If you've read his past posts.. you know he's stretching the truth when he says he's good at poker.

[ ] knows what he's talking about ;-p

i glanced at the thread topic and thought it said bacon and cheese at first.

great first post?



I'm pret-ty bad at chess. Way too many future moves to think about and how to counter various scenarios or make one best move from a choice of several. Poker is never more than a few moves into the future and I can pretty much prepare for and react reasonably fast to any type of flop, any turn/river in the deck. Then again these are learned behaviors so for all I know, I'd be this way with chess if I'd spent a few years playing that frequently instead of poker.

Some good analogies above. The comment about intelligence only shows another parallel: strategy and even sometimes rational thinking are devoid from the lowest levels of players at each game.

I think you drastically underestimate how much work is involved, and you drastically overestimate how much natural talent is involved. Probably the most desirable "natural talent" to become a high level chess player would be an obsessive/addictive personality, and to be independently wealthy so you can devote all of your time to study.

The Wikipedia article you give has links to demonstrate that even the most talented chess minds in history needed 4+ years before they were beating high level players.

I believe it was GM Andy Soltis who said that most chess players reach their peak at about 8 years of full time study and experience, and after 8 years most players do not improve significantly.

Karjakin learned chess at age 5, grandmaster at age 12 (7 years experience)

Fischer learned chess at age 6, grandmaster at age 15 (11 years experience)

Carlsen played his first tournament at age 8 (probably learned chess a while before that), grandmaster at age 13 (5+ years experience).

Reshevsky learned chess at age 4, and was "beating accomplished players" at age 8 (4 years experience).

Capablanca learned chess at age 4, and sometime between age 8 and 13 he was capable of beating the Cuban champion (4+ years experience).

I don't have any examples at hand, but I would be willing to bet that there are plenty of examples of people who became high level poker players in a very quick time. Certainly a much shorter time than 4 years.

The fact is that to become a high level chess player, there is just a lot of knowledge that you have to know. Being able to calculate out variations very quickly and accurately will allow you to beat most players at your local club, but you won't get very far beyond that (because you're essentially relying on tactics/combinations).

As an example, the Soviet school of chess study has this idea of "300 key positions" that make up the fundamental chess knowledge. These key positions are to be studied exhaustively. Each position must be instantly recognized, every detail worked out, the plans for both white and black, and the same must be done for any small variations (i.e. "what if this piece is one square to the left...?"). Those 300 key positions serve as a guide for almost any situation (if you pick the right 300 positions, otherwise you need more than 300). On top of that, they recommend that you memorize thousands of key games, also instantly recallable. They say that a world champion level player will have over 1000 "key positions" in their mental database. I believe I remember one GM saying that you needed about a minimum of 40 hours of study PER POSITION, and additional time later on to review so you don't forget what you learned (because it must be recallable instantly). So for 300 positions at 40 hours per position, that comes out to working a full time job for 4 years. One GM who used this method for success said it would take most people 15 years of studying the 300 key positions, and that the "chess prodigies" merely spent every waking moment thinking about chess, which is why they achieved a high level more quickly than others.

I taught my self more or less how to play beyond the basics, I finally hit the glass ceiling in high school when I was the best in my school and district.

I never was able to go beyond it tho due to not being able to get coaching. Its not like I didn't try and get help, I tried but coaches are expensive.