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Aris, I'm mid-1900s at present and 54 next month. I was 2184 in 2013 and dropped back (I have MANY reasons for the drop... all 100% legitmate! LOL) I'll be trying to climb my way back to 2000, then 2100 and cross 2200 over the next chunk of years now that I'm no longer working silly hours.
My focus:
- clock management
- endgames (Dvorestky & Silman)
- middlegame tactics (ECO et al)
- opening that are more strategic than pure tactics (although I would love to be competent in the King's Gambit and Smith-Morra!)
Mihai Șubă (Romania born June 1, 1947) is a Romanian and Spanish chess player. FIDE awarded him the International Master title in 1975 and the International Grandmaster title in 1978.
Suba is the oldest example I can think of who obtained his GM title late in life. Of course Mike could go the Larry Kaufman route and win the World Senior Championship, since there is not an age restriction. That may be the easiest route these days.
Last edited by Ian Findlay; Tuesday, 20th October, 2020, 11:53 PM.
Suba is the oldest example I can think of who obtained his GM title late in life. Of course Mike could go the Larry Kaufman route and win the World Senior Championship, since there is not an age restriction. That may be the easiest route these days.
Ian, this example is well known to be dubious and refuted by the 40-year-old Grandmaster Variation...
OK, I'm curious now, what are the chances of a late middle-age 1800 player making NM/CM, so 2200?
And more importantly, in your judgement, what would be the KEYS to having a hope of achieving this?
Offer Carlsen, Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand and Gelfand all of the money in exchange for training you. Five years if you are in good health and cognitively capable. Thirty is not that old.
The only adult I can think of who made a big leap to NM is Matthew Nicholson. Judging by his CFC ID #, though, he did it in his 20s. If I remember correctly, he has very high physical energy with great posture much like yourself.
I would be interested to hear his thoughts on adult improvement.
Thanks Tony, I would also like to hear his ideas on adult improvement, but to be fair, he did it in his 20s, whereas I'm in my late 50s. No matter how good I feel now, my 20s are LONG gone lol
I was an U1400 player in my teens, and then let go of chess in my 20s to chase very physical sports. Then when my second son was born (early 30s), I somehow stopped scrambling around to get hundreds of things done, took parental leave, and picked up Silman's How To Reassess Your Chess (3rd Edition). I would read it in the evenings as my baby son would wind down, almost always WITHOUT a chessboard, and in just over a year (as I recall, can't find the exact time records), my rating peaked at 2048, I drew a couple of IMs, etc. Then my life got stupid busy again as I tried to make it in the corporate world (think Nortel BIG-lol), and I've slid back down a couple of hundred points since then. I feel I DON'T have any special natural abilities, I just really like classic slow play.
I was never "high-rated" at any point in my life. I think that's significant, as it seems quite clear that an 1800 12-year-old has a much greater upside than an 1800 with a Shoppers Seniors' Card!
So, I'm still looking for anyone who was mediocre INTO their 50s, and THEN elevated to 2200 or so. (I see there's more posts after Tony's, and I'll try to reply to them all within the next hours).
Thank you Tony for your reply, and also for your kind words!
Aris, I'm mid-1900s at present and 54 next month. I was 2184 in 2013 and dropped back (I have MANY reasons for the drop... all 100% legitmate! LOL) I'll be trying to climb my way back to 2000, then 2100 and cross 2200 over the next chunk of years now that I'm no longer working silly hours.
My focus:
- clock management
- endgames (Dvorestky & Silman)
- middlegame tactics (ECO et al)
- opening that are more strategic than pure tactics (although I would love to be competent in the King's Gambit and Smith-Morra!)
Thanks Sam!!
Although you seem to be quite a bit better than me, I do see some similarities. I love your checklist, and I'm happily working through the video lessons on Chess.com --- regarding openings, one of the curious things that's happened to me is that I've gone the other way during the pandemic. Rather than KIAs, I'm rediscovering classic gambits, etc. Have you considered a specific teacher/coach, etc?
Last edited by Aris Marghetis; Wednesday, 21st October, 2020, 07:16 AM.
Mihai Șubă (Romania born June 1, 1947) is a Romanian and Spanish chess player. FIDE awarded him the International Master title in 1975 and the International Grandmaster title in 1978.
