There is a difference between playing to play or playing to win. I can feel it especially now as I am 31. The automatic improvements that came when I was younger in any game I touched are gone. If I want to get truly better now, I need to engage in activity in a way that triggers deep state of focus, otherwise nothing gets written into my brain.
Maybe you are also older?
I distinctly remember this feeling at age 28... that my brain wasn't "automatically" learning things for me the way it used to. Not sure what that feeling is or what actually takes place in the brain, ask a neuroscientist I guess :p but it's definitely something noticeable.
I will say that learning new things helps keep the brain.. uh... active? It doesn't feel as old as what I'm trying to say... not just a platitude, I'm saying it based on experience. And not chess I mean things like learning a new language, or math, or how to play an instrument.
Somehow I learned a whole bunch of wacky math, science, english while being a constant nervous wreck who cared only about girls and nonsense social rules throughout school but now I can barely force myself to learn 20 new words a day. Wish my brain worked like it used to.
I'm 28, and I totally get this. I've improved very little overall in the past 8 years or so, and I've found that if I ever take a break from chess it feels like I've lost a lot when I come back to it. I still have hope that I can make another leap, I just don't always have as much time and energy to devote to chess as I'd like.
This is something people don't realize about the difference between playing online vs OTB tournaments. There's a huge difference in focus playing someone who's playing a game in between classes/meetings/on the toilet, and someone who has set aside their entire day/weekend for the sole purpose of focusing on chess. It's a completely different animal.
The mind and body definitely has limits as you age, but unless you're at or very near your *potential theoretical peak* of ability, it's probably not a hard limit that is the issue.
Chess skills are like muscles -- they need to be consistently execised and overloaded in order to grow. They also often depend on each other as a group: It doesn't matter how good you are with your knights if you constantly get your bishps trapped. It doesn't matter how good you are at pins if you can't stop walking into skewers. etc. These skills also need to be maintained over time.
Calculation usually weakens as you get older as well and you have to do things to maintain or grow this skill. It's also a very energy-draining activity that seems to become more difficult as you age, so if you don't adapt to this, you might be losing games because of it.
In my opinion, it's more likely that the vast majority of players who stop improving haven't hit a hard biological limit, but haven't adapted to the changes necessary to increase their skill. If you always play at a particular level and don't train harder than you play, your play tends not to get better, and everyone has a comfort zone that they like to stay in. You have to get out of that to get better, but it's uncomfortable and psychologically difficult.
My .02.
All skill based activities have various skill floors. When you aren’t good at something, merely engaging in that activity will make you better. Once you hit a certain level, you have to actually engage in activities to force you to learn more. The higher you go, the more focused you have to be. At some point, you have to actually practice in a structured way to get better. Most people stop when they have to start legitimately practicing.
Memorization isn't what's separating you from players 300 rating points over you. Superior calculation skill and pattern recognition are. You can train those with puzzles and self analysis.
Those things can certainly overlap. I wouldn't be throwing memorization out the window.
There have been many great players who felt chess was becoming less enjoyable because it was becoming more and more "book" oriented. Capablanca and Fischer are obvious examples. Still being in the book 15 moves in was something that was kind of new in that time, and usually occurring at high level. Now pretty unremarkable!
However, I don't disagree with you really -- it's not realistic that all those players 300 above have memorized stuff he hasn't. But memorization is a legitimate way to thug you way up, to an extent. If they deviate first you have an advantage.
Not sure it's an advisable or worthwhile effort for a normal person though.
I’m definitely at the point where just playing rapid games and analyzing afterwards don’t do that much for improvement. If I want to improve it now requires active studying on my part which is more difficult to get myself to do as it requires more effort on my part. I think it’s similar for others, and many don’t want to (understandably) put in the work that’s necessary to improve.
I don't think memorization is what would help us improve. Because no matter how many additional opening moves I learn, or trying to learn sideline responses, I still need to work on my calculation and tactics.
Honestly the reason people eventually stop improving is that they don't want to put in the additional work needed to get to the next level. (I'm talking about myself here, I find it too easy to start Blitz games instead of ever actually doing puzzles)
There are many reasons, some already mentioned.
I'll throw this in... when I was new, I was lucky there was a local club where the *weakest* player who attended was 1600 OTB. Pretty much everyone was in the tight range 1700-1900. I'd show up, lose every game, and go home and study for next week. This helped me a lot...
