Class A player, how many hours to become one?

True.  Love for the game itself is probably the single most important factor for improvement, and strangely not often mentioned (at least in my experience).

A quote comes to mind:

"I love all positions. Give me a difficult positional game, I'll play it. Give me a bad position, I'll defend it. Openings, endgames, complicated positions, and dull, drawn positions, I love them all and will give my best efforts. But totally winning positions I cannot stand." - Jan Donner

Haha, you're right!  And here I was thinking to myself that it's easier to get feedback with chess because what could be less ambiguous than losing or winning a game?

But you're right.  Not just the whole piece, but with every note you're getting feedback.  In chess you can win after many mistakes, and even after analysis there may be many hidden mental errors, lines you missed, etc.

Use databases to create your own similar booklet. The process of examining many hundreds of games looking for forcing checkmates will do wonders for your game.

Ziryab wrote:

I played in my first USCF tournament at 35 and established a C Class rating within a year. A few months after turning 49 years old, I broke through 1800 to A Class.

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I don't think you can count on increasing your rating by 100 to 200 points each year, and this is why 9 out of 10 chess players (if this stat is correct) never make it to Class A (1800 - 1999).

Why? Simply because the amount of knowledge, skill and experience required to advance to the next class grows exponentially.

Take Ziryab's post above. It took him one year to establish a Class C rating, and 14 years more to gain 400 rating points to reach Class A. I don't know what Ziryab's provisional rating was at age 35, but as an example, let's say he started with a Class E rating (1000 - 1199), and it took him, as he said, one year to advance to Class C, a rating increase of 400 points in just one year. Do you think he was able to advance to Class B in one year, gaining 200 points? I doubt it.

I don't have any concrete data, but by way of analogy, one could see the work required to advance from class to class like this:

Class E to Class D - as much effort as climbing one flight of stairs.

Class D to Class C - as much effort as climbing from the first to the third floor, or twice as hard. In Silman's Complete Endgame Course, players need to know 35 pages of material to advance from E to D. For Class C, players need to know 70 pages of material, which is twice as much.

Class C to Class B - like climbing five flights of stairs, 5 times harder.

Class B to Class A - the class that sets the men from the boys, the class that 9 out of 10 chess players never reach - it might be not 10 times harder, but more like 20 times harder.

The last class, Super GM (2600 - 2800) - perhaps like starting at the bottom and climbing Mount Everest!

And to think that Carlsen almost hit 2900 recently. No one is close to him. He loses points when drawing, since the gap between him and most other Super GM's is 100 to 150 points.

Once I realized the importance of tactics, my chess.com rating jumped 200 points in about a month, but that was only going from 600 to 800, a baby step, not one flight of stairs. One small step. My Standard rating dropped from a little over 1200 to a little under 1100. My health took a downturn the last two teaching years, but I am finally and happily bouncing back, hitting 1200 soon. It took a lot of work for me to hit 1200, much harder than hitting 1000. So, I see each advancement to the next class, or next pool of internet players, as something exponential. In other words, it will take an enormous effort from me to break into the 1400 club hear at chess.com, but I look forward to the challenge, and I will savor every little bit of progress. If I can hit 1400, I will be competitive with the average player at my local chess club, and there will be a few that I will be able to beat 9 out of 10 times. :)

So a more important question. Which Class of player is a good person? How far can you get and be content? I Think its 1600 (Chess.com Standard). After that theres no Juice for the squeeze.

rTechnno_Waflles wrote:

So a more important question. Which Class of player is a good person? How far can you get and be content? I Think its 1600 (Chess.com Standard). After that theres no Juice for the squeeze.

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I see myself as a pretty good chess player right now. My friends see me as a chess master! I clobber them in casual play, as I should. They don't spend time doing chess puzzles, or understand the fundamentals of the opening, like moving a center pawn two whole squares, or even know why the center of the board is important to control. They mostly lose to a hanging piece. I don't even need to look for a tactic. I was there once, and remember how hard it was just to keep track of my pieces, losing rooks to an enemy bishop on the opposite end of the board, I.e., bishop at g7 takes rook at a1 - the long, dark diagonal. I must have lost close to a hundred bishops when I first started playing on the internet.

