Has chess mentor help your playing ability?

 That's ridiculous, since she simply couldn't paint worth a crap. Nobody would buy her pictures for cryen out loud! If she could sell paintings, so could I, and I have noe ability at all

Bobby Fischer wasn't born a chess genius. His father disappeared and his mother, Regina was vaguely interested in Bobby as she was caught up in being a communist activist. He escaped the hardship and bleakness of his childhood through a chess board and learnt to play from the instructions of a chess set at the age of 6.

He did pretty much nothing else other than play chess. At the age of 12 he eventually joined the Manhattan Chess Club and his playing strength rose considerably. Constant hard work and endless studying and playing combined by mentoring from his first teacher, Carmine Nigro allowed Bobby to grow at an exponential rate. 

Do you think Einstein was born a genius? He too studied intently from an early age, such knowledge isn't just inserted into some one's head it takes time to develop, many years. Stephan Fry is another example of someone who has read countless books and has an insatiable appetite for knowledge.

It boils down to the individual and their surroundings/upbringing to determine what kind of path they will take in life. We all have the option to change. Saying "Yes, well I'm not naturally gifted so I won't try," or "He's always going to be better than me because he was naturally talented", is b*******!

If your determined enough to do something in life, especially at an early age, you will achieve it!!

I believe intelligence is abstract, we are all born 'dumb', some people work hard at nurturing their brain and absorb knowledge, others don't..

 Their genius is what caused their interest, and their very deep interest is what caused them to be interested enough to work hard.

No one is born a genius, it's not something that we inherit at birth. It takes time and hard work. Like I said, it's also down to the surroundings and the situation with which you grow up in that determines the path you will take.

Not many people fully commit themselves to one particular subject/activity in life, but those that do usually excel in what they do. All of the people mentioned thus far have spend their lifetimes studying their chosen fields.

 Yes there are people who are born geniuses. So what if it takes hard work to develop it. If an ordinary person, and a genius put in the same amount of work, the genius will be way ahead. I think the notion that there are no born geniuses is probably a bunch of politically correct bull shit designed to make the average person feel better.

I couldn't disagree more, I know from experience that hard study and drive to accomplish something works. I've only been a software developer for around 8 months, my first 6 months I spent studying on my own, after I got back from work.

I applied for a junior developer position, and all the little projects I created while I was studying I took into the interview room. There was supposed to be 2 interviews, but they let me join after just 1. I'd started on basic SQL and moved onto T-SQL after just 2 weeks, completing the first book but not finishing the second (it was rather over sized and a dry read)..The next 3 months I worked on vb.net, a very easy programming language to use, and quite popular too. I created various apps from word processors to creating an app for Twitter, that you could use from your desktop.

At the end of that book there was a section on ASP.net, the first time I'd seen HTML markup, and CSS, not to mention a very small dabble in JQuery (which is always fun)  I showed my brother weekly the new technologies/languages I was learning, because he's been a Dev for years and inspired me to give it a try. He kind of threw a bombshell at me one weekend and told me to 'ditch' everything related to VB.net and go with a language called C#.

But I'd spend the last 2 months learning VB and was more than a little apprehensive of just 'ditching' everything I had done. But the reason was C# was a bit more popular, and more favoured my Microsoft it seems. So off I went, this time armed with a new book, equally as big as the VB book, Head First C#.

(fantastic book I'd highly recommend to people looking to get into programming or just refine their existing knowledge)

Anyhow, for the next 3-4 months I studied it deeply, completing as much as I could while writing the applications that cropped up in the book..

after a total of around 6 months I'd learnt enough to get a junior position with no college or university experience. My boss told me quite a lot of people applied for that job, some with commercial experience and others that were university graduates. I work with a lot of people who as soon as they start talking you would think holy Cr** these guys are insanely clever.

The truth is, there not..There just vastly more experienced and have gone through college, uni, and have previous experience, the works! However I've narrowed the gap a lot since I've started working there I'm catching them up after just a few months.

Hard work and plenty of studying. Does it make me clever to learn 4 different programming languages in 6 months? Absolutely not.. I just worked my ass off for it, and here's more..

At the time this was all going on, my son Logan, had literally just been born, I was also learning to be a father at the time, and not long since passed my driving test. I was driving around February and Logan was born in March. At the time I was working 6 days a week at a bakery, right near to my house, which was quite useful in a way. The only thing was that the starting times were usually 5am start, but half 1 - 2pm finish. Quite exhausting and mentally draining, but I loved programming so much I couldn't wait to get home and study. 

I used the learning process it to excape a lot of things that were going on at the time, and I'd say it kept me sane, kept me happy. I'd have gone mad without it to be honest.

So that's the first point, that it can be done.

I don't want to give my life story but a little history about me, no good grades from primary or secondary, I may as well not gone. had no interest in learning of any kind until I reached about 22 where I 'clicked' and realised I had to pull my bloody finger out. Had I this mindset from the word 'go' I would have a totally different life and probably would have achieved a lot more. 

The point of this is that anyone can do it, were not born with superior knowledge of quantum physics or thermodynamics. Were not born with the ability to calculate complex chess positions, we LEARN.

Every great person in this world has had to learn, study, and put the effort in, to get something out. I'm not saying Einstein, Fischer, Stephen Hawkins aren't unique, I'm just saying it's not impossible for us to have achieved the same thing, if we had followed in their footsteps from the word go..

I don't agree that it would be possible for just anybody to get to that level. Sure, the average player could accomplish a fairly high rating with a lot of work but not to that level. There are indeed born geniuses. Of course they are not born with the knowledge, but they are born with the ability to learn their chosen field to a higher degree.

Yep that's me alright. :)

Being a born genius is an oxymoron, woodshover, since being born is pretty stupid in the first place.

Seriously, I can't believe how many otherwise intelligent people don't believe people have different abilities.

Um, you're the one that believes in "born genius", woodshover. Who believes in that nonsense? You probably believe in angels

 Bull shit. I just have common sense.

lololol trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls.  

You must have been born with common sense, woodshover. The "common sense gene" is rare!

http://www.ehow.com/info_8149870_people-born-geniuses.html

Read the entire article above. It's obviously nature AND nurture. Nurture alone is not enough, however.

"According to Keith Simonton, who has studied and researched geniuses since the 1970s, geniuses are people who possess "the intelligence, enthusiasm, and endurance to acquire the needed expertise in a broadly valued domain of achievement.""

Does Simonton's definition of "genius" appear unambiguous to you, woodshover? I would think the words, "intelligence", "enthusiasm", and the term "broadly valued", would be warning signs that "genius" is a subjective evaulation, woodshover.

It's not. Read the whole article.

I read the whole article.