Suba is the oldest example I can think of who obtained his GM title late in life. Of course Mike could go the Larry Kaufman route and win the World Senior Championship, since there is not an age restriction. That may be the easiest route these days.
Thanks Ian, but I'm looking moreover for examples of people whose life is more similar to my own, here in Canada, born in the 60s or so. Like I'm WAY past my 30s (when he made it?!)
P.S. and I think IM/GM is unrealistic, I'm just talking 2200
Last edited by Aris Marghetis; Wednesday, 21st October, 2020, 07:06 AM.
Offer Carlsen, Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand and Gelfand all of the money in exchange for training you. Five years if you are in good health and cognitively capable. Thirty is not that old.
Thanks Vlad, but "all the money"? Maybe one day of lessons LOL
That's VERY nice of you to imply 30, but Shoppers Seniors' Card!!
Have you considered a specific teacher/coach, etc?
Not at the moment and probably not down the road either, but having one is probably the best way to advance and learn. I'd prefer to buy things for our backyard veggie garden or save the money towards finishing our basement.
Not at the moment and probably not down the road either, but having one is probably the best way to advance and learn. I'd prefer to buy things for our backyard veggie garden or save the money towards finishing our basement.
I hear you. Now that I think of it, "teacher/coach" is probably not the right phrase. Over the years, I have consulted at times with TomO, and his practical approach has been tremendously helpful. I remember hiring him decades ago for the Closed championship of LEO (Hull-Gatineau, Que). I somehow sneaked in seeded 6th of 6, but finished 3rd. Thanks to Tom, it was a great life experience!
He's very good, and when my students get too good for me, I refer them to him. Anyway, I guess I think even more useful would be someone who's actually DONE this, so a potential "mentor?!"
A few folks within 200 points of each other would be a good study group (practice games and old school post-mortems and opening/tactics/endgame analysis study) should also be mutually beneficial.
Quite some time ago (1994) there was a book, Chess Master At Any Age by Rolf Wetzell. I no longer have my copy but it's available for free from the Internet Archive. Some more recent discussion (2012) around the issue can be found at
A few folks within 200 points of each other would be a good study group (practice games and old school post-mortems and opening/tactics/endgame analysis study) should also be mutually beneficial.
Thanks Sam, but sometimes I wonder about that approach? Here's a quote from one of the reviews written about the old book that Stephen Wright referred to just above this post:
"A sad, and true, fact is that most chess players show little improvement in their game after several years of study and play. Why? Because it's difficult to change our thinking about how we each play chess. Old, bad and erroneous thinking habits prevent us from becoming stronger."
I think I largely agree with this quote. Hence my search for someone who actually improved after trying to improve later in life. I'm beginning to think this is even more rare than I feared lol
Quite some time ago (1994) there was a book, Chess Master At Any Age by Rolf Wetzell. I no longer have my copy but it's available for free from the Internet Archive. Some more recent discussion (2012) around the issue can be found at
The only adult I can think of who made a big leap to NM is Matthew Nicholson. Judging by his CFC ID #, though, he did it in his 20s. If I remember correctly, he has very high physical energy with great posture much like yourself.
I would be interested to hear his thoughts on adult improvement.
In the early 1990s, I returned to chess after about a ten year absence. I had been a class B player when I stopped playing and perhaps a low A player. I was probably 33 or 34 at the time I returned. Ray Stone called me to play on the first Windsor team in the Detroit Metro League along with Milan Vukadinov and Brian Profit who now argues about Trump with me. I accepted the challenge and was put on the fourth board.
In parallel, I started reading Tony Robbins books and listening to some of his tapes, specifically the abridged version of Awaken the Giant Within. In that tape which ran a little over an hour and a half I think, Robbins suggest you apply his various ideas in some area of your life to see if it works for you. I chose chess. In about 14 months I went from the low A class and being very rusty to 2200 USCF where I played most of my games at that time. At that point disaster struck and an old back injury asserted itself and it became physically painful to play. I tried but went into physiotherapy for a few years and eventually emerged being able to play again and had a good final tournament in North Bay to raise my CFC rating over 2200 in 1996 or perhaps it was 1995 though 1996 makes more sense as I went from a job at the university which left me lots of time for chess to a job as a software specialist at a factory automation distributor where I had less time for tournaments.
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