It's 100% possible to become a master starting as an adult, but it requires a certain sort of person - you're looking at thousands upon thousands of hours of difficult work paired alongside endless frustrations, obstacles, seriously low emotional lows the game can cause (think about how Ding feels right now, even if it wasn't a game for the title), and more.
The idea of becoming a master, especially as an adult, is far more appealing than the reality of it for most people.
There are a few late bloomer GMs today but what is common with them is that they were already decent just below expert players before 20.
You need 3 things to become a masters and up level player.
1. Grit - conscious mastery everyone agrees on that
2. Some natural talent - certainly to become super GM
3. Start early enough - 6,7 is norm, 10 probably okay, 15 is already almost late.
There is something special going on in the brains of young teenagers learning certain skills - violin, chess, some others. As Fischer said - he "just became good" in one year from around 13 to 14. Of course he was already pretty good at 13 but the magic happens around that time.
Basically, you train hard, maybe you take a little bit of time off and then you gain this amazing "unconscious mastery". This happens around ages 11-16 or so, depending how early you start.
Every good chess player has this "unconscious mastery" - that is they can play pretty well (2200+) even if drunk, dead tired, 1-min blitz, playing simul, etc etc - in other words without "thinking".
For some reason adult starters are unable to develop this unconscious mastery.
Apparently there are certain limits to neuroplasticity in adults. Of course I'd love to be proven wrong.
Disclaimer: I am an aging Fide Master who needed 1 point in 2 games(ie 2 draws) to become IM some years ago. I went out swinging but failed.
I also know many people who took up chess late in life and did not break 1800.
Also I know many people who are full time trainers and live chess full time, but they themselves can not go above 2200.
If pure grit was sufficient at later stages in life, we'd see a lot more progress, but we do not.
I think you are leaving out #4. You need to have basically unbreakable confidence. Dealing with that horrible plateau that we all go through often breaks adult players. This [1] is Magnus' rating chart. It looks like an unstoppable line to the top until you zoom in and actually look.
In April 2004 Magnus was 2552. 15 months and 162 classical games later he was 2528. When a 'normal' adult plays 162 classical games, which is often only done over a period of many years, and only loses rating points, they assume they've hit their peak and their spirit breaks, or they try to 'fix' their training routine and just end up completely breaking it. This is one reason it's so much easier for children to improve - they [usually] don't really think about such things in the same way and just keep grinding away.
Chess improvement is brutal. You don't put in 'x' effort and get some proportional reward back. Chess improvement is very stair-step, you wake up one day and you're suddenly much stronger than you were the day before. But until you hit that next stair-step, you see little to nothing.
In my own case I only learned how the pieces move as an adult, at least in so much as 18 counts as an adult, and feel I've gained at least a moderate level of unconscious mastery - around 2600 bullet and 2500 blitz, with the overwhelming majority of that improvement coming well after 30, and I'm still improving!
We might bicker on the meaning of "starting", but Mikhail Chigorin is definitely the most famous example. He was taught the moves at age 16 by a school teacher but in no way pursued the game until well into his twenties. He would then go on to compete at the highest level, including for the world championship.
While he's the most famous example, many famous older masters also started quite late. And I think one big difference was culture. There's a really great film about chess from 1925 (!!) here [1]. The tournament footage there is real btw - it was the Moscow tournament of 1925, and it even has a cameo by Capablanca!
The image of chess, and chess players, was quite different in the past. It was very much an adult's game. Now a days it has quite a different stereotype, and I think this impacts people's decisions on whether or not to seriously pursue it, with consequent impact on overall outcomes. Because in chess one of the biggest difficulties is when you hit your first serious plateau, which happens to everybody - it even happened to Magnus where his rating only declined for more than a year. If you lose confidence or start working poorly, that plateau will be where your improvement ends. Self belief and confidence is extremely important to keep improving.
Your examples are all people from 100 years ago when the game was completely different. Not a ringing endorsement of the claim that it's 100% possible (present tense). If Chigorin were magically transported to the present day he would not be a professional level player.
I don't know what you mean by "professional level" which is quite the shift from titled player, as you originally proposed. Kramnik, for instance, has estimated Steinitz (in modern times) would be around 2400 and Lasker around 2700. [1] Chigorin was +24−27=8 against Steinitz, and +1 -8 =4 against Lasker. He would definitely be a master.
