Interesting... I think this has two possible interpretations:

A) Portisch was being humble and honest. Talent is indeed the result of diligence. So, he's just saying he is not special, just a hard worker. <Immensely talented people> are people who work very hard, and they recognize this openly.

B) Portisch was B.S.ing. Talent is totally innate, and Portisch was pretending it's about diligence when he was born lucky. Then he is encouraging people to work hard, selling them the idea that they'll get to his level that way. The <immensely talented> then raise the hopes of the masses of regular folk disingenuously.

I thought <OCF> meant A. If it's A, the converse statement, "Talent is 100% innate" would get the comment "That is the kind of <defensive> thing immensely <untalented> people say." ("I lost that game... well, I wasn't born lucky, you know?")

I thought <OCF> meant A. Did <perfidious> interpret B...?

What did you actually mean, <OCF>? Maybe there are more interpretations and I am totally missing it.

It's a self-deprecating statement like "aw shucks, I ain't no genius". But actually they DO have talent, they're just being modest. And indeed, OCFs mule can practice all it wants. I won't win the Derby.

<Fusilli: Interesting... I think this has two possible interpretations:>

It was neither of those. I think people who are massively talented have a strong tendency to not realize (or possibly admit) how innately gifted they are. Sure, they work hard, as any chess player has to, but it's not the work that makes them so good. It's their raw talent. No talent plus hard work makes a decent chess player, but not elite. I daresay there are tons of chess players who work as hard as the elite GM's and never come close to that level.

Well,that is the appproach that always has appealed to Joe the Plummer.

Even Mozart worked very very hard.

I like Kasparov who emphazied that hard work is also a talent. He worked immensely hard himself.

There is the additional point that hard work has to be well organized and structured. I think I had some baseline talent, but I was rather lazy to study chess AND my study was chaotic (as in, often, pick up magazine and study random article, or grab book and look at random chapter). My coach provided some structure, but I got little coaching.

I saw a research article, long ago, where the authors had used fMRI to see which parts of the brain lit up when GMs and club players looked at given positions. Turns out they used different parts of the brain. That may have not been the only thing that the researchers did, but I remember the conclusion that, in order to reach GM level, people did in fact need to be born with certain kind of brain setup, and if you lacked that, no amount of work would take you there. So, apparently chess talent has a direct brain anatomy translation. (A little discouraging, I suppose... No wonder that study did not get much traction in the world of chess as it may have in the world of neurology.)

He neutralized my attempts almost without thinking. Like it was trivial. Like he played from the book. Is it possible that he knew the variation?

Sadly, the game score is almost certainly lost. There is one city, not so extremely far from here, where I might find it - as soon as the COVID enables, I will go there trying my luck.>