Can I become a GM by playing 100 games per day without studying books, strategy, etc?

Question

Some things in life you learn by simply doing, not just doing it, but doing it a lot. Practice makes perfection. I don't believe no-one is born a GM. Even Kasparov had to practice a lot.

So has anyone have experience with just playing many, many games to practice? Did it help you improve or it just cannot work that way?

Answer 1

By spending that much time on something per day, you will inevitably become very good at what you practice!

Unfortunately, what you'll be practicing is moving pieces around on a chess board, based on the kind of thinking process you have at the moment. You'll be great at doing exactly that.

What it's very bad for, is changing how you do something. And that's what's needed to improve in chess -- figuring out what you're doing wrong, and then figuring out how to stop doing that. Having repeated the same wrong thought pattern thousands of times will make it much harder to get rid of the bad habit.

As of the time I'm writing this, user "german11" on Lichess has played 531,069 games there. Most of them (about 414k) are bullet games. His bullet rating is 1104 right now.

Note that the learning science discussions about "10,000 hours of practice to become an expert" and so on are about deliberate practice. Not just any kind of rote repetition will work.

Answer 2

You can, but you probably won‘t.

First of all, becoming a master or getting even a 2000+ (ELO-) rating, is a very hard task and most chess players never achieve that – and some of them play and study a lot, so at least playing a lot of games cannot be a recipe to become a GM. Well, but maybe you are kind of a genius and are able to master lots of skills to become a master only by playing.

There are most certainly better methods of getting better, at the very least you should analyse your games and find your mistakes – if able do that with a better player, not with a machine. I would also recommend playing less games which a larger time control. Doing lots of tactics, studying pawn formations and attacking schemes, typical positions arising from the openings you play, endgame positions etc. could also pay off.

Furthermore, by only playing I doubt you will master opening and endgame skills very well. The theory there is totally complicated and it should be vary hard to learn it just by playing (without even analysing the games!). (While tactics and typical play in "your openings" can be – to some extent – learnt by "just playing").

Answer 3

Let me play devil's advocate here (since everyone seems to take the negative position) and say yes, you absolutely can.

But, and this is a big but (no pun intended) the games you play have to be "good" games, and it will not be enough to simply play them, but rigorous analysis must also be done on each game that is played.

The absolute truth of the matter is that any student, with enough motivation, a cheap computer with a decent processor, some (free) chess software and either a lot of talent or a lot of time, can become an IM or even GM. This is something not many players will admit, because it seems to subvert all the chess-related purchases they might have made.

In the past, it was necessary to hire a tutor, or read books and other chess literature, to keep up-to-date on opening theory and to learn chess. Today, with the advent of powerful chess engines and game databases, much of this is obsolete. Furthermore, I would argue that chess books are not only outdated, but outright inefficient when compared to the alternatives. These are bold claims, so let me try and support them with a plan of action which is bereft of any chess literature and focuses only on games.

The Plan

1. Don't play 100 short games a day, this is a waste of time. Play 1 long game (90 minutes or more) against a moderately strong computer engine and spend the rest of the time doing analysis
2. You will lose pretty much every game you play (if the computer is set to its highest level) but you must not get discouraged or change your style of play to beat the computer (i.e don't play closed positions solely for the reason that computers are bad with them). This is where motivation and discipline will determine whether you really benefit from this method.
3. In every game, focus on a single thing and try to improve it. Initially the biggest problem might be gross blunders, hence you should do a blunder check on every move you play to prevent such blunders from occurring.
4. You should try to create a thinking algorithm, a step-by-step process or checklist which helps you to make decisions over-the-board and then use this algorithm for every move (until it becomes habitual and automatic). Steps might include things like the blunder-check above, or deciding whether the position is tactical (requires intensive calculation) or positional (requires sound planning and positional understanding). This is the only thing where it might be faster (not necessarily better) to read up on, instead of building it yourself, since efficient thinking systems already exist that were created by very successful players (Capablanca, Nimzovitch, Tal etc.).
5. Analysis of your games should be done to figure out weaknesses or lapses in understanding. The easiest way to do this is to look at positions where you spent the most amount of time. A computer must be used to keep yourself objective and grounded in the concrete, but is used only to check your analysis, not to replace it. (Most computer engines have the option to analyze your annotations and almost all give a point score for every move, take advantage of these options).
6. Play in tournaments and OTB games, record them, and analyze them the same as your other games. These games are more valuable, because you can actually win them once in a while and because they are games outside of a controlled environment (i.e not in the comfort of your home).
7. You will undoubtedly improve the most by focusing on your own games, but for a change of pace you might want to analyze a collection of games by a strong GM or favorite player. You should do this by playing guess-the-move from the winning side, making annotations for moves you guess (correctly or incorrectly). Then check the game with a computer engine (you'd be surprised with how many mistakes you find, both in your own analysis and in the moves of the GM's). You can also use these games to figure out the thinking algorithms of the masters.