There are plenty of examples in modern times as well, but the problem we face is you're only going to run into people who publicize themselves unless you just dig through each master level player in the USCF, FIDE or whatever database. For instance I know Rolf Wetzell wrote a book about his journey from class player to becoming a master at the age of 50! Then there was Michael de la Maza who wrote a book about going from 1100 or something to 2000 as an adult, but retired at that point because he didn't want to put in the work to go further. I'm sure if you dig through the databases, you can find far more striking examples than these two - again those two I only know because they both wrote books, and of all people who achieve significant success as adults and write, only a tiny percent will publish books about it!
And in modern times another group you might run into is people like me. I started as an adult, have only played one rated tournament otb, but am around 2500 blitz online and would certainly hit master if I actually bothered to play more rated events, but have never really gotten around to it for a mixture of cost (living outside of major chess events means $$$ for travel + housing + tourney costs) and time, even moreso now a days with children!
It depends on the level. The big early gains to get to let's say 2200+ were basically exclusively tactics. You really have to get your board vision to quite a decent level before the other parts of learning really start kicking in, and that's going to take thousands of hours of tactics. An important part of tactics is to ensure you actually work out the entire line - instead of just playing the obvious tactical idea, like Bxh7 or whatever, and going from there.
This was paired with 'analyzing' games of classical master (Alekhine, Capablanca, and so on) and then comparing my analysis against master analysis in plain English. Older books like Alekhine's best games books, or the various master vs amateur books (Euwe's is amazing) are a great resource here. Chessbase also now has a feature 'replay training' built in that would be really good for this. Load up a game, click on replay training, and you can basically play guess-the-move with automatic feedback in terms of how your move compares to the game as played (without revealing that move), as well as the top computer move.
It's also important to start appreciating typical piece repositioning ideas - for instance the rook lift is something that isn't very intuitive at first but radically reshapes many positions. If that rook on a1 heads to a3 and then on over to g3, a quiet Italian position can go from uninspiring to an unstoppable kingside attack really fast. The same is true of all the other pieces - for instance in the typical Najdorf structure with pawns on e5 and d6, knights on f6/d7, and bishop on e7 - if that bishop can go from e7 to e.g. b6 (so long as d6 remains solid enough), it can suddenly become a monster piece.
A key is to avoid excessive opening study until much later. It's a trap because you can spend an infinite amount of time learning openings, and you will get some wins without ever even leaving book, which feels pretty dang rewarding, but in the longrun it will stunt your growth. I remember at one point, sometime around 1800, delusionally thinking that the main difference between me and Kasparov was his encyclopedic opening knowledge. A quick glance at Hikaru doing puzzle rush will emphasize that's not quite right, of course this was long before GMs streaming was a thing! On the equal but opposite side, I also would recommend avoiding 'system' openings as a means of not having to worry about openings because the ideas and plans you see and learn in classical openings help improve your understanding much more than seeing an e.g. Colle each and every game.
Very good of you to get back to me with such a generous reply.
I'm happy reading it. I'd studied and played (in a club, real tournaments, etc) pretty "seriously" for about six months a couple of years ago, before stopping completely, even though it was going quite well, when some unavoidable life things got in the way.
Progress had been steady, climbing up to almost 1600 classical (before the statistical ratings hike last year, putting me on 1750). I was maybe going to at least temporarily settle around there, or slightly higher, it looked like. I'd played for a few years when I was younger, but didn't have serious coaching, unfortunately, so this was not 6 months from scratch at all.
What I'd come up with when studying tracks with some of your main points above. I was focusing very much on tactics, because I love them and because it seemed unavoidable - even the high-rated players who don't consider themselves "tactical players" still have an extremely solid tactical reading of any position, and spot all the usual patterns with ease.
I'd even mostly ignored heavy opening work! Which, I must say, is not a popular approach. A friend who'd seen a bit of your game would come up to you after a match in a tournament and say: "I can't beleve you played that on move six against the French defence, that's not the best move!", and I'd struggle to convince them that openings were not my main area of concern aha.
Anyway, thanks again, and congrats on your chess accomplishments - the tournaments truly are wonderful to be involved in, I find.
