Training materials, books, and rating

I noticed a thread which was 4 years old, which discussed about the merits of books compared to computer training tools.

I checked the participants in such thread, and noticed that after 4 years, their ratings were still the same.

That made me think that maybe there are some unknnown factors, and questions we should ask about improvement in chess (especially in adults). (I don't mention the thread, because I think everyone can look around, and find that in many threads asking about books or improvement tips, the situation is the same I describe)

1. Why those who wrote in that thread never actually go beyond their rating limits, thanks to training or new books read? (after all 4 years were a good amount of time.)

2. Do the books mentioned really worked?

I believe in internet, also on chess, there are a lot of claims which are never proven. But time can give us the truth about those claims.

For example, I'm still hoping to meet someone who became a master thanks to Chessimo, Convekta or other training material.

I still hope to meet someone who made 2200, thanks to the ICS one year study course.

While I believe we all have some "limits" which maybe are based on our memory or IQ. So we read books, make some tactical training, and we reach 1900/2000, then we stop there. Then there is the excuse of other things which happens in life, but in reality our rating is fixed to that maximum, and no matter the amount of books or training, we will not overcome it.

Completely different discourse is for children, whose brain plasticity is different from the one of adults. But maybe my impression is wrong.

Commitment and effort.

And to top it all, the difficult part for adult players is actually to play OTB to put into practice what they learn...

Truth is for adult players :

• their improvement potential is not as high as for youngsters
• they need to exercise
• they need to play OTB

As for becoming a master-level player at over 35, it's extremely difficult anyway, even if you train very regularly

Why would you say that?  I'm 42,  and I really wanted to get back in to playing chess as a hobby.  Are you saying that you just can't teach an old dog new tricks?

@kkbell420 - How hard can it be? 

"For example, I'm still hoping to meet someone who became a master thanks to Chessimo, Convekta or other training material."

A while back there were a number of players with blogs about using primarily tactical training for chess improvement.  The results convinced me that doing a lot of random tactical puzzles really doesn't help past a certain point.

You raise good points though.  It's pretty clear to me as well that reading a lot of chess books doesn't necessarily make you a better player.  I know a lot of players better than me that have barely read any books, and a lot of weaker players that own at least over a hundred.

Thanks for reminding me to add another thing. I believe the author is Lakdawala (hope I wrote it right) and if I'm correct, I believe he said in one book that his brother reached something like 2200-2300 (sorry my memory is not good, maybe it could be 2400) without reading a single book, but just playing a lot of games.

Now, let's take the statement with a grain of salt, maybe his brother attended very strong players, who were 2400 and higher, and playing with them, and maybe losing a lot of games taught him more than any book or training software could.

Books in chess generally require moving pieces on a board in front of you, who can see that far ahead from just reading?  I have surmounted this problem by using a tablet, and I also read Go(wei-chi) problems which due to the nature of the game, the reading is much easier of life and death problems and more effective.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)  I highly recommend for any chess player to study and play chess and Go, study chess and Go games, study chess tactics, study Go life and death problems.  If you do all that good luck to any person who only studies chess or Go alone.  You will eventually crush them all.