Both either unattainable (as in a **** ton of free time) or undesirable (as in spending thousands of hours studying a board game) for almost all adults.

Well, since you address only part of my 'rebuttal' and this being a gambling forum I'm willing to make a bet and give you decent odds that's not what developmental psychologists consider the most important factor for children developing quicker and to a higher level than late life learners. Hard work is NOT always enough to make a nickel into a dime.

Man, to be honest I don't really care. In my opinion you seem like a typical case who reached some point in their game (2100 I'd guess given how unusual that figure is), had trouble casually moving up and then instead of considering why your methods for training were not working - you gave up and looked for excuses instead of improvements. If I'm way off please correct me, I'm not the expert in psychology.

For myself, I learned the game as an adult - and now crush countless IMs and GMs who were already IMs and GMs before I even knew how the pieces moved. And this is mostly in blitz where intuition and instinct is more important than almost anything else. Something I never could have imagined doing when I was sitting on the chess server with a 1000 rating struggling to not hang pieces with only 30 minutes to make my moves, not that many years ago!

I have no idea what level I'll be at or what I'll be doing in 5 years in regards to chess. All I know is one thing's for certain. I won't be sitting around making excuses for myself.

You've got my interest peaked. What Gm's are you crushing on I presume ICC? The Octogenarian Cendrier does not count fwiw.

Yeah on ICC. I don't really keep a list of who I beat, but the site does!

On icc type "search chatbanned" for a list of my games against IMs/GMs. Right now there's 581. You can filter the games via: "search chatbanned winner=chatbanned" or "search chatbanned draw" for a result of 171 wins and 54 draws.

Alternatively, you can use: "pstat chatbanned [player name]" to see my record against a particular player. Eg: "pstat chatbanned yardbird". Not the best of records against yardbird (+3 -6 =0), but he's damn tough.

This is solid advice for a beginner. I probably already said this in my ramble earlier, but I also really like the corollary: if you think a move is critical, play it unless you see a reason not to.

Of course, "I'm playing someone weaker and shouldn't take any risks" is a decent reason, but playing that game isn't going to improve your chess.

Nice screen name, I knew it sounded familiar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMVFe_Uhkws

Interesting game there for a while.

Love his comment at the beginning there.

My play, maybe a little less so.

"Oh.. He is attacking me!" hahaha )

Nice record, and I mean that, certainly better than mine. Don't want to turn this into a pissing contest, but your stats also show you too have a ,,chess ceiling", and it is probably around ICC Blitz rating 2400. Pretty decent, but not shockingly good. It roughly translates to a FIDE rating of 2200/2300, pretty good, especially for a late life learner. It refelcts you are probably a pretty smart guy and have invested, as you say, a ton of hours in learning chess. But there is but a VERY small chance you will reach ICC 2700, or strong IM level, no matter how many hours you put into chess. And that is the point I think we are discussing. Yes, anybody can improve at chess, but only to a certain level. There is of course a relation with the amount and quality of invested hours, but there is also a relation with natural ability, intelligence, age and a few other factors. /thread hijack

Thanks for letting me know I have a ceiling. Kind of funny I just broke my all time best in every single rating category in the past two weeks. Those tricky ceilings.

Also, ICC 5-min 2200 is already much higher than ICC blitz 2400.

Agreed. You're definitely master-strength.

I tend to hear weak players claim if they had more time to study/work/practice their game, they would "easily" be masters than I hear strong players blaming it - in my experience, most strong players accept that they simply didn't have the necessary combination of talent and environment to get to the upper echelon.

My personal experience came after I reached master and had beaten a few IMs in rated tourney play, and thought I might have a future. I made a conscious choice to pursue a more standard life, but I also acknowlege it was far from certain my ceiling was beyond weak IM at best.

I agree with this quite strongly - nice post. Giving up because you believe you lack talent is for the weak-willed rather than the "untalented."

Great talents often mature late. I happen to believe that I have great talent. Now I just need to wait for my talent to emerge!

My belief in me does not hurt anyone, and it makes me happy. If I do eventually become good at the thing in question, then I've justified my self belief.

Do any of you have trouble psychologically playing someone rated much higher than you (eg more than 150 points)? I feel like I get more careless b/c I'm not expecting to win. Also, sometimes I "choke," where I'm up a full piece and find a way to blow it (particularly if no queen is involved).

My performance against GMs and IMs was much higher than vs. FMs and SMs. The better the player the better I played, I found.

I also have the opposite problem. When playing a player somewhat weaker than myself, I sometimes don't take the game seriously enough and can get into trouble because of it.