TalkChess.com

Dan Cooper wrote:

Laskos wrote:

CheckersGuy wrote:

PaulieD wrote:I remember one tournament where I played a father/son. With Dad it was a grueling game where he finally fell into a trap. A couple of rounds later I played his 11 yr old son. The son showed up at the board and put his legs underneath him on the chair. I said to myself (he's just a little kid) .
He promptly "crushed" me.
I understimated him significantly, but do not know if I would have won even if I properly estimated his strength...probably not.

He played so effortlessly.
Watch out for the kids!

It's true in General that if you spend a large percentage of your life doing X, for example chess, you are going to be very good at it (Assuming you have some talent). Let say he started playing chess at the age of 5. Then he played chess for about half his liife already. The learning curve for such talented Kids is very very sharp at the beginning.

Talent, big talent is a large component. Sure, together with hard-working. But If you have 10 random 5-year kids hard-working, the odds are not a single random kid becomes a GM.

Not all 10 random kids will be motivated to continue with chess long enough to become a GM.

Even if they are, the odds are not much higher. They will probably lag hopelessly behind a really talented and hard-working one by the age of 14-18. In many cases they will lose motivation because motivation alone will become useless.

I've seen kids like this when I used to play in chess clubs.
Actually Play like this kid showed is pretty typical in Clubs here in India. .
They are real MASTERS of Practical Play, things you won't find in Chess Books or Computers.... by choosing an offbeat Opening this silly Paraguayan Grandmaster actually played right into his hands !
Dan Cooper is right in the sense that usually players like this fade out due to lack of financial backing.
Kai Laskos is also right as Talentwise, this kid has more Talent in his Little Finger than Magnuss Carlsson has in his whole body !
Of course, Theory is also important and I hope he is being groomed in the right way.
He really showed that GM another aspect of chess !
Fantastic !

Laskos wrote:

CheckersGuy wrote:

PaulieD wrote:I remember one tournament where I played a father/son. With Dad it was a grueling game where he finally fell into a trap. A couple of rounds later I played his 11 yr old son. The son showed up at the board and put his legs underneath him on the chair. I said to myself (he's just a little kid) .
He promptly "crushed" me.
I understimated him significantly, but do not know if I would have won even if I properly estimated his strength...probably not.

He played so effortlessly.
Watch out for the kids!

It's true in General that if you spend a large percentage of your life doing X, for example chess, you are going to be very good at it (Assuming you have some talent). Let say he started playing chess at the age of 5. Then he played chess for about half his liife already. The learning curve for such talented Kids is very very sharp at the beginning.

Talent, big talent is a large component. Sure, together with hard-working. But If you have 10 random 5-year kids hard-working, the odds are not a single random kid becomes a GM.

I fully agree with Kay here, but there is a further shade to the problem too: if 10 out of 100 random kids passes the first stage of the test, becoming a GM, only 1 out of those 10 will pass the second one, to become something more, probably a WC challenger.

Stats show that only 1 of 10 junior world champions have later been crowned world champions, so, if we compare Pragna's feat with winning the junior WC (just a single game though), chances are still only 10% that one day he will become WC.

Many of the men's world champions, if not all, at least in more recent years, after the junior WCC established itself as an institution, though, have previously been also junior ones.

Nice game though.

No one says he will become WC one day.
But, he has more than the Talent required.
But, in chess, as in every aspect of Life, Talent is not everything.
For example, I would say that Vishy Anand in his younger days was a much more talented player than Kasparov ever was. But Kasparov's sheer hard work and exhaustive knowledge of Chess openings helped him get the Edge over Anand, in those days....
Pragganandan still has a long way to go....

[quote]
.... by choosing an offbeat Opening this silly Paraguayan Grandmaster
actually played right into his hands !
[/quote]
I think too that the Paraguayan chose a wrong strategy. It would be better to stick to a well established opening which gives him some advantage to endgame. A tired boy with weaker endgame knowledge could be defeated by a GM easier. The Paraguayan wanted to win quickly but his collapse was more faster.

[quote]
...this kid has more Talent in his Little Finger than Magnuss Carlsson has in his whole body !
[/quote]
It is an overstatement, I think. Time will show that what the value of this boy's talent is.

Laskos wrote:

CheckersGuy wrote:

PaulieD wrote:I remember one tournament where I played a father/son. With Dad it was a grueling game where he finally fell into a trap. A couple of rounds later I played his 11 yr old son. The son showed up at the board and put his legs underneath him on the chair. I said to myself (he's just a little kid) .
He promptly "crushed" me.
I understimated him significantly, but do not know if I would have won even if I properly estimated his strength...probably not.

He played so effortlessly.
Watch out for the kids!

It's true in General that if you spend a large percentage of your life doing X, for example chess, you are going to be very good at it (Assuming you have some talent). Let say he started playing chess at the age of 5. Then he played chess for about half his liife already. The learning curve for such talented Kids is very very sharp at the beginning.

Talent, big talent is a large component. Sure, together with hard-working. But If you have 10 random 5-year kids hard-working, the odds are not a single random kid becomes a GM.

Impossible to prove it because it is not defined.

Probability to become a GM for a random 5 year is dependent on the following factors

1)How many hours per day everyone of the 10 random 5 -year kids work?
2)How much time do they work to become a GM?(For example it is possible that some child can become a GM only at age 24 by working hard but that kid is going to stop working hard at age 12 with rating 2200).

3)What do they study in the time that they study chess?(It is possible to use time not in effective way)?

Usually there is no way to convince a 5 year kid to work hard in the first place to use his full potential so you cannot check what could happen in case that the kid is going to work hard like the polgar sisters.

Uri Blass wrote:

Laskos wrote:

CheckersGuy wrote:

PaulieD wrote:I remember one tournament where I played a father/son. With Dad it was a grueling game where he finally fell into a trap. A couple of rounds later I played his 11 yr old son. The son showed up at the board and put his legs underneath him on the chair. I said to myself (he's just a little kid) .
He promptly "crushed" me.
I understimated him significantly, but do not know if I would have won even if I properly estimated his strength...probably not.

He played so effortlessly.
Watch out for the kids!

It's true in General that if you spend a large percentage of your life doing X, for example chess, you are going to be very good at it (Assuming you have some talent). Let say he started playing chess at the age of 5. Then he played chess for about half his liife already. The learning curve for such talented Kids is very very sharp at the beginning.

Talent, big talent is a large component. Sure, together with hard-working. But If you have 10 random 5-year kids hard-working, the odds are not a single random kid becomes a GM.

Impossible to prove it because it is not defined.

Probability to become a GM for a random 5 year is dependent on the following factors

1)How many hours per day everyone of the 10 random 5 -year kids work?
2)How much time do they work to become a GM?(For example it is possible that some child can become a GM only at age 24 by working hard but that kid is going to stop working hard at age 12 with rating 2200).

3)What do they study in the time that they study chess?(It is possible to use time not in effective way)?

Usually there is no way to convince a 5 year kid to work hard in the first place to use his full potential so you cannot check what could happen in case that the kid is going to work hard like the polgar sisters.

2 other possibilities in our ugly modern world:

1) how much money you are ready to spend to buy yourself a title (or an election, for that matter)
2) what sophisticated cheating technological gimmicks you have access to

Modern life is ugly as hell, I would prefer to have lived in the Middle Ages...