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Chess or Scrabble?

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Pringle, Mar 24, 2011.

  1. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    Chess is extremely, extremely rewarding, then. Let's say you have about an hour a day, maybe a little more on weekends. Here's about what you'll expect if you follow a reasonable training program

    3 months - you can beat anyone who "knows how to play" or just goofs around in general
    1 year to 18 months - You'll be an average player at competitive tournaments
    3-5 years - You might reach "Class A" strength, the top "casual" level (in theory, beyond this is 'professional,' but not really)
    5-7 years - You can achieve "Expert" status.
    7-10 years - You can maybe have a shot at reaching the lowest levels of "Master" (the top 1% of all tournament chess players)
     
  2. JR

    JR Well-Known Member

    If you want to play a board game, play Scrabble.

    If you want to play a game that challenges you intellectually and forces you to learn strategies that may consume and frustrate you, take up Chess.

    I used to diagram chess strategies when I was a teenager and I'm still trying to figure out how to respond to The Sicilian Defense.

    Hundreds of books have been published on Chess, not so many on Scrabble although The Scrabble Dictionary is pretty much the basic reference tool for the game.
     
  3. JR

    JR Well-Known Member

    Rick, the number of years you play has really nothing to do with your level of excellence.

    I'd consider myself a better than average player (maybe a Class A) and I've been playing for a long time.

    No matter how much I play or how many books I read I will never advance to the next level.

    It's got nothing to do with time spent or a "training program"

    It has to do with how your brain functions and like an elite athlete, your genes.
     
  4. Wenders

    Wenders Well-Known Member

    I've been playing for a couple of weeks, but my friend and I have been having major issues with the app (on Android) the last few days.
     
  5. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    If you aren't playing OTB tournaments actively, it'd be really hard to know how good you are in that format.

    I've talked to a lot of professional chess trainers and serious players about the subject of ceilings and improvement, and they all agree that there *is* a ceiling at which most players can no longer progress, but it's not as low as you are saying. Their consensus is that it's somewhere between 2100 and 2400 FIDE, which takes you into the expert and lowest master range.

    Beyond that is where natural talent takes over. You can't make International Master on raw effort and average intelligence. But you can definitely make USCF Expert (Candidate Master in FIDE) and most of those guys agree that you'd have a strong shot at National Master (in the US) or FIDE Master (elsewhere).

    Reading more books and playing more are two of the things they wouldn't recommend for a player who feels he has plateaued, incidentally :)
     
  6. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    A beautiful chess set can make a nice decoration for a home.

    Advantage, chess.
     
  7. Mystery Meat II

    Mystery Meat II Well-Known Member

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