Actually, the article gave examples, e.g., "the number of hours of deliberate practice to first reach “master” status (a very high level of skill) ranged from 728 hours to 16,120 hours," where 10k was not necessary.

Of course, nothing in the article refuted the study Gladwell cited, among a group of talented musicians, those who practiced more were superior. I'm fairly sure no one took away from that the notion that people with no musical talent could become concert musicians if they practiced for 10K hours. The debate is silly, but the studies cited were interesting; would that they had been presented less sensationally.

Yes, 100%.

10,000 hours does not mean you will be world class. 10,000 hours does not even mean you will be excellent.

If you are world class, you almost certainly have put in your 10,000 hours. Not the other way around.

Err... no? "chess players differed greatly in the amount of deliberate practice they needed to reach a given skill level in chess. For example, the number of hours of deliberate practice to first reach “master” status (a very high level of skill) ranged from 728 hours to 16,120 hours." The article implies at several points that the rule is neither necessary nor sufficient.

The article argues only against sufficiency. Only if you believe that the 10k hour rule is without exception -- that it's not a broad statement about what is necessary for mastery in a broad range of fields across a broad range of talent but instead a precise, ironclad threshold with no other determining factors -- does the article imply anything about the necessity of a certain number of hours.

Any one datum is questionable: How were the 728 hours tracked? Were some forms of practice excluded? Is the master designation in chess equivalent to the elite mastery the 10k rule describes? Is this measurement for an extreme talent outlier?

Neither the insufficiency argument nor the existence of outliers argument have merit against the 10k hour rule, properly understood. One number cannot possibly cover the range of fields, the range of talent, and the range of practice measurements (hour tracking, practice quality). Might this single number still be a broadly useful heuristic? I'm not sure, but this article tilts at windmills unhelpfully.

There is little point in an argument for or against a supposed 10k rule. The point is about the balance between genetics and practice, and the article makes a cogent argument that the "10k camp" has overstated its case for 'practice' and understated the role of genes.

This is exactly what I commented, though much clearer and more succinct. :)

Maybe the author is still a long ways off from 10,000 hours of writing.

You also need to take into account QUALITY of practice. 10k hours won't do much good if you don't have really good teacher, if you are not challanged enough (e.g. by not having money/time/parent's support to join country-level or international junior competitions)