... but after some years, as I got to 1900 OTB, there was no club full of masters I could join to get beat up every night, and I basically stopped improving.
So you have to find new methods that will push you into new ways of playing... and no one is born knowing how to learn. Learning itself is a skill. If you're lucky, then as a kid you have coaches who take care of that for you, and constantly give you material and put you in environments that allow you to keep improving. As an adult, with a dozen other things in life that are more important than chess, you tend to end up where you end up.
---
A quick note about memorizing stuff though... The better I've become, the more I've agreed with one of Finegold's rants about "why people don't get better at chess." He focuses more on the beginner incarnation of it (missing basic threats) but it's also true at higher levels, the winner is the person who is doing all the in-between stuff better. It's not about knowing what pawn break a GM would play, or calculating an amazing sacrifice, it's about all the boring fundamental moves... are you resolving the tension early for no reason, are you creating weaknesses for no reason, that sort of thing.
Everyone has an ability to improve simply from playing, but yes there is a limit to how much you can improve by yourself without actively working on it. Some people are lucky and can coast all the way to 2000+, others get stuck before they even hit 1000. I'm not really sure why this happens earlier for some people than others, but obviously there are factors like age, health etc that have an impact.
In any case when you hit a wall, you kinda need to bruteforce your way through. In chess, that's with puzzles, game analysis, books, study etc. Not fun for the most part and for most people, which is why many people stop once they hit whatever their wall is.
Its about being willing to think and analyze beyond what feels comfortable. Be willing to ask the difficult questions. Be willing to really think through positions and truly understand why certain choices are optimal or suboptimal. Be willing to push.
At the lower levels, probably because they didn’t properly study for it. Sheer number of hours alone of doing something does not guarantee mastery or even proficiency. Targeted practice is critical.
At the highest level, it’s genetics/talent. Once you get to the Top 99.9% level, you are dealing with the freaks of nature in their respective domains. To give an obvious example, you cannot practice your way into LeBron James or Michael Jordan — you need to win the genetic lottery.
The same goes with “cerebral” activities. You cannot practice your way to Magnus or Kasparov. It’s just not as obvious to us since the genetic differences are not as obviously as being 6”6 and being able to jump fifty inches in the air with ease.
I am at 900 and don’t see myself getting to 1100, or at least def not this year or the year after.
The input needed for me to get to a higher level is not worth it. I don’t want to study, watch videos, talk with other people about chess, do puzzles etc.
I just want to sit on the couch while watching the office see if somebody made a move and then make a move.
I do like YouTube when a good player does a speed run but that will never be enough.
I just don’t want to put in the time
many people here say talent but i think unless you're already master+ level, talent doesn't really have much to do with it.
I think the biggest factor is attitude. Many people take the wrong attitude when they lose. They just rage and quit, not many actually go back to take notes of the blunders/wrong plans/weak moves that they played. If you refuse to learn then you just don't improve.
Another factor is dedication/time. Not many people love the game enough to keep playing (especially in tournaments) and not many people are dedicated enough to improve to keep learning. So they plateau.
Sometimes you have all the above factors but you still don't improve, then you have to ask someone to teach you. A good coach can give you a different perspective of the games that you never knew before.
And then if you have tried all of the above and still can't reach a certain goal, then yea probably it's something more hardwired like talent, cognitive ability, etc.
Thanks for your question. Make sure to read our [guide on how to get better at chess](https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/wiki/improve); there are lots of tools and tips here for players looking to improve their game. In addition, feel free to visit our sister subreddit /r/chessbeginners for more information.
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Because you get used to the style of play you've been using for the given Elo and time control you reached. To progress further I think one needs to feel comfortable in more different situations while maintaining a good usage of time.
It doesn't boil down to any single factor. Let's say the theoretical maximum that any human can achieve is about 3500 Elo. Various things are going to contribute to stopping you from reaching that maximum. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume you can just sum up these factors:
* Genetics - reaction time, pattern recognition, episodic memory, ability to work 10 hours a day everyday, etc. If your genetics are about average, that lowers your potential by maybe 400 Elo points. Your ceiling is now 3100.
* Starting age. You didn't start learning chess until you were say 18, losing the benefit of the cognitive flexibility of youth. 500 points. Your ceiling is now 2600.
