Interesting Bobby Fischer article

[Bill Rogers]

10 to 12 hours a day studing chess seems a little high for some. Take Bobby Fisher as a 13 year old he spent at least 8 hours a day in public schools not counting commutine to and from school or time taken for meals. That does not leave much time as noted above for studing chess.
I feel pretty sure that a higher than average IQ had played a big part in his accomplishments.
Bill

[gerold]

10 to 12 hours a day studing chess seems a little high for some. Take Bobby Fisher as a 13 year old he spent at least 8 hours a day in public schools not counting commutine to and from school or time taken for meals. That does not leave much time as noted above for studing chess.
I feel pretty sure that a higher than average IQ had played a big part in his accomplishments.
Bill

Someone listed the IQ of all the past G.M's and if i remember
right they had very high IQ.

[shiv]

To begin with your last point. In Germany at the beginning of the now so famous Bundesliga private sponsors led the clubs. One of the most successful was Solingen. They had players like Spassky, Hübner, Kavalek. Years before the single League we had 4 divisions west, north east and south. And then the final play offs. In the 70s corr Wch GM O'Kelly, aristocrat from Belgium, played for Solingen and gave extra GM lectures to the sponsor, but believe me, that wasnt leading to any master title. Why doesnt that function?

Because in chess you cant become sort of theretical, learned GM after a certain age of life. So that your idea is wrong that someone with college etc "could" become GM, he cannot. It's too late. Because chess is mainly about playing. And eidetics.
I forgot to mention that the sponsor WAS a high IQ guy who as adult had learned to play the violine. What is the difference between good play in violine and chess? <g>

To just mention the rest of the story, I dont know if you can actually buy them, but O'Kelly had published the lectures (it's mainly high class positions to solve) in How to play like a GM and How to become a GM. I can warmly recommand that because it's so unorthodox to combine positions in a lecture that are sacs, endings, draws, mate and other tactical stuff. For pure amateurs very difficult. And IF you solve it you FEEL like a master. But you know the difference between reality and such a feeling.

(BTW eidetics. It's like the lecturing O'Kelly for goal GM, some athletes with memory extremes pretend that they could teach you how to change your inborn memory into eidetic genius. Dont believe it!!)

Not sure I fully follow your comments. Are you translating from German to English when you post?

Regarding the GM and college comment, I meant that potential to be good in college might help you become a GM as well. Of course, practice is most important thing to improve at chess. However, some people do not learn from their mistakes and keep repeating them. The abilities I mention in a previous post will lead one to the GM path.

You mentioned the O' Kelly book. The english version is Assess Your Chess Fast: From Expert to Master. Batsford. 1976. ISBN 9780713410556. There are probably other good books on the subject, like books by Kotov Think Like a GM, Play like a GM; books by Dvoretsky etc. There are also several other good books on the subject. I did not realize O' Kelly wrote such a book though. I also recently saw Nunn's chess puzzle book, highly recommended as well. In the end, the challenge is to sit through the whole book and solve all the problems

[shiv]

10 to 12 hours a day studing chess seems a little high for some. Take Bobby Fisher as a 13 year old he spent at least 8 hours a day in public schools not counting commutine to and from school or time taken for meals. That does not leave much time as noted above for studing chess.
I feel pretty sure that a higher than average IQ had played a big part in his accomplishments.
Bill

You do not need to spend 10-12 hours a day studying chess for your whole life. Some GMs mentioned that they spent 10-12 hours a day for say one year where they made a lot of progress and in subsequent years work only 4-6 hours a day or less. Depends on the person.

Also Bobby Fischer dropped out of school at the age of 16, and subsequently was well known for spending 10+ hours almost every day on chess.

I think the higher than average IQ does help one to dedicate his time on chess as noted in a previous post.

[shiv]

Rolf, now understand your other comment that a rich sponsor of chess events could not improve at chess despite (many?) lessons from a GM. Depends on the effort he put in and his interest. Maybe he was really interested in the violin but less so in chess. It also helps when you learn chess at a young age.

Eidetics is an interesting way to put it. Visual recognition does play a huge role in chess and perhaps that is why younger players can improve faster. O'Kelly's claim that one can improve on eidetic ability sounds believable!