Volleyball Pros

[David Sklansky]

If the top 100 American volleyball players were all of a sudden offered $10 million dollars a year to ply their trade, and that salary commenced in three years, how many of those who get that salary three years from now are not presently in the top 1000?

Same question for:

Chess players

Pool players

Poker players

100 yard dash sprinters

Baseball players

Accountants


For the sake of simplicity, please ignore aging. In other words don't count the youngsters who were already concentrating on the field before the windfall, who would be replacing those who got too old.

[Dan BRIGHT]

all of them

[cheiro]

some of them

[bobman0330]

Volleyball: 70%
Chess: < 10%
Pool: not sure, definitely greater than 50%
Poker: 85%
Sprinters: 70%
Baseball: close to 0%
Accountants: close to 0%.

Fields where there's a long growth period like baseball and accounting will obviously have the fewest newcomers. Chess is somewhat special because most chess geniuses know what they are and play a lot of chess. For non-major sports, the turnover should be very high because a lot of very good people do other stuff because it's more lucrative. For mental activities like poker I would expect a deluge of very intelligent people to get very serious for 3 years.

[seano34]

Outside the current Top 1000??

Volleyball players - At least half - they're hardly the greatest athletes in the world. Just serious hobbyists

Chess players - A handful maybe. There are probably very few people with grandmaster attributes out there that are not already grandmasters.

Pool players - Probably the majority. Expect to see the current top pool players replaced by the snooker elite.

Poker players - Dont you all earn that anyway?? lol

100 yard dash sprinters - Maybe 10-20%. Pro-athletes from rugby (non US)/ NFL (US) who chose one over the other. Too based on natural attributes and every knows from an early age if they can run fast or not - so the Top 1000 is probably a fair representation currently

Baseball players - 30% random guess

Accountants - IS there a top 1000?

[iSTRONG]

David,

Your question is confusing the hell out of me. Are you essentially asking how many out of the 100 best players in 3 years are not in the top 1000 players now?

What's the $10M salary got to do with it?

[David Sklansky]

No. I am assuming the top 100 wouldn't change at all in the next three years if it wasn't for the larger rewards.

[StellarWind]

Chess players are caught in the iron grip of the infamous 8-year rule. A player who has been playing seriously for eight years has reached his maximum rating. Significant improvement in results after eight years is very unlikely no matter how much effort is expended.

Obviously I'm not talking about preteens but the clock does start running long before adulthood.

In addition nearly all very strong players take up the game before they become adults.

Bottom line: virtually no adult or near-adult players outside the top 1000 would ever reach the top 100.

[Dynasty]

For chess, we have a very reliable list for exactly who the top 100 active players in the world are. This ELO list is updated every two months.

FIDE's Top 100 Players October 2006

This list doesn't include inactive players such as the retired Gary Kasparov. Ignoring that, the lowest rated player, Igor Khenkin, has a FIDE rating of 2620.

For a top 1,000 FIDE list, I could only find the January 1996 ratings. The 100th ranked player then, Yuri Kruppa, had a rating of 2580. The inflation of ratings over a ten year period is normal and expected. Most believe the rating inflation is at least in part an accurate assessment in the improvement of chess player skill of professionals over time.

Given that information, we could assume the current 1,001st ranked chess player has a FIDE rating of approximately 2450-2470. In order to reach the top 100, they would have to increase their FIDE rating by 150-170 points.

Three years is certainly enough time to improve your game by that amount even at this high a level of competition. The problem (as with all the other occupations) is that all those ranked 101-1000 should be expected to make the same efforts to improve.

I think we can conclude that nobody who is not already very strong in chess could possibly get into the top 100 players in three years. Even the greatest players the game has ever seen such as Kasparov and Bobby Fischer needed more than three years of extraordinary study to raise their play to a top 100 level.

The only people who I think could accomplish the goal are those who are already on the path to the top 100 without the incentives. I'm not sure what that # is. But, I'd guess it's less than 10 players.

[tolbiny]

chess players- maybe a handfull of players would crack the top 100, but they would be players who were ust outside of the top 1000. Chess takes more than 3 years to master so anyone not already very familier with chess has no chance outside of a prodigy, but chess is widely enough played that there aren't many prodigy's out there to tap.
Poker players- none, except for a prodigy or two, already enough $$$ in it as a financial incentive.
100 yrd dash sprinter. At least half- maybe 75% or higher. There are a ton of very fast athletes who go into more lucritive games like football or baseball.
baseball players - none.
Pool players no idea.
Vollyball- >75%.
Accountants- how do you count people who were accountants early in their career but moved on to more lucrative endevors but could become great accountants again if the incentive was there?