What's the highest rating one can achieve without seriously studying?

Hey guys, I recently just started playing chess a few months ago. I'm currently 25 years old. Chess for me is an enjoyable game but other commitments in life demand a lot of my time. Chess will likely only ever be a hobby of mine, as I doubt I will have any serious time to devote to chess now or in the near future. 

Now that being said, I do enjoy chess a lot and would obviously like to get better as I play. So far I haven't done any studying, and to be honest studying chess doesn't appeal to me that much (probably because I already have to spend so much time studying for school). I plan to read up on some openings and some basics for fun, but probably not much more than that. 

I'm a reasonably bright person and my rating is ~1200 to 1300 I would guess (maybe that's being too generous) without any study or practice other than playing games and reading these forums occasionally. So my question is, for someone who is reasonably intelligent and decently good at chess naturally, what is a realistic expectation as to how good one can become without ever commiting serious time to studying?

And in addition to my original question, what do you think would be the "highest yield" material or book to use that would improve my rating/skill without a huge time commitment?

i would say 2100-2200 elo somewhere there, you dont need a lot of theory to reach that rating. Higher and you would need to study for real.

Dream on. You cannot get better than 1600 without studying games or books

I was in a similar situation about 4 years ago (my rating was in the 14-1500s in 2009, when I was 21, and I had only dabbled with chess in high school before this, really... with no knowledge of chess culture [and there is still much I do not know]) and I'm a national master now.  If you can make studying and fun the same thing, you can be world champion [well magnus said something like this in a recent interview].  I know players up to 2500 who have made it to that level via mostly finding improvements on their own games and their OTB (over the board) experiences.  It helps to access, know and play players who are slightly better than you as you improve.  Also I found that playing through some famous games and reading stories of the more brilliant and entertaining players inspired my play also!  My favorite tournament to play was the USATE in Parsippany, NJ (a team tournament [so go with your friends], cheap entry and festive atmosphere, lots of free prizes, plus some great players there, I got to play 3 time US Champ LarryC last year for instance and analyze with him.  It's interesting to meet legends who have played legends with stories to tell... many masters have traveled internationally and learned much culturally too... I've heard Kasparov will be at USATE visiting/book signing or something next year...)

I'm not saying that improvement is easy, and I have put some work into it, but it was mostly play and study of my play!  Playing masters helped me a lot to get there; I lost over 100 games to FM Dehmelt before I was finally able to play near his level.

That is very encouraging to hear. But it also shows that you had enormous motivation, discipline etc whic can also be called talent.

Also now chess is very very accessible thanks to the Internet.

Chess is a school subject in the state of Tamilnadu, home of possibly 16 of 32 or more Indian GM's. Tamilnadu has 60 mm people. Since elo is relative , if ten million happy kids with doting families take on chess, with companies in India providing cushy lifetime jobs for IM And above.

It is going to get harder and harder to get to 2000 with no rating inflation.

Did I mention China, it is getting popular There as well as more bellies are full in both those countries. And both have a tradition of respect for things intellectual.

1200

jk probably 1366

you win one lucky game for your first live chess 

then you only play unrated

:)

I have never studied. My range is 1450-1600 in correspondence play here.

Well i am pretty much a lazy player by nature and have studied half assed for years and got my rating to 1901, so not studying at all i would say most people would fall somewhere around 1500-1600 but it depends on how much natural ability they have for the game. I want to break 2000 and i know i will have to change my study habits to achieve that

Indeed, chess_gg.

when i was much younger then now i'd learn 2 defence and 1 opening. With that and 2 or 3 times a week playing stand games i got about 1750 points in ICC.

Also this may sound dumb, but I think that in some sense the "purest" way to play chess is between two people who haven't studied the ideas of others to improve at chess. I like the idea of figuring it out on my own. But I'm also perfectly happy putzing around like chess_gg said lol. I know that in order to become "good" (which is extremely relative) you need to do some studying.

I am actually quite encouraged by the responses in here though, I figured the plateau would be much lower (maybe around 1500 or 1600) without really studying. Also at age 25 I'm considered an old-timer in the chess world lol (for a beginner anyway) and mostly just playing for fun, so I don't have delusions of any GM titles in my future. Petrosianic, thanks for sharing your experiences. Reading stories like yours is very encouraging

If you play quite a lot and analyze with better players, you could probably do better than 1500 or 1600. Otherwise, that seems about right.

Just go in a real club. Play some geezers with 1600 elo that wipe you from the board and then you will know that it takes years to develop relatively natural, that everybody studies and that without study and playing you will not really progress over 1500-1600 elo. Real club players otb play much better than internet correspondence players on here.

I don't know... take Morphy.  No books, no regular competition, and he was at least master strength (some say 2500 even).

For others... 1200?  Maybe less?

The part that stood out to me about Petrosianic's advice was access to strong players and study being fun.  These are the things that will really help you.  I guess it depends what you consider work and what's fun.  You said you dig around on the forum for tips sometimes, that's a start.

Yes, I agree with Lou-for-you: join a club. And find stronger players who can tutor you and analyse your games, and read books. But that may not be enough to have more than 1500-1600 rating points unless you also have that "something" (a mix of excellent memory, ability to recognise patterns in an instant regardless how complicate a game looks, intuition etc) that will allow you to become a very good players. All this takes A LOT of passion and dedication, of course. 

it depends. I started at 1376 FIDE 3 years ago (i am 13 now). 1 opening book, 1 endga,e book, 1 middlegame book, and chess.com browsing, got me to 1665 in 5/6 tourneys with the highest performance rating of 2056, and average performance of 1885. SO u should get close to 2000.

Achievement without effort is far less rewarding.