In the beginning, back in 2010, I figured that what separated the good from bad players was this: the player who could spot undefended pieces pretty good was the good player. I knew nothing about pins, forks and skewers - or discovered attack, zugzwang and zwishenzug. I love the sound of those two German words.

In terms of Chess  What is a Certificate, Diploma, Associates, Bachelor's, Master's, Doctorates?

GM  Doctorate

IM Master's

Ex Bachelor's

A Associates

B Diploma

C Certificate

D Uncertified

E Honorable Mention

LOL. I like the diploma analogy.

You actually have a very strong point masked bishop.  The key word for progress is "deliberate" practice.  It is not accomplished simply by hiring the right teacher, or by reading a lot of books, or even time, in and of itself, is not what deliberate practice is.  It is difficult to sum up briefly what exactly "deliberate practice" entails.  However, as several books and science theses have explained quite clearly, it can be done by virtually anyone...even masked bishops.    

This previously posted [link] does the explanation better justice than anything I could put here.

http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/01/06/the-grandmaster-in-the-corner-office-what-the-study-of-chess-experts-teaches-us-about-building-a-remarkable-life/

>it can be done by virtually anyone...even masked bishops.<

Nope. This is what no-one wants to hear. I don't care how well you study...only 10% of you will ever get out of class ratings and only 1%, AT MOST, will ever make master.

Sorry. Moose out front should have told you. If you were going to be a chess master, you'd already be one.  

My provisional rating after my first rated event was 1232. After four events (seven months later), my rating (still provisional) was 1420. My fifth event gave me an established rating of 1425. I fell below 1400 once eighteen months later after going 0-5 in one tournament (dropped from 1472 to 1378) and needed three events to lift it back to 1415. I had peaked at 1495 before the 0-5 disaster, missing a chance top go over 1500 and guarantee a tie for first in the C section of the Washington Class when I erred in this position.

I was on board one in round four and with a win in this game would have tied for first if I lost in round five. 

 I thought about 17...b4, but played something else instead. I went on to lose this game and the next. I was Class C almost ten years.

When I first hit 1600, I did not drop. When I passed over 1700, I dropped below in the next event. When I crossed over 1800, I have remained A Class (so far). I peaked at 1982 after a run of eleven consecutive wins (see http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2012/07/eleven-consecutive-wins.html). I dropped to 1899 when I gave up the biggest upset in a local event, losing to a player 500+ below me. The next event, I gained one point to return to 1900. Then, ten weeks later I played in another weekend tournament, beat our city champion (see http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2014/05/beating-nikolay.html) and climbed to 1917, my current rating.

In my city, at least, getting over 2000 is the real challenge. 

Ziryab wrote:

Musikamole wrote:

...

My chess library is basically quite extensive, ... our own chess.com member's Checkmate booklet by Ziryab (outstanding reference book for all the major checkmates in a checklist format), ...

Use databases to create your own similar booklet. The process of examining many hundreds of games looking for forcing checkmates will do wonders for your game.

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That is an excellent idea. Thank you!

One question - when viewing games from the chess.com game explorer, I rarely see GM's play all the way to checkmate. Most of these high level games tend to end several moves before checkmate, and if played to checkmate, many of them would start with a pawn promotion, because one of the GM's was up by a pawn or two, and his opponent resigned at the moment when he realized he good not stop a pawn from queening.

I do see some of the classic mating patterns, I.e., Morphy's Mate, The Greek Gift - when I view old games posted on chessgames.com.

I know that you know a lot about databases and own a large database of games. Can you please recommend a database where I can do this homework, sifting through games and looking for forcing mates? Perhaps a Chessbase product? Is there a database I can purchase that has all of the games from the romantic period of chess, for example? Thanks!

While I wait for a response, I will head over to Chessbase and see what they have. It would be very embarrassing if all of the games from the romantic period, covering Greco, Morphy, Philidor, Pillsbury, Blackburne, Anderssen, Legall, Boden ( not sure if all of these checkmate names reference real people) - that all of the games from these legendary chess players can be found on the chess.com game explorer. I will take a look.

originaleaz wrote:

I'm 1500-1600 now after about a year. During that year I have played roughly 1000 hours. I'm guessing I need another 4000 hours to even get near 2000.