* Training quality. You're training the wrong things because you don't know what to prioritize, and you don't have a GM trainer to tell you what you're doing wrong. 200 points. Ceiling = 2400.
* But motivation is probably the biggest factor. Not only is my training wildly subpar, I also don't care. I only play blitz because longer time controls are too much of a commitment. I do puzzles because they're rewarding and I can almost always win. I avoid opening theory because it's boring. I practice 15 minutes a day instead of 10 hours because there's other things I care more about than chess. Even when I do play chess, my focus is only like 80 or 90% on the game because I simply don't care that much; I don't dream about chess so I'm not using sleep to integrate chess information, I don't think about chess at lunch or when I'm at a party, when I lose I don't replay the game 100 times in my head to find where I went wrong, etc. 1000 points. Ceiling = 1400.
If I keep playing regularly, 5 to 15 minutes a day, for years and years, I'll likely hit that ceiling and more or less stay there until the effects of cognitive decline outweighs those of accumulated low-intensity practice. Partly it will be because I'm not smart enough, I don't optimize my training well enough, etc. But mostly it will be because I never care enough to actually do the things needed to improve.
Everybody hits a speedbump at some point, how soon it comes is going to depend on your age, mental flexibility, natural talent and training methodology.
0-500 happened when I learned as a kid, 500-700 by playing the odd game over the years- ladder mate, backrank mate, basic awareness of what the pieces can "see" and slow, basic calculation of simple exchanges.
700-1400 happened over a year in my 20s by playing 10 min+ games every day, with no courses/lessons/tutorials, just noticing my mistakes and making an effort not to repeat the same one in my next few games. It built pattern recognition, tactical awareness, and basic positional awareness. Much more attention paid to the opponent's immediate plans and opportunities.
1400-1600 in 6 months or so, playing less frequently/with less effort, but with the addition of blitz to improve my instincts and some puzzles to automate some more common mating patterns. At 1600 I'm finding that in order to see rating increases, I'm having to look for the first time at opening theory, pawn structures and positional themes. I can't get any further by just playing.
Are you analyzing your games? Are you doing tactics regularly? Do you have a coach? Have you studies strategy, positional play, or endgames? Is you’re just mindlessly playing, you’ll never improve. You must struggle.
For 4 years I was a mediocre 1200 elo, but in the last few months I decided to study openings and calculus and I managed to reach 1400. I still need to learn endings, I think that when I do that I will be able to reach 1800. Playing for fun is very different from playing to improve.
Because most of us (including myself) are self taught. We learn through books and YouTube videos, but we don't actually have a chess coach who can actually give us a direction to go. It's hard to acknowledge your own mistakes.
Back when I was working with statistical analysis in organizations, we came across the S-Curve when looking at peoples' careers. It seemed to appear in their earnings over time, their skills level, their relationships and more. It appeared in project management, in company earnings, in innovations and many more areas. What it seemed to represent was how all these things started slow, accelerated, then slowed and plateaued. Rather like a sine curve, from trough to peak. It wasn't quite that discrete, since the s-curve could "jump" when a person changed a career, or a product suddenly became popular or somehow shifted into another gear.
Looking at people's Elo ratings in various places, despite the ups and downs in regular games there seems to be the same underlying pattern. You follow an s-curve between each plateau, but the up part has a lot of jags up and jags down -- rather than look at the actual raw scores, do a "x-game" average. While there is a decline after the plateau, taking the average after every 10 or 50 or 100 games (number depends on how seriously you are playing), you see there's a slow s-curve in effect.
The s-curve depends on the person and what they are doing. and what they are doing to break through the plateau, but it does show that there can be learning to get off whatever plateau you reach, if you find something that makes your play different or better.
But, unless you apply the adherence to basics (a good coach is needed) and find the tiny improvements in those basics (sometimes learning new openings, discovering and mastering new tactics, mastering new endgames) you can very easily get stuck on a plateau, and never get off it, no matter how many games you play.
When you’re bad at something, there’s hundreds if not thousands of issues that you need to work on. With that many different issues, it’s easy to fix a ton of them with just a little effort and plenty of them sort themselves out accidentally. Once you get better, the amount of those issues decrease so you have to actively look for them before you can address them.
Also, it’s likely that when you start to improve you address the easy issues first and save the hard ones for later. So, as you get better the few issues that are left are the hardest ones to tackle.
