To echo Tyson's sentiment, I was talking to a master about a year ago. I said I
was interested in retaining a coach, that I still held some ambition of
earning, if not a master's rating, at least an expert rating. However, I
observed that, having passed my sixty-ninth birthday, I was getting worried
that neither of those aspirations had much of a chance for fruition. He
disagreed. But he was quick to point out that one doesn't just achieve an
expert or master rating, just by playing a lot of chess. He had looked at a
couple of my games and observed that he thought I still had a chance, certainly
of attaining expert level. However, it would require many, many hours of
dedicated study. I had an opportunity, when I was at the French National in
2018, to talk with a good friend. I asked him what he did when he wasn't doing
chess. His answer was a wry, "I don't do anything other than chess." I have
little doubt that, were I to disconnect myself from the other things I enjoy
doing,were I to devote to chess all of the hours that my wife could be
persuaded to allow me to devote to chess, and if I used those hours to study
seriously, I suspect I could still get into the Class A, and maybe, possibly,
perhaps, into the Expert Class. And it's worth noting that, while disciplined
study is essential, it is quite likely even more essential to recognize the
impact upon oneself of personal environment and family dynamics. One of my
favorite lines from one of my most favorite movies: "A League of Their Own,"
from Jimmy Dugan, "Of course baseball is hard. If it was easy, everybody'd do
it." And that applies to chess, as well.
Cheers,
Jim T
-----Original Message-----
From: usbca_chess-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:usbca_chess-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of mordue andrew ;(Redacted
sender "tyson.mordue" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, November 20, 2020 5:47 AM
To: usbca_chess@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; David Rosenkoetter
<davidrosenkoetter260@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [usbca_chess] Re: Each Generation of Players Is Better Than the
Previous One
Hello folks,
This fascinating stuff. I took my car in for it's MOT on Wednesday and the
garage owner, a chess player, said that he was watching the series. I actually
read the book by Walter Tevis many years ago.
The general pattern is accurate. If one looks at World Champions then Tal
became WC at age 23, Karpov at 24 and Kasparov then broke Tal's record.
Subsequently Carlsen lowered it again. Most other post WW2 champions gained the
title in their 30s.
Maintaining their strength through to their 50s is also typical. Botvinnik won
a WC match against Tal at the age of 50 and Smyslov qualified for the
Candidates in his 60s. I would also add Korchnoi and Portisch, who weren't WCs,
as fine examples of longevity. In particular Korchnoi, although he is rated as
briefly World no 1 by Chessmetrics in the mid 1960s, actually improved as a
player in the 1970s and went on to play two WC matches.
However, for the purposes of this group I would strongly discourage anyone from
thinking that they can't improve after the age of 30. It is very likely that
you can. My own peak FIDE Elo was 2317 in 2008 at the age of 46, while Chris
Ross currently has an ECF grade of 211 which converts to an Elo of 2288. Chris
is now in his forties, low forties.
I can give many examples of people improving after they retired from working.
The point is that they had more time to both study and play. Incidentally
Korchnoi's improvement in the 1970s coincided with him giving up smoking. Lewis
Hamilton, the F1 World Champion, went on a vegan diet several years ago and has
dominated the sport ever since.
With any pursuit you get out of it what you put into it. There's no substitute
for hard work but do try to ensure that your outlook is positive. Set yourself
targets and be objective about analysis and opinions. At the risk of sounding
ambiguous 'the more you go forward then the more you will go forward'.
Regards,
Tyson
On 20 November 2020 at 01:57 David Rosenkoetter
<davidrosenkoetter260@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thanks, Evan, for the article. I think that along with the more hours
spent on training an the vast amount of resources available to younger
players today, the amount of time players today spend in actual
competition has increased today thanks to the internet's chess servers
like the ICC, Lichess, et al.
Add to that, the serious younger chess players today are often avid
video gamers and you get folks whose quick analysis puts true genius
on display. both at the casual club level and the among the younger
pros, you don't find many folks who are pure bookies, studying every
line till their eyes glaze over without testing it against a server or
live opponent online.
