well of course, but let's also remember that it also depends if the person would be enthusiastic enough about the game to actually learn from that experience over the years. They are what we're not for a reason, they had a natural gift for the game, and that talent just continued to grow.

 

With age comes a lot of things unfortunately.  High-level chess requires a lot out of people, both physically and mentally. It would seem to me that if chess players only improved with age, most of our active grandmasters would be old men and women.  That, of course, isn't the case. It would be interesting (and rather easy using chessmetrics.com) to take a decent-sized sampling of historically strong players and graph their accomplishments between , say, age 20 and age 65 (about an average worker's years of employment)  and compare the results to see if some sort of pattern emerges.

well, ur right batgirl, it can not be considered an excuse, i for example, belive that with age comes experience, the game of chess encourage that belief. But of course, that's just me.

Between 1899 and 1905 Janowski was almost invincible in tournament play.  He was 48 years old when this game was played. Capablanca was exactly 20 years younger and in his prime - not that any of that serves as an excuse, but it is something to consider, I think.

 

I edited my typo on this comment -