The greatest amount of neuroplasticity for any human being occurs when they are a child and decreases as you age.
And no, there is no regimen nor amount of psychedelics or modafinil that will ever bring it back.
My problem is that I'm lazy and I don't like calculating. So I hit my wall with intuition and I'm okay with that. I'm not going to start putting in the work to improve, so I don't have improvement as part of my goals. I'm a casual kibitzer and I'm okay with that.
I think that the higher you climb the more work you need to do. The changes that lead to big improvements have been learned and what's left is smaller changes that lead to smaller returns and needing more of them to make a bigger impact. In chess, blunders cost you games, when you stop blundering so often you see big improvement to your rating; at high level it's really about maintaining parity and squeezing minutia in every position and end game. Do enough marginally better moves and you might get ahead of your opponent enough to win.
It’s almost exclusively talent. Almost everyone can improve with more effort, but after each step forward more effort is required.
Eventually people face burnout or just not enjoying it, or real life time/energy constraints.
Eventually everyone reaches an equilibrium between playing well and having fun
The alternative is some people will get better forever. If humans never get as good as stockfish, these people will have limits that they will slowly approach just like everyone else.
At every level your game can be strong in some areas and weak in others. For example, I have a major strength in endgames but a major weakness in openings. Memorization is part of the issue but mostly only if you are weak at openings.
If you are weak at endgames then you are missing CONCEPTS or known theoretical positions. If you are weak at middlegames then you are weak at understanding pawn structures or strategical concepts like outposts and trading your worst piece.
You can be the best 900 in the world at tactics strategy and openings but if you can't checkmate conceptually with a queen and king then it will come back to bite when you draw a game instead of winning it. You might win most games from a sizzling attack but when you meet someone who can play well defensively then you will have met your match.
I've been lucky enough to meet some master level players. Almost all of them have told me that their game is totally different now then it was at the lower levels. For example to go from CM to NM or NM to FM or FM to IM they had to completely absorb themselves in the game and even sometimes completely change their style to continue to improve. In short - a combination of being hungry and being humble enough to realize your mistakes and improve yourself.
There is a difference between playing to play or playing to win. I can feel it especially now as I am 31. The automatic improvements that came when I was younger in any game I touched are gone. If I want to get truly better now, I need to engage in activity in a way that triggers deep state of focus, otherwise nothing gets written into my brain. Maybe you are also older?
I distinctly remember this feeling at age 28... that my brain wasn't "automatically" learning things for me the way it used to. Not sure what that feeling is or what actually takes place in the brain, ask a neuroscientist I guess :p but it's definitely something noticeable. I will say that learning new things helps keep the brain.. uh... active? It doesn't feel as old as what I'm trying to say... not just a platitude, I'm saying it based on experience. And not chess I mean things like learning a new language, or math, or how to play an instrument.
Somehow I learned a whole bunch of wacky math, science, english while being a constant nervous wreck who cared only about girls and nonsense social rules throughout school but now I can barely force myself to learn 20 new words a day. Wish my brain worked like it used to.
I'm 28, and I totally get this. I've improved very little overall in the past 8 years or so, and I've found that if I ever take a break from chess it feels like I've lost a lot when I come back to it. I still have hope that I can make another leap, I just don't always have as much time and energy to devote to chess as I'd like.
This is something people don't realize about the difference between playing online vs OTB tournaments. There's a huge difference in focus playing someone who's playing a game in between classes/meetings/on the toilet, and someone who has set aside their entire day/weekend for the sole purpose of focusing on chess. It's a completely different animal.
The mind and body definitely has limits as you age, but unless you're at or very near your *potential theoretical peak* of ability, it's probably not a hard limit that is the issue. Chess skills are like muscles -- they need to be consistently execised and overloaded in order to grow. They also often depend on each other as a group: It doesn't matter how good you are with your knights if you constantly get your bishps trapped. It doesn't matter how good you are at pins if you can't stop walking into skewers. etc. These skills also need to be maintained over time. Calculation usually weakens as you get older as well and you have to do things to maintain or grow this skill. It's also a very energy-draining activity that seems to become more difficult as you age, so if you don't adapt to this, you might be losing games because of it. In my opinion, it's more likely that the vast majority of players who stop improving haven't hit a hard biological limit, but haven't adapted to the changes necessary to increase their skill. If you always play at a particular level and don't train harder than you play, your play tends not to get better, and everyone has a comfort zone that they like to stay in. You have to get out of that to get better, but it's uncomfortable and psychologically difficult. My .02.
