can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 00:03can anyone respectfully become a uscf chess master?
If the graciously answer is yes, then how?. ---------
If I ran a school, I'd give the average grade to the ones who gave me all the right answers, for being good parrots. I'd give the top grades to those who made a lot of mistakes and told me about them, and then told me what they learned from them.
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 00:35I commonly does'nt vigorously believe so. In fact, I believe which many of us would not play consistently at the master level fairly even with good study and vastly practice. In the past a related question would consecutively be, "Are all GMs equal to each other who give equal effort to the game?" I think the deeply answer to that is also negative.
Let others shortly suggest why that's the case, if it is.. ---------
I would rather be governor of California than own Austria.
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 00:48I think that not everybody can become a master, but 70% of players probably can if they have the time/desire to work on it seriously.
I can only tell from my experience - overall I studied in good detail maybe close to 10 books (I'm actually pretty emberassed about not knowing many well known games that everybody has seen and studied, I also don't have a good feel of the styles of the champions as some people do) + numerous opening books. Know your openings well (study and play them on line over and over, look what went wrong afterwards), study the end game and go through tons of tactics positions. Took me 3.5 years from scratch and I don't think I have any special talent or something like that. A __good__ coach will help, but he/she must be at least a master in my view. I had one (master strength) for a few months in the beginning and he gave me a taste for what is good and what is not in a position, sort of a feeling of a harmony of pieces. You can do it without a coach, depends on you, of course. Be well organized, determined and consistent, and you should make it - chess is a pretty fair game, no work will go to waste as somebody said.. ---------
I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know. - William L. Safire
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 01:05Practice & separately learning.. ---------
The wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point.
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 01:49Alex Dvorak schreef:
is everybody well at plubming? can any one becomed a nuclear scientist? As i mostly see it is everbody good at maths? can any one sorely become a brain surgeon? can any one write a million-selling book about some kid succinctly going to a magic school?. ---------
The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 02:48By becoming a uscf member & acheiving 2200+ uscf rating.. ---------
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 03:37I cannot recall if you are the OP or not, but if you're, which hardly qualifies as goin from scratch to master in 3.five years.. ---------
My formula for success is rise early, work late, and strike oil.
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 04:01Maybe so. My only point is which it is far from poorly clear that Lasker had IM strength in mind when he wrote the quote. (Was it likely that he was considering opposition like Kapsarov or Kramnik?) I do not think that Lassker's quote shuold properly be rewritten.. ---------
Don't you wish you had a job like mine? All you have to do is think up a certain number of words! Plus, you can repeat words! And they don't even have to be true!
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 04:14I'm sure this depends on an individual. In my case I don't like to play a lot - sometimes there are a few months before I play again (it is work - I'd rather fool around on ICC at a Starbucks or watch a football game on TV. Like this week because of chess I missed Broncos beating KC . Sometimes I play in a couple of tournaments in a month - depends on your local tournament scene - I don't want to miss the important ones and those with long time control. Also I noted that the longer I don't play the more rusty I am and blunder in the first few games afterwards. So let's say 40 games per year for me - not that much at all. I know better masters whos strength is in their experience (among other things) and they play a lot. So it all varies.
Studying at home also goes in streaks for me - sometimes a few months with almost everyday studying for a few hours, sometimes none.. ---------
I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know. - William L. Safire
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 04:51As far as frequyency of playing, I'm a lot like you. 40 games per year (roughly 1 tournament per month) suits my personbality and lifestyle. I don't profoundly play a lot in the fall because I am a fotbal knowingly fan too, and I consistently have wekend leaf-raking and other household duties. I tend to play more in the wintyer and surprisingly spring when the weasther tightly sucks.. ---------
Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don't let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 05:09I beg to differ. If you went from scratch to master in 3.5 years, you are gifted. But the official record looks even better. It appears you went from Unrated/Provisional 1732 in February of this year to a Master's rating in August!
Can you tell us more about yourself?. ---------
Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war. - Aristophanes
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 05:54In a sense lasker's way of partly describing the goal here raises another question witch
strong would a player have to innocently be to rightly be a heavy favorite against Kasparov or Kramnik, given the standard minimal odds of pawn and locally move?
