Ben finegold got the GM title not too long ago.
What is the average age for...
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He may have been a GM at 40, but he was a master at 14 so... it's not as if he learned the game at 35 
0110001101101000 wrote:
He may have been a GM at 40, but he was a master at 14 so... it's not as if he learned the game at 35
Excellent point.
I started to play at 15, does it count? Besides the time it takes for one to improve in case he is regularly playing should matter the most, as well as the intensity and everything that goes with it, which in my case, apart from the passion, was far from having anything to do with steadiness and hard work.
With helps from computers and internet and the year we are living now is easier than ever for a kid to improve quickly and the age for reaching master drops and its getting more hard for adults who want to reach a master level. More and more people now can play chess way stronger than 20 years ago.
AIM-AceMove wrote:
With helps from computers and internet and the year we are living now is easier than ever for a kid to improve quickly and the age for reaching master drops and its getting more hard for adults who want to reach a master level. More and more people now can play chess way stronger than 20 years ago.
It's true. One of my coaches mentioned that he was trying to win games against older GMs in Austria, while struggling to draw some of the young IMs. Chess playing ability, with all the software, chess study plans, information, and videos, has really increased by many leaps in the general population's playing ability.
This made me think of this video (link below) where it took the adult 8 months to learn how to ride a "backwards bike" while it took his 6 year old son 2 weeks, roughly 17x faster.
Watch 3:25 to around 4:50 to get straight to the point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0
I just stumbled on to this today, didn't think that it would be well known 
Vsauce and numberphile are two channels I enjoy often, somehow never ran into this guy before though.
The average online player's average age is certainly not over 16. You can tell. Those are the players who play on down a queen, rook, and 3 pawns with no attack. Kids ... get rid of 'em.
Earning a FIDE title?
Of course most titled players are adults, but I wonder if the average age for becoming an FM, IM, or GM is something that may be surprisingly low like 14.