Hi there
After the world championship I googled "chess online", found out this site and now for almost 2 weeks I've been watching and studying different openings and such stuff whole nights, in other words went crazy about chess :)
Before I played from time to time but not that often.
One of my "character traits" is to achieve some goals/ratings, doesn't matter what I'm doing.
So I'm very curios, which rating is feasible for an adult and at which cost?
Like, imagine you started at 1000-1200 and you've been playing for a year (by playing I mean also studying theory of course) spending ~10-20 hours/week, what rating is feasible to achieve this way?
I'm pretty sure a lot of people asked this before though, sorry for another silly question :)
If you really spend 10-20 hours/week constructively working there should be almost no bound if you just keep going.
I would guess with 1 year of training like that you might climb to maybe 1800-2000 FIDE, in the long run at least 2200. (though I don't know how quickly since I play since my childhood so I can't estimate that well how quickly I would have learned as adult)
One more advise: Do tactics! Chess is all about pattern recognition so it's important to get those tactical patterns.
1200 to 1700 is possible in the first year, 1700 to 2000 in the second, then around 75 points per year.
Some other thought: Don't care too much about rating, just play the game. If you train and play well your rating will come at some point. But if you just care about your rating you might lose the fun and yet still don't gain any rating.
Woah, thanks for the information!
Well yes I know that it's important to focus on the game. But you know, I'm the kind of person who really wants to see some measurable progress.
I took figure skating lessons as an adult and I really love this sport but the thing is, imagine figure skating has the same rating system. In order to get to, say, 2000, it'd take 5-7 years working 20 hours/week for an adult and 2000 would be considered as an average result :)
So I asked this question so that I can understand how competitive I can be.
Chess looks for me like a game where you can have some kind of repertoire which allows you to compete. Like in figure skating you have some jumps which you can execute and show something. Here in chess it looks like you can develop strong areas with some openings which you know good and gradually learn new stuff.
Looks like at 1000-1400 it's all about avoiding blunders and learning openings and possible traps, while later on it's more about strategic
It's all about the tactics at first.
Around the year 2000 there was one well publicized individual who went from beginner to 2000 (USCF/ELO) in a single year mostly by going tactics crazy, so that sort of progress is definitely at least possible. And you can get much further than that without openings.
Openings in chess are like this trap because they seem like the key to success yet they ultimately end up just holding you back. I mean if you take a player who is substantially stronger than another player and give the weaker player a position that is a theoretically winning (better pawn structure, up a pawn, etc) the stronger player is still generally going to be the clear favorite. So why is the weaker player spending his time with openings when even if he completely outplays his opponent in the opening, he likely will be unable to convert his clear edge to a victory?
Definitely learn the opening principles - control the center, rapid development, king safety, etc. But don't waste your time going and starting to consume the theory on the Najdorf or whatever.
It's all about tactics and avoiding blunders as much as possible.
A good opening training is learning the strategical and tactical motifs of an opening, so the difference to tactics/middlegame training is not too big, is it?
S. Agdestein once said that you could get to 2000 simply by taking hanging pieces. Of course this might be an oversimplification.
I believe that by solving realistic and good tactics, and learning some strategic plans you will become much better very fast. Just don't spend 5 hours every day memorizing openings, like some do. Those hours could be much better spent learning plans and ideas.
But what is the difference between memorizing openings and learning plans and ideas?
