the Polgar experiment actually disproves the hard work theory

Oh no I'm not saying it's easy to do that. But perhaps it could be done. Well, my example is something I said before, epiphany type moments. They're not things you prepare to have, you just have them. Ok now I'm getting a bit weird but you never know, maybe you even have a near death experience and somehow that changes your overall mindset and it carries over to chess. I don't know :)

lol with near death experience  

(In my imagination) I'm playing chess on my phone while driving, I cross over into the wrong lane, and nearly collide with traffic. Car spins off the road, hits a tree... but I gained 200 rating points haha.

But yeah, seems like we agree.

The Polgars sister works very hard as they study chess 5 hours a day(starting as kids).

Yeah I mean I'm just going by my own personal experiences. I think there are certain things that just kind of happen suddenly. Like, it might be that I've seen 8,565 games and I have x mindset. It might just be that on the 8,566th game, something fundamentally changes it, makes an impression on me that, in general, makes me approach the game differently in the future. It's not so much that I have way more experience than when I had 8,565 games -- I might have put in just an extra two hours of work studying the 8,566th game -- but it simply made me want to be different. It made me adopt a different habit or two. I know this is dramatic to say, but it changed who I was! Not that much but it still did!

I've had games like that that I've lost for example. One time I lost to about a 1600 player, maybe two years ago or so, and I was still an expert. And in that game, he just had a white knight on h6 against my doubled kingside pawn structure (pawns on h7, f7 and f6). And he just developed an attack on me, and I saw exactly what he was doing, but there was very little I could do about it! I could never get, for example, my rooks to defend my king (for example, get a rook to g7 to cover squares like h7 and f7), because the knight on h6 keeps me from playing ...Rg8 first!

That one game had such a huge impact on me because it showed, in certain positional circumstances, allowing a piece like that can mess up my whole defensive situation so badly that even if my opponent is lower rated, and even if his attack is slow, it might be decisive anyway because my setup just doesn't work. And h6 isn't really a typical outpost. We think of that as more of a decentralized piece. But because it controlled g8 and pressured f7, it controlled my whole defensive scheme.

So now, I realize, I need to watch out for just that one square, that is perfect for my opponent's strategy, that can totally determine the future of the game, since I was punished so badly for not doing so last time. I just checked his immediate attacking ideas, looked at his knight coming to h5 and queen attacking g7, seeing that I could defend it, not realizing, no, that knight is headed for h6, where it apparently attacks nothing. But this kind of change really isn't about pattern recognition this time. It's conceptual and mental.

Played almost exclusively 3/0 games for 3 years online. I had Chernev's logical chess book which I never finished reading. I would look at random games, so I got some of the basic ideas from there. I also had Reinfeld's 1001 combinations book which I'd work out of for tactics. Oh, and an old endgame book by Horowitz, so I knew basics like which K+p vs K positions were draws or wins, lucena position, that sort of basic stuff.

---

On the subject of talent as what people like... one thing I've almost always done, which isn't very useful (lol) but I enjoy it, is analyzing with an engine...

What I do is have it show its top 3 picks and it's just always running on the side. Then I go to a position I found interesting and analyze on my own. After a few minutes, I look at what the engine's top 3 picks are. If it doesn't like my move, I play it and explore what the engine would play against it. Then I explore the moves it liked instead.

Importantly, if I think the engine moves are too engline-like, I force it to play more human looking moves. Sometimes the eval no matter what drops, so then I know the engine is suggestion totally impractical play and an impractical evaluation (at least for my skill level) so I can safely ignore it.

Definitely I know what you mean. There's knowing of it... and then there's really understanding it. You're seeing something you'd probably seen 100 times before, but now it's making a big impression. You're understanding the mechanics of how and why it's happening. As I said before (although a long time ago) on the forums I had an epiphany like this about development, and center control... things we hear about practically from day 1, but it took me years of playing to really see it for myself.

You talking about schemes of defense and squares that seem safe or unsafe, but in reality are the opposite is one of my current conscious focuses.

In a recent game I was ready in one line to open up my king with g5 (pawn break against f4). I saw that even though we had about the same number of active pieces on that side and both our kings would be opened up, I was the only one controlling relevant lines.

I didn't get a chance (opponent did a different line) but after game engine confirmed g5 would have been winning  -- never would have played a move like that in the past.

Well, it's an interesting position at the end of it, but a lot of different moves could have been better during the opening. I play a lot of center counter stuff in blitz so I don't know if it's anything too obvious, it's just I have some experience. Nothing terribly wrong with any of the moves.

The real fight happens after move 14 though

I actually lost a very similar position recently in a blitz game out of the petroff opening. I tried a line I don't usually play, and after Bf4 g5 Bg3 f5 black had a huge kingside attack and I lost quickly.

I think in your game black made the same mistake.

I also don't prefer 9...c6 I'd rather challenge white's setup on the dark squares directly with 9...Nbd7 and probably 10...c5

 Oh you were white... obviously you crushed him, not much to say for white 

I would say the important question is:

Is iq real or is it just hard work?

If iq is a talent then yes, this was because of talent. 

Hard work and a fine IQ from early life on will make you a grandmaster...

Susan Polgar has repeatedly stated that the reason she was successful was because of the hard work she put in on a daily basis.

Talent (genes) are important, but without the willingness to train, they would never have reached the top.

It would be interesting if the Polgar sister's children reach greater heights than their famous moms.

In the field of music one father tried to create a rock band with his daughters.  The result was the Shaggs. 

Opinions vary as to how successful he was.  Some say they're terrible.  Musicians Frank Zappa and Kurt Cobain were fans.

It's wild that the primary arguments are 1. Lazlo Polgar couldn't reproduce his experiments and 2. The Polgars are bad parents
To address these:
1. There's 0 evidence of Lazlo Polgar having tried to do it a second time. When he wanted to prove that it could be repeated in 1992, his wife talked him out of it. It is likely reproducible, as is born out by the circumstances of many other people identified as geniuses including Magnus Carlsen. There's whole books on this exact thing. I'd suggest starting with Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin. It talks about the specific circumstances that produce "geniuses" in any field.
2. What is actually the evidence for the Polgars being bad parents? As far as I can find, none of the sisters seem to think they were abused or seem to resent the circumstances of their childhood. Work, Love, Freedom and Luck was a motto of their home, and generally speaking, it seems like Lazlo Polgar made happiness for his daughters a priority and there isn't a lot that I can find to contradict that.

I have 5337 chess problems by Laszlo Polgar.]

He chose his wife with chess on his mind.

This thread was born and died in 2016. Then a guy resurrected it in 2019, but with little success, and he quit chess is 2020. I'm rooting for the guy who resurrected it in 2023, but I think he's doomed.