All skill based activities have various skill floors. When you aren’t good at something, merely engaging in that activity will make you better. Once you hit a certain level, you have to actually engage in activities to force you to learn more. The higher you go, the more focused you have to be. At some point, you have to actually practice in a structured way to get better. Most people stop when they have to start legitimately practicing.
Memorization isn't what's separating you from players 300 rating points over you. Superior calculation skill and pattern recognition are. You can train those with puzzles and self analysis.
Those things can certainly overlap. I wouldn't be throwing memorization out the window. There have been many great players who felt chess was becoming less enjoyable because it was becoming more and more "book" oriented. Capablanca and Fischer are obvious examples. Still being in the book 15 moves in was something that was kind of new in that time, and usually occurring at high level. Now pretty unremarkable! However, I don't disagree with you really -- it's not realistic that all those players 300 above have memorized stuff he hasn't. But memorization is a legitimate way to thug you way up, to an extent. If they deviate first you have an advantage. Not sure it's an advisable or worthwhile effort for a normal person though.
I’m definitely at the point where just playing rapid games and analyzing afterwards don’t do that much for improvement. If I want to improve it now requires active studying on my part which is more difficult to get myself to do as it requires more effort on my part. I think it’s similar for others, and many don’t want to (understandably) put in the work that’s necessary to improve.
I don't think memorization is what would help us improve. Because no matter how many additional opening moves I learn, or trying to learn sideline responses, I still need to work on my calculation and tactics. Honestly the reason people eventually stop improving is that they don't want to put in the additional work needed to get to the next level. (I'm talking about myself here, I find it too easy to start Blitz games instead of ever actually doing puzzles)
There are many reasons, some already mentioned. I'll throw this in... when I was new, I was lucky there was a local club where the *weakest* player who attended was 1600 OTB. Pretty much everyone was in the tight range 1700-1900. I'd show up, lose every game, and go home and study for next week. This helped me a lot... ... but after some years, as I got to 1900 OTB, there was no club full of masters I could join to get beat up every night, and I basically stopped improving. So you have to find new methods that will push you into new ways of playing... and no one is born knowing how to learn. Learning itself is a skill. If you're lucky, then as a kid you have coaches who take care of that for you, and constantly give you material and put you in environments that allow you to keep improving. As an adult, with a dozen other things in life that are more important than chess, you tend to end up where you end up. --- A quick note about memorizing stuff though... The better I've become, the more I've agreed with one of Finegold's rants about "why people don't get better at chess." He focuses more on the beginner incarnation of it (missing basic threats) but it's also true at higher levels, the winner is the person who is doing all the in-between stuff better. It's not about knowing what pawn break a GM would play, or calculating an amazing sacrifice, it's about all the boring fundamental moves... are you resolving the tension early for no reason, are you creating weaknesses for no reason, that sort of thing.
Everyone has an ability to improve simply from playing, but yes there is a limit to how much you can improve by yourself without actively working on it. Some people are lucky and can coast all the way to 2000+, others get stuck before they even hit 1000. I'm not really sure why this happens earlier for some people than others, but obviously there are factors like age, health etc that have an impact. In any case when you hit a wall, you kinda need to bruteforce your way through. In chess, that's with puzzles, game analysis, books, study etc. Not fun for the most part and for most people, which is why many people stop once they hit whatever their wall is.
Its about being willing to think and analyze beyond what feels comfortable. Be willing to ask the difficult questions. Be willing to really think through positions and truly understand why certain choices are optimal or suboptimal. Be willing to push.
At the lower levels, probably because they didn’t properly study for it. Sheer number of hours alone of doing something does not guarantee mastery or even proficiency. Targeted practice is critical. At the highest level, it’s genetics/talent. Once you get to the Top 99.9% level, you are dealing with the freaks of nature in their respective domains. To give an obvious example, you cannot practice your way into LeBron James or Michael Jordan — you need to win the genetic lottery. The same goes with “cerebral” activities. You cannot practice your way to Magnus or Kasparov. It’s just not as obvious to us since the genetic differences are not as obviously as being 6”6 and being able to jump fifty inches in the air with ease.