If you actually stick to the above recommendations, I really think you'd make significant progress. Much more so than if you spend an equivalent amount of time reading a book. The reason is because passively reading something is very inefficient, compared to actively learning through difficult training games. Why is reading/chess literature still popular? Mostly because it gives a false sense of accomplishment and because its enjoyable. Ask yourself if the last chess book you read gave you a significant boost to your rating or chess understanding. Ask yourself how much you actually remember from the book, whether the concepts or games or annotations, and how much of it has actually influenced your OTB play.

The method above is not merely my own conjecture but is inspired by the training system developed by Botvinnik (there is a portion I left out, concerning physical exercise, but I think that's self-evident), who emphasized long-time-control training games and thorough analysis for chess improvement. The emphasis on thinking algorithims comes from the research done by de Groot.

Ultimately the final verdict, is yes, you can improve in chess through just games. But few have the dedication, discipline and motivation to do so.

Answer 4

Of course you will improve from just playing, however getting to GM level without studying 1 book is almost unheard of, maybe some world geniuses but otherwise not possible. There are things in chess you can not learn or realize they exist without getting taught about them.

However... You can get to Master level with a lot of playing, I played chess for 2 years straight and all I did was play it 8 hours a day... Achieved master level with minimum learning from books (mainly openings only and some tactics explained by Daniel King). However, I had to research a lot more to achieve a higher (which I haven't yet, got college :( )

Overall, you can get to Master level, anything like IM and GM level require some legit learning.

Answer 5

Anecdotally I know a few people who have reached 1800-2000 level without serious dedicated study, just by being smart people who already have strong talent in logical thinking in other areas like math, programming, logic puzzles, etc and knowing very basic tactics and concepts like control of the center, pawn chains, basic endgame strategies, etc. This is a far cry from GM level but it is pretty impressive nonetheless.

However there is no point in not doing training to improve seriously. Before this century you had to pay a chess coach and read books to get strong analysis, but nowadays everyone has access to computer engines and tons of free lessons online. All you need is a smartphone and internet connection, and it doesn't even have to be a powerful smartphone. This is probably why so many strong younger players who spend lots of time on a computer have appeared.

Answer 6

It seems impossible in my view.

Books, videos and other learning material contain methods and conclusions that have taken hundreds of years to discover, understand and present.

It seems highly unlikely you will arrive at similar conclusions by playing your own games.

Also, to become a GM, you have to meet the current GM requirements. That will take a lot of effort and you will meet hard competition.

It is one thing to know something in theory. It is another thing to put it into practice during a real game, over the board, against a human opponent.

How to play a tournament is a whole challenge in itself, on top of playing chess.

You will probably learn something from your games. But you will learn way faster and better if you know what you are trying to do and how to put the outcome in a bigger context.

There is another element to this. In life, there are many different mountains you can try to climb. Becoming a chess GM is one of them. If you don't know, from deep within, why you are climbing this mountain and feel a deep drive in your entire being, then you will likely give up.

What is GM? It is a title. It is a reward for something, but what is that something? What are you doing and why?

I did not try to become a GM. I tried to become a player that makes anyone worried across the board. From the library player to the world champion. Once I got to that point, it seemed good enough.

Nowadays, I am no longer interested in competition. I want collaboration. To build something together. To meet and share ideas and insights.

Peace,

Rauan

Answer 7

As it turns out, you can become better than a GM purely from playing games. That's what AlphaZero did - it learned completely from self-play.

The caveat, of course, is that you have to play a lot more than 100 games a day. To get an idea of the number of games required, the AlphaZero derivative Leela Chess Zero is one of the strongest chess engines around, plays roughly a million games a day, and has played ~1.5 billion games against itself.

100 games/day is not nearly sufficient to become a GM.