Chess Forum / General Topics / May 2005

Introduction:
I think, that after one has made some basic progress
towards improving chess skills, the time comes where
it becomes apparent, that further progress will require
more training.

The questions:
#1.
Which rating one can achieve playing chess on average
two hours a week with pausing from time to time for two
up to six weeks?

#2.
Does progress towards higher chess ratings
have an impact on overall mental ability as
e.g. rising speed of performing programming tasks
or score reached on IQ tests?
Or is the progress in chess isolated having no
impact on the overall mental performance?
Or even worse, does the progress make one
less able in another areas of mental skills?

Claudio Grondi
P.S. my current ChessBase rating I have reached after
playing some weeks online is 1300 in Blitz and 1130
in Bullet (I like to play Blitz, so I played 135 games Blitz
and only 51 games Bullet).