I am at 900 and don’t see myself getting to 1100, or at least def not this year or the year after. The input needed for me to get to a higher level is not worth it. I don’t want to study, watch videos, talk with other people about chess, do puzzles etc. I just want to sit on the couch while watching the office see if somebody made a move and then make a move. I do like YouTube when a good player does a speed run but that will never be enough. I just don’t want to put in the time
many people here say talent but i think unless you're already master+ level, talent doesn't really have much to do with it. I think the biggest factor is attitude. Many people take the wrong attitude when they lose. They just rage and quit, not many actually go back to take notes of the blunders/wrong plans/weak moves that they played. If you refuse to learn then you just don't improve. Another factor is dedication/time. Not many people love the game enough to keep playing (especially in tournaments) and not many people are dedicated enough to improve to keep learning. So they plateau. Sometimes you have all the above factors but you still don't improve, then you have to ask someone to teach you. A good coach can give you a different perspective of the games that you never knew before. And then if you have tried all of the above and still can't reach a certain goal, then yea probably it's something more hardwired like talent, cognitive ability, etc.
Thanks for your question. Make sure to read our [guide on how to get better at chess](https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/wiki/improve); there are lots of tools and tips here for players looking to improve their game. In addition, feel free to visit our sister subreddit /r/chessbeginners for more information. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/chess) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You find your level with it
Because you get used to the style of play you've been using for the given Elo and time control you reached. To progress further I think one needs to feel comfortable in more different situations while maintaining a good usage of time.
It doesn't boil down to any single factor. Let's say the theoretical maximum that any human can achieve is about 3500 Elo. Various things are going to contribute to stopping you from reaching that maximum. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume you can just sum up these factors: * Genetics - reaction time, pattern recognition, episodic memory, ability to work 10 hours a day everyday, etc. If your genetics are about average, that lowers your potential by maybe 400 Elo points. Your ceiling is now 3100. * Starting age. You didn't start learning chess until you were say 18, losing the benefit of the cognitive flexibility of youth. 500 points. Your ceiling is now 2600. * Training quality. You're training the wrong things because you don't know what to prioritize, and you don't have a GM trainer to tell you what you're doing wrong. 200 points. Ceiling = 2400. * But motivation is probably the biggest factor. Not only is my training wildly subpar, I also don't care. I only play blitz because longer time controls are too much of a commitment. I do puzzles because they're rewarding and I can almost always win. I avoid opening theory because it's boring. I practice 15 minutes a day instead of 10 hours because there's other things I care more about than chess. Even when I do play chess, my focus is only like 80 or 90% on the game because I simply don't care that much; I don't dream about chess so I'm not using sleep to integrate chess information, I don't think about chess at lunch or when I'm at a party, when I lose I don't replay the game 100 times in my head to find where I went wrong, etc. 1000 points. Ceiling = 1400. If I keep playing regularly, 5 to 15 minutes a day, for years and years, I'll likely hit that ceiling and more or less stay there until the effects of cognitive decline outweighs those of accumulated low-intensity practice. Partly it will be because I'm not smart enough, I don't optimize my training well enough, etc. But mostly it will be because I never care enough to actually do the things needed to improve.
Everybody hits a speedbump at some point, how soon it comes is going to depend on your age, mental flexibility, natural talent and training methodology. 0-500 happened when I learned as a kid, 500-700 by playing the odd game over the years- ladder mate, backrank mate, basic awareness of what the pieces can "see" and slow, basic calculation of simple exchanges. 700-1400 happened over a year in my 20s by playing 10 min+ games every day, with no courses/lessons/tutorials, just noticing my mistakes and making an effort not to repeat the same one in my next few games. It built pattern recognition, tactical awareness, and basic positional awareness. Much more attention paid to the opponent's immediate plans and opportunities. 1400-1600 in 6 months or so, playing less frequently/with less effort, but with the addition of blitz to improve my instincts and some puzzles to automate some more common mating patterns. At 1600 I'm finding that in order to see rating increases, I'm having to look for the first time at opening theory, pawn structures and positional themes. I can't get any further by just playing.
Are you analyzing your games? Are you doing tactics regularly? Do you have a coach? Have you studies strategy, positional play, or endgames? Is you’re just mindlessly playing, you’ll never improve. You must struggle.
