Checkmate to deliberate practice: the case of Magnus Carlsen

The role of practice in the acquisition of expertise has been a key research question at least since Bryan and Harter’s (1899) study on expertise in Morse telegraphy, which proposed that it takes 10 years to become an expert. The framework of deliberate practice (Ericsson et al., 1993) has taken an extreme position by denying the role of talent in most domains and stating that superior performance is an increasing monotonic function of deliberate practice—the more goal-oriented practice, the higher the level of skill. For example, Ericsson et al. (1993) argue that “individual differences in ultimate performance can largely be accounted for by differential amounts of past and current levels of practice” (p. 392). The deliberate practice framework has captured the imagination of the popular press, as can be seen by the publication of several popscience books such as Talent is Overrated (Colvin, 2008), Outliers (Gladwell, 2008) and Bounce (Syed, 2011). In recent years, this framework has been criticized in academic circles; for example, in retrospective studies, the amount of deliberate practice accounts for only about one third of the variance in expertise in music and in chess (Hambrick et al., 2014). More naturalistic data also question the validity of the framework. As top performers have spent similar number of hours to improve and maintain their skills, the fact that individuals such as Roger Federer in tennis, Michael Jordan in basketball, Usain Bolt in sprint or Michael Schumacher in auto racing have so outrageously dominated their sport throws considerable doubt on the deliberate practice framework. A particularly spectacular example is provided by chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen (Norway), who became world champion in classic chess in November 2013 by beating Viswanathan Anand (India) and who also became world champion in rapid chess (15min + 10 s additional time per move) and speed chess (3min + 2 s additional time per move) in June 2014. In the June 2014 rating list published by the World Chess Federation (http://ratings. fide.com/toparc.phtml?cod=309), 23-year old Carlsen is ranked first with 2881 points1. This is just one point below 2882, the highest rating in chess history that Carlsen held in May 2014. There is a 66point difference between him and the second player, grandmaster Levon Aronian (Armenia, 2815 points; see Table 1). This difference is nearly the same as that between the 2nd and the 14th player in the list (63 points), Dutch grandmaster Anish Giri (2752 points). Table 1 shows the rating of Carlsen and of the ten players following him in the list. A one-sample t-test confirms that Carlsen’s rating is statistically different from the next ten grandmasters (M = 2780.6), t(9) = −19.38, p < 0.001, mean difference = −100.4; 95% CI [−112.1, −88.7]. One hundred points is a considerable difference: it is half a standard deviation in skill and means that, against