User blog comment:Steelside/Do You Believe in Skill Caps?/@comment-92.33.178.1-20120612184316/@comment-3156280-20120615131309

yes that's what I said though. If you are born with a "chess-playing" mind, you will learn, understand, and perform better at chess than someone who is not. I call this "Natural Talent". Now, if someone who was born with a Natural Talent for playing chess but never in his life did he once even play the game it will not matter. He will never beat someone who has played the game before and knows how.

Now, if that same Naturally Talented player starts to practice and study chess. He starts to learn different strategies and counters, because of his innate ability to understand and play the game he will improve at an increased rate. He will get more out of every practice session than a regular person would. If the player that defeated the Naturally Talented player practiced at a constant rate and the Naturally Talented player adopted the same exact practice schedule, given enough time the Naturally Talented player would eventually surpass the skill of the other individual.

Think of it as a race. Let's say Player A is the Naturally Talent player and Player B is not.

Player A starts at Distance = 0. Player B starts at Distance = 10. But Player A run at Speed = 15 when Player B runs at Speed = 12. If the race is of long enough distance, Player A will eventually pass Player B.

In the above analogy, Speed is equal to Improvement Rate while Distance is equal to Experience or Time.