The 10,000 number actually comes from a study done by Anders Ericsson in the early 90s, not from chess. My bad.
Most people agree with the idea that you need some special talent or skill to be a great musician, right? To prove this, Ericsson went to the Berlin Academy of Music and divided students into three groups: the stars, who had a possibility to become international solo violinist. The "good" performers, who were going to become professional violinists someday. And the rest, who would probably become music teachers. They were all asked the same question: “Over the course of the years, ever since you picked up a violin, how many hours have you practiced?”
All the violinists had started playing at around age five, and they all played about two or three hours a week during their first few years. However, around the age of eight, an important difference began to emerge in the amount of hours they each practiced. By age 20, the stars in the group had all totaled 10,000 hours of practice over the course of their lives; the “good” students had totaled 8,000 hours, and the future music teachers just over 4,000 hours. Looks completely normal, right? People who spend more time practicing, are better. Except there are probably few talented people who only had to spend 3 months to learn how to play violin() and should be much better than those untalented people, right? Wrong. Heres the true kicker of that study:
The curious thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any “naturals” - musicians who could float effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time that their peers did. Nor could they find “grinds”, people who worked harder than everyone else and yet just didn’t have what it takes to break into the top ranks. Their research suggested that once you have enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. What’s more, the people at the very top don’t just work much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.


Most people would agree that people like Tiger Woods or Mozart are incredibly talented. And that they become so good because they had some innate talent. Did Tiger Woods become so great because he had that talent? Or did he become great because his father trained him to play golf since he was a baby so hard that he even appeared on television to playi golf at the age of two?
In Mozart's case it was even more obvious. His father was a famous composer and performer who started intensively training his son from age three onwards. None of his earlier works is regarded as "great" music. His earliest masterpiece was composed when he was 21 years old. By that time he had eightteen years of extremely hard, expert training behind him.

Castigated quintessence
Speaks to a tamed effectivity
Its not a conquest pleasure
 merely an abrupt architect of blind negligent commission
Inwards it stands counter and consumes its self roughly
If you could overstand hopeful inner projections its magnitude might hasten your retirement
 but the bitter cold countenance is a foreign breath
   and could it touch you might transport alien values unknowable
Your shade thus touched would risk reduction to base pre-animal.