In any case, “Anyone can be GM” is a slippery question because as stated it’s obviously false (a new born baby can’t be a GM by Friday) so the only way to answer properly is to make some assumptions about what’s really being asked. I assume the question is asking about innate talent vs. hard work and whether “anyone” (we still need to define this) can make GM in spite of lack of talent and because of hard work.
I think the answer is yes, but actually doing the hard work starts to bleed into natural disposition, which isn’t exactly about talent, but I think it’s close enough to make people worry.
I think what a lot of people are really asking when they ask whether anyone can be GM is whether they can be GM starting at 40 with kids and a job. The answer is no. So it depends what we’re asking.
Well the person we’re asking about isn’t you though. That’s the point. The counterfactual involves someone with a very different history than your own.
Levy explaining that in Game 6 of the world championship, when the engine showed 0.0 in the end game it wasn’t a theoretical draw, it was just too complex a position for the engine to evaluate. Pretty sure this is incorrect and tablebase had it as a draw with perfect play, and I don’t understand why Levy doesn’t know this if I do.
Can I be a GM if I start training at 60 with no kids in the house nd no job. When I was a kid I was probably around 1500 without any formal training (at around age 14) and not playing all that much. Then I stopped playing because there wasn’t really a chess club or anything that I had access to. It was before online chess times.
This is part of why I quit chess for a long time. You will never be great if you started later in life. But this is true of being an olympic sprinter or an astronaut and on and on. Adult improvers need to find success and fulfillment in other ways, and there are worthy other ways. I’m pitching an article to chess.com along these lines this week heh. We’ll see what Danny thinks lol
Honestly I am kind of glad there weren’t really any available avenues for me to develop my chess skill. I really did love it. But in the end, I think I would have spent a ton of time and ignored a bunch of other stuff.
I am going to play more when I retire. I know I’m not going to become a GM. My lifetime goal is 1800.
1800 is a great goal. There’s also a senior’s tour in many countries.
The breakthrough that brought me back to chess was taking each game as an end in itself rather than a means to some other end, like rating. How often do you sit in silence without looking at your phone and just…think without interruption for several hours at a time? That’s really something special in this day and age.
Rxb7 is followed by Ba3+ and O-O-O and White loses the rook — either due to a need to parry a mating threat (if White brings his King to B1) or as a result of a check by the rook on the d-file (if White moves his king there).
I don’t get some of the complaining in the article, ie, it’s separated because there’s only one lady in the top 100 in the world at chess (and she’s 96th), unless you want zero womens events, which isn’t going to be good for women in the game overall. (there’s also a ton of events that are open to anyone, plenty of opportunity out there) Nearly every other competitive venture is like this in male/female ratio and that’s why there are separate women events and more people tune into the male events because of the better skill, just how it is.
There’s more nuance to it than that. Did you read Polgar’s comments in the article? There are two reasonable sides to the debate and the author doesn’t clearly side with either, so I think you’re missing something if you think the article is confused about why there are women’s events.
As to the guy who got fired, his first comment is bad but I’m not that sure about the second. The second one might just be him speaking imprecisely in English. A Kasparov-ish mea culpa should get him his job back imo. If not, then fuck him and glad he’s fired.
More women are playing chess than ever before, and online chess has created more opportunities for women to play. But world chess champion titles are still separated by gender, and plenty of female players say they still feel belittled and even harassed — both online and in person.
This certainly seems like it’s saying that separating the world champs by gender is bad.
I do think btw that women’s titles ought to be eliminated, they seem patronizing to me. And while it’s easy to argue that female-only competitive play encourages girls to play, that argument doesn’t operate for women’s titles. They seem like they just serve to reinforce the idea that women are permanently worse at chess.
Also when you hit 2200 you can use the CM title anyway while WFM kicks in at 2100, so there’s only a 100 point area before there are gender neutral titles you can use.