The type of players today like the Beth mentioned in the series are
folks like Irina Krush, Jennifer Yu, or Annie Wang all of whom play
for our U.S. women's national teams. Wang, in fact, along with another
gal who's name I can't remember right offhand, were the youngest women
chess experts at the tender age of eight.
Pretty cool stuff. OK, time to head for Lichess for some duels.
David
On 11/19/20, Evan Reese <mentat1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hey Guys,
Thought some of you might enjoy this short article from the most
recent issue of The Economist magazine.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/11/13/the-queens-gambi
t-is-right-young-chess-stars-always-usurp-the-old?utm_campaign=the-e
conomist-this-week&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=salesforce-marke
ting-cloud&utm_term=2020-11-19&utm_content=ed-picks-article-link-8&e
tear=nl_weekly_8
We watched The Queen's Gambit on Netflix, with audio description by
the way, and we enjoyed it very much.
* * *
“The Queen’s Gambit” is right: young chess stars always usurp the
old
Champions decline with age and each generation is better than the
last
FROM THE very first episode of “The Queen's Gambit”, a hit Netflix
miniseries about chess in the 1960s, it is clear what a precocious
talent Beth Harmon is. Before her tenth birthday, she has learned to
beat the janitor at the orphanage in Kentucky where she resides.
Soon she takes on an entire college chess club in simultaneous
matches, winning each one easily. By her troubled teenage years, she
is vanquishing all comers, including stalwarts who are considerably older.
After Beth wins a gruelling two-day match against one silver-haired
champion, he gracefully concedes: “You are a marvel, my dear. I may
have just played the best chess player of my life.”
The seven-episode drama has received universal acclaim from critics:
of the 58 reviews gathered by Rotten Tomatoes, an entertainment
website, every one was positive. But it has also been praised by
chess aficionados for its accuracy (doubtless helped by having Garry
Kasparov, a former world champion, as a consultant). And a
recent paper <https://www.pnas.org/content/117/44/27255>
by three economists confirms that the series’ portrayal of a young
upstart vanquishing her elders is exactly what happens in real
chess, decade after decade.
The study, published last month in /Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences/, analysed 24,000 matches involving world
champions between
1890 and 2014. To assess the performances of the champions and their
opponents, the academics compared their 1.6m moves against Stockfish
8, a chess-playing program that computes the best possible move for
a given configuration of pieces on the board. The players were
scored according to how often they picked Stockfish 8’s optimal
moves. (The researchers also estimated how each move affected a
player’s chance of winning and how often they made catastrophic
mistakes.)
These results produced two clear conclusions. First, players tend to
reach their peak early in their careers, with little improvement
after their 30s. (There are even signs of a decline after 50.)
Second, each generation comes closer than the last to Stockfish 8’s
benchmark of optimal play. Professional players born in the 1950s
had already reached a higher average level of performance by the age
of 25 than those born in the 1920s ever did.
The authors reckon that the early-peak effect can be explained by
the fact that the human brain’s problem-solving ability (or “fluid
intelligence”) reaches its high point at around the age of 20. As
for the long upward trend in performance through the decades, the
authors suggest that more rigorous training is probably the cause.
Indeed, modern chess masters can study the machines that now tend to beat
them.
If Beth were playing a methodical young champion today, she might
surprise them with unorthodox play—but she would make enough
mistakes to lose most of her games.
<https://s100.copyright.com/AppDispatchServlet?publisherName=economi
st&publication=economist&title=%E2%80%9CThe%20Queen%E2%80%99s%20Gamb
it%E2%80%9D%20is%20right%3A%20young%20chess%20stars%20always%20usurp
%20the%20old&publicationDate=2020-11-13&contentID=%2Fcontent%2Fa2m0l
98ihal7bpi3bpkr4740m3k787ns&type=A&orderBeanReset=TRUE>
Evan
