There's an absolute possibility of Magnus Carlsen showing up at my door and mooning me after quitting chess and relinquishing his title as World Champion to my neighbour out of spite. It's incredibly unlikely, but not impossible in the slightest. To discard this thought as ludicrous simply because "it's never gonna happen" when there's still the absolute possibility for it to occur renders you the narrow-minded one as well when you put words in other people's mouths in such derogatory fashion and exhibit a complete unawareness of the sheer scale of computational power required to solve chess. You must be a fan of NIKOLA Chess.
Quit posting trollbait.
@AdmiralAAnd I'm not comparing it to just the years he spent dedicating his life to becoming a pro, but also the time that chess becoming solved would affect his career (which is any time before he retires). It's so funny that you would even use the word possibly in your sentences when you think you have a 100% absolute grasp on what is going to happen in our life time.
@AdmiralAOf course it is easy to make such ridiculous comparisons and get away with it when you're comparing 2 different things. Why don't YOU stop trolling me? Go ahead and do it, and just stop posting. You've been more insulting than anyone else in this thread.
I personally don't think chess will be "solved" in any of our lifetimes. But even if it did, chess players would just move to chess960 probably, its not like chess professionals would ceasse to exist altogether. Humans are still going to want to play chess with other humans, at least I hope so.
@RainOfMeteorsOkay, old man, I'll get off your lawn.
@CurlaubMoving on to answer your actual question, excellence in chess is not impossible just because you didn't Scholar's mate somebody right out of the womb. Alexander Alekhine and Mikhail Chigorin both took to the game rather later than most contemporary prodigies and matured as masterful players on par - if not exceeding - their peers. It's not impossible, but it's an exception rather than the rule, so long as you put in an absolutely ungodly amount of hard work, time, practice, and absolute dedication.
OK Rain, I'll admit, I was a little condescending. But that's because every response for a full page and into the second page was irrelevant to the OP's question. I blame the title for the post. The OP's question had little to do actually about rating, so much as it had to do with how far one could progress as a player given enough hard work. To that degree, you indignantly slapped around the idea that people who study chess are wasting their time and that raw talent is the only factor without supporting your idea at all. If you truly think your posts prior to mine weren't already trollbaiting a community of chess enthusiasts who study and practice on a daily basis here, then I think you need to find the definition of trollbaiting and look at it again, as you clearly don't understand it.
I'm done responding here. I have better things to do with my time, like play chess.
@static_shadow"Trollbaiting" is to deliberately anger other people for the sake of one's own amusement. One cannot "trollbait" without the intent to do so and if one truly thinks (and I do) that their posts were not "trollbaiting" then they cannot by definition "trollbait". I certainly did not get any sort of amusement from this conversation.
No Static - I'll call you out. Rain was slightly deviant to your bell curve of what a good chess player should be and you made slight of his post. Many people use this site for their own enjoyment for social purposes and Rain explained his bewilderment why anybody chooses to be different.
You are the one that is 'troll baiting'. Don't be an asshole
To that degree, you indignantly slapped around the idea that people who study chess are wasting their time and that raw talent is the only factor without supporting your idea at all. If you truly think your posts prior to mine weren't already trollbaiting a community of chess enthusiasts who study and practice on a daily basis here, then I think you need to find the definition of trollbaiting and look at it again, as you clearly don't understand it.
What I don't understand is your vitriol! Change your profile name to - 'nobody can have an opinion that slightly diverges from what I think they should' - that would be more representative of yourself.
I'm so fired up....
Who DICTATES what a person's reasons are for playing chess? Rain questioned the motives behind somebody playing chess.....you, lambasted him for it! I don't play chess to be next GM or whatever title you want to give the best....
You have your reasons Static, all Rain was doing was challenge 'a' reason. You put him over a pillar for that?