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You may be right, if you really make each hour count - deliberate practice - as some have posted. There is a rule I have heard about that connects the number of hours with Mastery. I have know idea how true this is, and if it would even apply to chess, a game which I believe has an exponential learning curve, I.e. 100 hours to progress from 600 to 800. 1000 hours for 1200 to 1400. Maybe 5000 hours to progress from 1600 to 1800, which would be Class B to Class A. Just throwing numbers out as a really rough estimate of the exponential learning curve. Maybe someone has researched and calculated the learning curve for each class.

----------------------- The 10,000 Hour Rule -----------------------

10,000 Hours to Mastery: The Gladwell Effect on Learning Design

Posted by Steven Boller

I just finished reading Malcom Gladwell’s latest book, Outliers. In one of its chapters, he explains the 10,000-hour rule. This rule states that people don’t become “masters” at complex things (programming, music, painting, free throws) until they have accrued 10,000-hours of practice. And…he dos a great job of illustrating that people who are commonly regarding as “masters” are really just people who hit the 10,000 hour mark very early in their lifetimes. (Examples: Mozart and the Beatles in music; Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak sin programming).

The research he cites to prove his point is compelling. It does support this 10,000 hour threshold and crosses all types of areas from computer programming through hockey. Who cares, you ask? As learning professionals, WE SHOULD. In an era where company management wants training on just about anything distilled down to minutes of time as opposed to hours of time, what can a learner realistically gain in terms of mastery? – or even rudimentary skill?

In my experience, it is not the years, but the number of games and tournaments you play.  In my case, my first tournament in 1969 was 1522.  I did not play another rated tournament until 1973, and was then rated 1610 after a few more tournaments.  On my 20th rated tournament in 1976, I was rated 1710.  On my 40th tournament in 1981 I was rated 1815 (Class A).  At my 40th tournament my record was 96 wins, 30 draws, and 70 losses, or 196 rated games.  I believe if I had played in 40 rated tournaments in 1 year or 2 years, my rating would be the same as it was in 14 years.  Assuming 10 hours of preparation of playing in a rated tournament, that took me 400 hours.  I hit 1900 on my 70th tournament in 1983.  I hit 2032 on my 91st tournament in 1987.  I hit 2115 on my 105th tournament in 1990.  Lack of play brought me down to my rating floor of 2000 in 1994 after 120 tournaments.  My rating increased the more frequently I played in my early years.  My rating decreased when I was inactive and playing in 1 or 2 tournaments a year (from 1994 to 2014 I have only played in 6 rated tournaments).   Also aging (over 63) and lack of OTB hasn't helped with faster time controls and young guns moving up.  However, aging doesn't affect correspondence chess, and with slower time controls (3 days or more) I play my peak OTB of 2200 in correspondence or Internet chess.

I use ChessBase as it facilitates searching. I can look only at games that end in checkmate, for example. I assume that SCID vs PS, which is free, offers similar search functions. I'm happy that I invested in ChessBase.

That's an interesting way to measure it (tourneys, not years) that I haven't seen before.

Hmm chess progress is often seen in linear progress, this is not often the case, you could try to predict and calculate but often progress happens in sudden spurts and you won't know what OTB tournaments you will play the coming years and how high rated your opponents would be.

Better is not to get focused on the rating but rather try to study every part of the chess game intensely and have a solid opening repertoire written down. Most players I know (including me) don't have a solid repertoire, just playing some lines I like but nothing written down.

Parts of the chess game: opening/endgame/tactics/positional play/material winning combinations/mate combinations/pawn structure

a solid opening repertoire is probably the least important element of chess skill for reaching class A, but important for rising above that level. My best wins have come in openings that I play infrequently and dimly understand.

Every person is different.  I've seen some kids shoot up 500 points in a single year.  There are several kids that I played in an U1000 event who are now over 1700, and they achieved that in under 2 years.

Your question is akin to asking how long will it take for you to learn calculus.  Well, some prodigies can learn calculus in a week (or at least enough to score a 5 on the AP Calculus exam) while others could spend a lifetime and never master/understand calculus.