How to Become a Chess Master. Quick
How come we see men of hardly any intellect excel in chess and others of great talent scarcely show moderate ability, and get confused and bewildered when they have to move a pawn?
Asked a long time ago, back in 1688, Jean de La Bruyère (1645-1696) in his Les Caractères.
A tough question, says Naka.
In any domain, most people are average performers. Some are actually terrible and just a few are exceptional. What makes the difference?
Many have taken on this seemingly ever-escaping goal of becoming an expert. And many claimed they had a recipe for it.
It is commonly considered it takes 10,000 hours for one to reach the expert level in any field.
Some experts say, studying openings is the key.
On the other hand, Dr. Lasker, the longest-reigning world champion, claimed he needed 200 hours to teach an average young person ignorant of chess, and of no special talent, in order to bring them to a high level. He proposed this learning plan,
Rules of play and exercises, 5 hrs
Elementary endings, 5
Some openings, 10
Combination, 20
Positional play, 40
Play and analysis, 120
(From above, one thing is more than evident. If you and your coach spend more than 5% of your study time on openings, dump him!)
Yet, the hordes of experts on how to improve in chess are still not quite sure how to go about the noble goal of becoming a chess Master. (Even the author of The Invisible Gorilla, a cognitive scientist, research psychologist and National Master of chess seems clueless about it.) They all seem to be missing something. To prove things are really bleak, here are the numbers of experts in science, medicine and chess in the US,
6,000,000 scientists and engineers,
1,000,000 medical doctors,
ONLY 1,000 chess masters (2200+ rating).
But, don't be disappointed and giving up on your dream! I'm gonna let you in on a little secret of how to make it possible, real quick. All you need is some light brain exercise to do. Just a little brain zapping with the use of a small electric current. Don't be scared, it is just 2 mAmps. So finally, we seem to have found a substitute for practice when it comes to approaching mastery. Those 10,000 hours may be replaced with just a few seconds of electric zapping!
To make it easier for you to finally become someone in chess by using zapping, I'm revealing you the exact brain regions you got to zap.
And please tell us how it went!
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