A further titbit from my wanderings in the chess world. I was given a free "Chess" magazine today from 2010. In retro mode, it includes excerpts from war-time issues of the magazine where readers write in complaining about the English Chess Federation officials in terms that are almost identical to the contumely expressed about AGA officials elsewhere on L19. But as that was no surprise, the interest was limited.

The really interesting piece was a piece about a young player's project to turn himself into a grandmaster. We see such projects on L19 every thrice in a while. But this chess example had a twist I have not come across before. Will Taylor backed himself to the tune of 200 pounds with a national bookmaker to achieve grandmaster status (apparently with no time limit). He got odds of 25 to 1. He was expecting between 100 to 1 and 500 to 1, but an international master friend had suggested 25,000 to 1 was more realistic. Yet another friend thought it was as likely as Tiger Woods winning a "husband of the year" award. But Will said the precise odds were not important as the idea was to create motivation.

I checked on the web when I got home and he is still at it. It's hard to judge his progress, because he was simultaneously studying for a degree. In the magazine article he was proud of having achieved 177.5 hours of training in 13 weeks, but his blog suggests this may have dipped - some weeks missed and the most I saw was about six hours a week. So he has not been close even once to the "expert" level expected of the famous "10,000 hours in 10 years", let alone achieved any consistency. However he has now obtained his degree and seems to think he can now concentrate more on chess.

It's also possible to be cynical about what grandmaster means. Will started at about 1900 Elo and claims the GM level is 2500. However, even if he achieved that, it is close to 350 points below top rated Magnus Carlsen, and at that difference Carlsen would be expected to win 90% of their games.

You can judge for yourself on his site: http://roadtograndmaster.com/?page_id=2

A bit more stunt-like, there is a fellow who had never previously played golf who is now devoting 10000 hours to becoming a professional: http://thedanplan.com/.

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Occupy Babel!

http://http://roadtograndmaster.com/?p=11

That sentence was wishful thinking really. I haven't played Go since the Durham tournament in June 2011, though I may be going to China in September and if that happens will be hard-pressed to avoid it entirely!

He keeps saying in his posts that "typical child prodigies" achieve grandmaster from class A in a matter of a few years, and such gains are "routinely made quickly," but he's dead wrong. Typical child prodigies achieve expert or master or IM and plateau, and never reach grandmaster; there's hundreds of those for every one that reaches grandmaster. Then again, he probably cares more than most.

I'd give him 75 to 1.