Chess Progress and Age

Assume you learn the moves at age 8.

Your most rapid progress will be in your early  years.

From ages 14 to 21 you should make good progress but not at the earlier rate.

From the ages of 22 to about age 60, you should continue to make progress.

Somewhere around age 60 your ability to analyze will slowly go down hill. However, with all of todays resources, and even though your ability to analyze may go slightly downhill--your accumulated knowledge will increase and thus while you are not making over-all progress--you will not be coming  worse at chess--you have hit a plateau.

Continuing until age 75, you may remain on the plateau or start to go slightly down hill in your chess ability.

As you age, beyond middle age, your ability to play fast chess could slightly deteriorate. And at the same time, your ability to play "slow"chess could still be increasing.

All the above is my impression. Do not have "proof" of the above statements.  Wonder if a study has ever been done on this? 

If u arr not a GM at 16 u have no future in chess.Ihih.No i am joking, maybe.First u learn chess and more it is better.But i also heard that play otb first than 16 can be dangerous for psicology.

there's a lot of screwy advice on this thread. and I think the lot of you need to read up more.

I could nitpik stuff on a long tldr; post. but I'll pick on GM.

Computers HAVEN'T solved the game of chess and the PEAK age is still 35.  Accumulated knowledge generally loses pit against a young, sharp mind that has obsessed on seeing chess patterns.  Each of the game's great masters have shown this.

if 55 were the Magic age; Kasparov would still be the world champion.   just sayin

The  peak age of chess depends on the type of chess you are  playing. If  you are playing very fast chess [such as bullet or 5 minute chess]--your peak age comes earlier. If you are playing slow chess [such as correspondence chess] your peak age comes much later.  

I'm surely going to be cursed to darnation to be dueling words against a gree dinosaur; bullet 1658.

but there's NO freakin way a 50 year old man is gaining any aptitude in chess; unless he didn't study when he was younger.

thats just bad science right there and it Can be easily disproved.

gelfand aint what he used to be- and neither kramnik and topalov are the top of their chess games- either.

and this is in the slowest form of chess people play (without peaking at a computer).

peak age IS 35(ish). (generally)

The slowest form of chess played is correspondence chess.

Yes, a 50 year old man can gain a lot of knowledge even as his ability to analyze goes down slightly. 

The knowledge available which can be learned is very large at any age.

There are worse things that happen when you age. Just ask my wife.

Peak age is 35? Crap I'm 31, I only have 4 more years to make GM! Lol.

ponz111 - those ages don't correspond to studies on Cognition and Learning, of which I studied into the graduate level in college.

There are a lot of abstract things one's mind has to have experienced by age 12 or becoming great at abstract thinking isn't possible.  For example, a child raised by deaf-mute parents who ran a lighthouse, all alone on an island, who never learned to speak by age 12 can NEVER be taught to speak.  But if there are two kids - they end up inventing a language and talking to each other and because they experienced a language early in life, after age 12 they can be taught English, Mandarin, French, etc.

The same with chess.  If games like Checkers and Go are learned by 12 it's possible, but still difficult, to become a top player in chess beginning at 12.  Yasser Seirawan is an example of success.

As you reach your later 30's, there's a less creativity in developing new, outstanding ideas but it's more a case of buying into existing theories and practices than any decrease in mental ability: getting "set in your ways."

When you're 60, the ability to memorize and assemble facts (not be forgetful) decreases, but not by a significant amount.  If you were not a top chess player it's very possible for someone in their 60's or 70's to increase their rating - but don't expect to become a master.