Improving takes time and effort and people don't want to put time or effort in
Because they stop studying
For 4 years I was a mediocre 1200 elo, but in the last few months I decided to study openings and calculus and I managed to reach 1400. I still need to learn endings, I think that when I do that I will be able to reach 1800. Playing for fun is very different from playing to improve.
Because most of us (including myself) are self taught. We learn through books and YouTube videos, but we don't actually have a chess coach who can actually give us a direction to go. It's hard to acknowledge your own mistakes.
Back when I was working with statistical analysis in organizations, we came across the S-Curve when looking at peoples' careers. It seemed to appear in their earnings over time, their skills level, their relationships and more. It appeared in project management, in company earnings, in innovations and many more areas. What it seemed to represent was how all these things started slow, accelerated, then slowed and plateaued. Rather like a sine curve, from trough to peak. It wasn't quite that discrete, since the s-curve could "jump" when a person changed a career, or a product suddenly became popular or somehow shifted into another gear. Looking at people's Elo ratings in various places, despite the ups and downs in regular games there seems to be the same underlying pattern. You follow an s-curve between each plateau, but the up part has a lot of jags up and jags down -- rather than look at the actual raw scores, do a "x-game" average. While there is a decline after the plateau, taking the average after every 10 or 50 or 100 games (number depends on how seriously you are playing), you see there's a slow s-curve in effect. The s-curve depends on the person and what they are doing. and what they are doing to break through the plateau, but it does show that there can be learning to get off whatever plateau you reach, if you find something that makes your play different or better. But, unless you apply the adherence to basics (a good coach is needed) and find the tiny improvements in those basics (sometimes learning new openings, discovering and mastering new tactics, mastering new endgames) you can very easily get stuck on a plateau, and never get off it, no matter how many games you play.
When you’re bad at something, there’s hundreds if not thousands of issues that you need to work on. With that many different issues, it’s easy to fix a ton of them with just a little effort and plenty of them sort themselves out accidentally. Once you get better, the amount of those issues decrease so you have to actively look for them before you can address them. Also, it’s likely that when you start to improve you address the easy issues first and save the hard ones for later. So, as you get better the few issues that are left are the hardest ones to tackle.
memorization is easy , anybody can do that. that's the opposite of what it is. chess is a SKILL and it can be very hard to improve in a skill
The greatest amount of neuroplasticity for any human being occurs when they are a child and decreases as you age. And no, there is no regimen nor amount of psychedelics or modafinil that will ever bring it back.
My problem is that I'm lazy and I don't like calculating. So I hit my wall with intuition and I'm okay with that. I'm not going to start putting in the work to improve, so I don't have improvement as part of my goals. I'm a casual kibitzer and I'm okay with that. I think that the higher you climb the more work you need to do. The changes that lead to big improvements have been learned and what's left is smaller changes that lead to smaller returns and needing more of them to make a bigger impact. In chess, blunders cost you games, when you stop blundering so often you see big improvement to your rating; at high level it's really about maintaining parity and squeezing minutia in every position and end game. Do enough marginally better moves and you might get ahead of your opponent enough to win.
It’s almost exclusively talent. Almost everyone can improve with more effort, but after each step forward more effort is required. Eventually people face burnout or just not enjoying it, or real life time/energy constraints. Eventually everyone reaches an equilibrium between playing well and having fun
Talent?
The alternative is some people will get better forever. If humans never get as good as stockfish, these people will have limits that they will slowly approach just like everyone else.
There's been rating deflation on LiChess. I don't know how much precisely.
At every level your game can be strong in some areas and weak in others. For example, I have a major strength in endgames but a major weakness in openings. Memorization is part of the issue but mostly only if you are weak at openings. If you are weak at endgames then you are missing CONCEPTS or known theoretical positions. If you are weak at middlegames then you are weak at understanding pawn structures or strategical concepts like outposts and trading your worst piece. You can be the best 900 in the world at tactics strategy and openings but if you can't checkmate conceptually with a queen and king then it will come back to bite when you draw a game instead of winning it. You might win most games from a sizzling attack but when you meet someone who can play well defensively then you will have met your match. I've been lucky enough to meet some master level players. Almost all of them have told me that their game is totally different now then it was at the lower levels. For example to go from CM to NM or NM to FM or FM to IM they had to completely absorb themselves in the game and even sometimes completely change their style to continue to improve. In short - a combination of being hungry and being humble enough to realize your mistakes and improve yourself.