how good can the average player get?

If you’re old your chances are as high as becoming a world class soccer player.

I mean I have spend some tens of thousands of hours on serious chess training... and I started 15/16 y.o.

well if u train enough u can do it

The brain is no bucket to fill. Chess is rather procedural than declarative so even a photographic memory will not do it.

As an adult you cannot learn new things 8 hours a day, 365 days a year. Never.

No adult beginner ever has become GM. They all had say FIDE 2200 at the age of 18 or 20.

А можно НЕ по английски? И какой у вас рейтинг?

Так, спонсора! Сколько ты донатиш в месяц?

@Alientcp said in #6:
> It is not a measure of intelligence. Its an acquired skill. The average player get a low rating, because the average player does not put any work to it nor any kind of consistency.
>
> If you put the actual work, with a good training regime, you can get quite high. Maybe not GM level, but CM or IM is not out of the question, but those require A LOT of work behind.

There are many different aspects of intelligence. Chess is CERTAINLY about at least a couple of them. Grandmaster chess players can think about subsequent moves/scenarios in ways that normal people can't. That's intelligence.

I think this topic is poorly worded. The "average player" is simply the player whose rating is at the median of the bell curve. They could be there bc they are a 6 year old prodigy, or because they are an intelligent person who started in their 40s and worked to get better.

The better question is how much can a given player expect to improve from their baseline.

@Sarg0n said in #10:
> We all know that there is only a weak correlation between intelligence and chess...

Again, this is only partially true. I can imagine there are GMs out there who can't write beautiful prose, but they are all intelligent in specific ways that the average person can't even fathom.

As @Sarg0n said as adult learning comes harder. For starters one cannot invest the time but also biological reason. There are clear reasons why learning gets slower with age. Learning on brains is dependent on myelinization of neuron connections and amount myelin created gets lower by age. also unlearning as there is real mechanism for that one just has lear new stuff better. And we adult have loads of wrong ways don't we.

also there personality traits that are needed like being careful which not easy thing to turn into if it not natural for you
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4261922/

@alexander0495 said in #16:
> Grandmaster chess players can think about subsequent moves/scenarios in ways that normal people can't. That's intelligence.

Its just applied knowledge. The ability to learn now things from previous ones.
See an example.
Compare 3 chess players. One doest know how to play too well. The second is very good at pinning, the third one is good at pinning AND it can spot discovered attacks.

From those 3, the last one will be most likely to discover a third tactic pattern, the windmill.
So, the more you know about chess, the deeper the understanding of it, new knowledge can arise when you combine the previous one, and if you actually study that new knowledge to get a deeper understanding, you start to implement it more frequently and it gets easier over time.

I grant you that the GM have an extraordinary memory. But the ability to calculate is an acquired skill, and thanks to that enormous memory bank, they can calculate deeper. I can grant that.

Some people are indeed limited, but thats the lower extreme, the average player does not train, its a casual player. I have not seen a case of some one not improving with a good training regime.

Its just like obese people, they cant run, because they never run. But if they start to train, little by little they get better. Some super extreme cases wont be able to do a thing because they are too damaged already.

I was obese, couldnt do more than 5 push ups to save my life, over a period of 2 months, i was able to make over 60 in 1 go. 4-5 months, i was able to do 100.

Everybody can do most anything, you just need to put some effort in it.

I have seen average people learn to play an instrument over time.

I have seen average people learn new languages.

Sure, they wont be the next usain bolt, wont be next mister universe, wont be the next slash, but damm straight they can stop being average. The average wont train, wont play regularly, wont get guidance. Im (was) average dude, i started with 1600~ rating and couldnt pass it for a long time. Just the grinding alone and minor adjustments increased my level.

Little to no training, no consistency, no coaching. It really isnt hard to stop being average if you put the effort.

You just want to think that you are smarter than the average, but reality doesnt back that up.
Who knows, maybe you are, but it doesnt mean an average cant beat you.

At the end its more or less about knowledge, and how to combine it, the average is average because it wont pass the first layers of knowledge, which are the basics, but once they start getting good at some themes and learn how to gain new knowledge, their understanding of the game and level of play get quite high.