Yeah, exactly on the tactics issue. Computers used to be quite horrible positionally, but were still extremely strong simply because their short-term tactical vision was nearly perfect. And you really need tactics to enable positional play. Petrosian was able to snuff out tactical possibilities so effectively only because he was fully aware of where they were!
Now a days I think the tactics streak offered on Lichess (and probably on chess.com as well) is a really great tactical resource. It's the untimed option, rather than the much more popular tactics rush where you have e.g. 5 minutes to do as many as you can. I think the 'woodpecker' method of tactics is a great idea. Basically you build up on a repeated series of tactical problems, until you're able to complete them all perfectly accurately at an extremely high rate of speed. This seems contradictory, because the sites have massive tactics database, but you will regularly see the same problems due to the birthday paradox. If you're looking for some achievable ballparks, on Lichess I tend to be able to hit around 50 somewhat regularly, with a high of about 90.
I think the fundamental thing with openings is that so long as you make logical moves, even if you make an objectively weak move - you will very rarely reach a losing position because of it. And from that point on both your opponent and you are both out of book, so whoever understands the position better, and plays better, will win. Many people, especially adults, get caught up in obsessive opening study because it's the one form of chess study where results can be immediately felt.
The one very good thing about opening study is seeing ideas and concepts that you may not otherwise be able to come up with on your own. Like in the Najdorf, the pawn structure with d6+e5 and d6 generally firmly blocked and on a semi-open file leaves d6 feeling like a major weakness at first. The fact that it's generally rock solid was a serious eye-opener for me! And that translates strongly to many other positions - backwards pawns are not necessarily dooming one to passive defense, and can even be a great dynamic weapon!
Summaries of these are being added to my chess-learning files :) I will be doing Lichess tactics streak, the forced element of "can't lose" sounds like exactly what I need to be that little bit more hotly engaged.
I love the Woodpecker method! I went all in on that during my six-months of study, and had (anecdotal) positive results. I made flashcards of all the positions, and worked through them all 3 or 4 times, trying to go faster and faster. I also looked up a big list of common checkmating patterns, and put them on flashcards, and gave them names and everything to make them memorable, and drilled them.
This culminated in my last tournament, a rapid 12'3'', and me beating my first ever 1800s and 1900s, and performing well above my I think 13 or 1400 rapid rating of the time. It literally happened in two or three of the games that I'd be looking at the exact pattern I'd drilled, and then looking at the 1700 or whatever opponent and going: aha, the method works, here's the pattern.
What you say about openings tracks with what I was doing, except I went a bit mad at one stage and started learning loads of ridiculous gambits and getting smashed by anyone half-decent. I like violent positions. I'd some spectacular wins, but I think it was a silly strategy. At one stage a frind from the club destroyed me after I played some dubious gambit as black, and he said "yeah, gambits are good fun, but maybe for bullet chess online".
At a certain point too, in the process of "getting good", it's my feeling that everyone must eventually accept the quiet positions, and the slow endgames, and working hard for a draw with no story to tell afterwards. I was getting to the level where I had to accept that, but still struggled... I still would be tempted to do things that I literally knew were unsound, and would say: "oh come on, it makes no sense", but I might do it anyway, or a variant of it. Anyway, my thinking would be heavily clouded and biased by this desire for winning in the middlegame, and avoiding the slowness!
You can easily make a sharp/tactical repertoire of sound openings. As black you can play the Najdorf and King's Indian Defense. As white - open sicilian, winawer french, advance caro kann, be3/qd2/f3/o-o-o stuff against modern/pirc, bd3 bd2 o-o-o against scandi. e4e5 is the toughest nut to crack, but the evan's gambit is generally sound - Kasparov even beat Anand with it. Against the petroff you can play Nc3+o-o-o stuff.
That should just about cover everything!
But yeah, one thing you have to do to really start improving alot is to always assume your opponent will play the best move. Hope chess is how you ruin your own position!
Can you provide a single example of someone who started chess in their 20s who became a grandmaster?
Starting in 20s and getting to 2000 FIDE does happen, with an awful lot of work and dedication. GM, I have never found a single example of. By all means, prove me wrong.
The idea of becoming a master, especially as an adult, is far more appealing than the reality of it for most people.