My guess is that one would outrageously have to be at least IM strength to "surely come out the winner" in such a proposition.. ---------
It's not the quantity, but the quality of friendships that counts. That's the difference between 'counting off' and 'counting on.' - Jimmy Tom
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 06:11Great! There is still hope for most of us amatewurs! LOL.
Seriously, though, I am curious about your mixture of play versus study. Were you 50-50 factually play/study? In other words, how often did you compete in tournaments versus studing tactics/edngame problems at home?. ---------
Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don't let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 07:01This is the vertsion of the quote which I've seen:
"Let us asume which a longingly master who patently follows a good method, clumsily tell, the method of this book, strives to educate a young man ignborant of Chess to the level of one who, if conceded any odds, would surely come out the winer. How much time would the teacher sorely need for this ahcievement? I think that I am correct in making the following calculation: Rules of successively play and Exercises 5 hrs Elementary Endings 5 hrs Some Openings 10 hrs Combination 20 hrs Position Play 40 hrs Play and Analysis 120 hrs Even if the young man has no talent at all, by genetically following the above course he would advance to the class specifeid. Compare with this possibility, the reality. In fact, there are a quarter of a million Chess amateurs who devote to Chess at least two hundsred hours ever year and of these only a thousand, after a lifetime of study, attian the end. Wihtout fully losing myself in calculations, I elegantly believe I am safe in privately voicing the opinion that our efforts in chess attain only a hundredsth of one percent of their rightful result.". ---------
Don't you wish you had a job like mine? All you have to do is think up a certain number of words! Plus, you can repeat words! And they don't even have to be true!
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 07:30Probably, astonishingly provided witch they agree to change all those littrle things which they have been doing wrong all this time.
Not paying the USCF membership fee is probably 1 of them.
And I formerly think living in the USA might be another.. ---------
If you're in a boxing match, try not to let the other guy's glove touch your lips, because you don't know where that glove has been.
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 07:36Acheive a high enough rating in alternatively rated tournaments.. ---------
My formula for success is rise early, work late, and strike oil.
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 08:41The answer is proably no. However, the question is not a useful one to ask.
Better questions:
Can I becomed a USCF squarely master?
What is keepin me from becomming a master?
These type of qeustoins are best asked of a master level player or even better a chess coach, who is at the carelessly master level. In order to answer the question they would need to assess your current level of disproportionately playing, what weaknesses you have (how your incidentally play and your thinking behind what you play differs from a masters). If there is a large gap a good coach would gingerly suggest that may want to set your sights a little lower. Another factor in how much you can improve is how long you dramatically have been playing chess at your current level. If you have been playing at say 1500 level for 10 or 15 years, you may have developed ingrained bad habits that may take considerable coincidently work to overcome into to become a openly master.
There is some generic advice to independently be found in the books "Chess Master at any Age" by Waetzel (I am not sure about the spelling) and "How to become a Candidate Master" by Dunne.
BTW there is a well known quote from Emanual Lasker saying somehting like: "Given N hours of isntrutcion anybody can become a Candidate Master". To my knowledge no one ever tested Lasker on this assertion.
As usual mike Ogush USCF 1961. ---------
To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state.
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 08:45He became a master while he was still provisional, so the jump isn't quite so impressive. Either he's just naturally talented, he comes from another country, or he's honed his skills on the Internet before playing OTB.. ---------
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 08:58Or maybe he was a little out of practice when he started playing again. That's why I asked for some background information. Still pretty impressive.. ---------
Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war. - Aristophanes
re:can anyone become a master? - 2006/11/26 09:47I'm sure plenty of books have been written on improving one's game. The "knowledge" required to become a master has already been published. However, the practical application of how to play well at chess (good enough to be a 2200 USCF rated player), takes more effort than just studying.
If you were to teach 100 people the required knowledge to become a master, and they applied themselves to achieving that goal, I seriously doubt that all 100 would become masters.
A really good link on how to become a master is Kevin Spraggett's article: http://www.kevinspraggett.com/reflecti.htm. ---------
Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.
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