Genius or Knowing when to trade your bad pieces

Excerpts. The original article is at USCF's website, available for members only.
However the excerpts should suffice.
1. "When Bobby Fischer earned the grandmaster title at the record-setting age 15 1/2 he was hailed as that very rare player, the "prodigy". "
2. "But don't prodigies- ............have to have talent to begin with?
That is the big question whether we're talking about chess players, musicians, athletes or whatever........"
3. " Ericsson also popularized the "10,000 hour rule"- that is you need to devote at least 10 years or 10,000 hours of intense training before you "just get good."
(Richard) Rapport said he's only taken chess seriously for four years. But eight hours of study a day multiplied by 4 years equals 10,000-plus hours."
4. " Of course just playing chess or polishing your Existing skills for 10,000 hours won't make anyone a GM. It is mastering new material-through repetition, memorization and other study techniques-that makes the difference. This takes enormous motivation. Fischer showed it when he drove himself to learn Russian as a boy so he could read Shakmaty v SSSR."
5. " It also takes free time. This explains why there are no adult prodigies-that is no one who takes up chess after age 20 and soars to 2600."
6."When did Fischer become more than a technical prodigy I'd say it was at least five years after this game." (The game was Reshevsky-FIscher
3rd Rosenwald Tournament, NY 1956).
"Ironically, one of his innovations was realizing the importance of getting rid of bad pieces."




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