The current world champion, an 18year old Magnus Carlsen beat a former world champion Anatoly Karpov who was 57 at the time. I’m sure there must be a lot of instances like this, just pointing out one. I’ve seen kids aged 5-6 beat adults, far-more experienced players. How does this happen?
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Experience can only get you so far in chess. Sooner or later the game will branch out from known situations to something unique and from there the only thing that matters is analytical thinking and work memory. For these abilities the age of 20 seems to be the peak, so young players are at an advantage with their fresher brain (once they managed to learn all the opening situations and how to respond to them)
And I’m pretty sure those 5-6 year olds were savants. Autists with a very specific skill they can do inhumanely good but lack a lot of other skills
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