Mastering Chess: Deliberate Practice Is Necessary but Not Sufficient, Psychologists Find

[FarCenter]

ScienceDaily (Oct. 24, 2011) — Psychological scientist Guillermo Campitelli is a good chess player, but not a great one. "I'm not as good as I wanted," he says. He had an international rating but not any of the titles that chess players get, like Grandmaster and International Master. "A lot of people that practiced much less than me achieved much higher levels." Some of the players he coached became some of the best players in Argentina. "I always wondered: What's going on? Why did this happen?"

Now a researcher at Edith Cowan University in Joondalup, Australia, Campitelli studies practicing. He's written an article with Fernand Gobet of Brunel University in the United Kingdom on their and other people's research on chess for Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

In one survey of chess players in Argentina, Campitelli and Gobet found that, indeed, practice is important. All of the players that became masters had practice at least 3,000 hours. "That was not surprising," he says. There is a theory in psychology that the more you practice, the better you'll do in areas like sports, music, and chess. "But the thing is, of the people that achieved the master level, there are people that achieved it in 3,000 hours. Other people did, like, 30,000 hours and achieved the same level. And there are even people that practiced more than 30,000 hours and didn't achieve this."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111024153448.htm

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3000 hours is probably also a good rough estimate of the time it takes to become fully competent at an occupational skill that is within one's ability.

[tridim]

1. Then, there are people like Jimi Hendrix.

From what I've read he practiced a lot, even in the bathroom, but he also had that something extra that most guitarists will never have. I always wondered if he had mild autism.

[DonCoquixote]

2. His friend Syd Barett did

Aka "the guy Pink Floyd made millions ripping off." Syd and Jimi were friends who both experimented with Guitar feedback, the sort of sound that would make non autists ear's bleed, but that they turned into music.

[tridim]

5. I had no idea they were friends. Interesting.

[MineralMan]

3. Same thing with most disciplines.

Some people have something about them that can't be duplicated. They are the ones who become renowned soloists on a musical instrument, world-record holders in some athletic event, or championship chess players. If you lack that impossible-to-define something, you will not achieve the same level as someone who does, regardless of your effort in trying.

For every discipline, it seems that the "something" is different in some way.

[vets74]

4. Can you play chess without a board ? Accurately ???

That's a better predictor.

And remembering games.

Practice is a hard thing to measure. Playing badly for 100,000 hours isn't going to help.

The chess computers have improved play for most serious players. They punish errors. It's a different game now at master level.