i mean seriously, mind as well quit now !

MC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZFS0kewLRQ

You were on a quest for the world championship up until you saw that video?

Point is i would be so glad to only know like 1000 winning set up in the endgame .
He knows completely 10 000 games .
A bit discouraging .

Not a very convincing job of testing that claim - they gave him not only one of his own games, but surely one of the most memorable

True but why would he lie?
The guy can play 10 blind game at the same time.
Obv. Is memory is top notch

I'm sure he's telling the truth. I don't think he can really recognize all 600,000+ positions and tell you the players and the year, though - which you might think from looking at the demonstration.

MC is not your typical GM or even World Champion. He is certainly a savant and he doesn't handle interviews well. It also looks like he has trouble losing to Grischuk and his gestures certainly show that he is somewhat weird.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta-8LU9EmaQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5OPdtDn_yA

In any case, there is a rule of thumb that if you spend 10.000 hours on something, you should get pretty decent at it. On the other hand you would hardly spend 10.000 hours at something if you didn't believe in your talent in the first place.

It doesn't surprise me at all. Kasparov was able to recall every game he'd ever played.

I hope Mason M wont see this

You know what i mean if you red the thread...

Comon man, i saw the videos.
It aint phill hellmuth .

He even kind apologize with the hand in the first video for his reaction.

Just slightly angry in the second video and bit discouraging, perfectly normal imho.

I wonder if he's an autistic savant.

I have no problem with his "anger" in the first video.

I played adult baseball with a military dude who threatened, via team-wide email, to shoot me with a bazooka.

It's 100% not lie. I forget what's the documentary, but it showed Magnus at 12yo, his coach pick a book, show random position and hide the players and year, and he's 100% correct to recall the players and year.
Also another video before his 1st WC match against Anand, his second Hammer setup few positions on board and Magnus recall all the games (few classic games and few of his own games).

That's why we have 0 chance to become chess WC.

seem like photographic memory

It's not exactly photographic memory or such, because chess games usually make sense and that narrows down the path a lot.

For instance I was able to reconstruct 13 games of rapid chess that I played in a tournament and enter them in my database, because I simply remembered what opening we played, what I was thinking about and which positions we eventually reached. If the game makes sense, you can tell it like a story. That's why it feels funny to me when people have to look up their scoresheet in the postmortem.

There is a video where Hammer shows Carlsen "the" position from Botvinnik-Capablanca, AVRO 1938. Carlsen names the game and the move (Ba3) and laughs. That was absolutely trivial, because showing this position to chess player is like showing an Aston Martin DB5 to a James Bond fan. You simply know it and you know a ton of other famous games like that one. There is no magic about it.

So you can do the same thing then?

So there are multiple videos of him demonstrating this claim, but all the positions are either Carlsen's own most memorable games or positions famous enough to have appeared on a postage stamp?

To a certain degree yes.

It is not unusual for players to recall complete games or to identify famous combinations, because there is a certain flow to it. It's like remembering music. You recognize the melody of many songs and you may even remember the lyrics. Some guys remember more, some guys remember less of course, but we all know Michael Jackson's "Thriller".

Well yes of course...
But there is a huge difference for remembering all the lyrics and knowing it for complete 10000 songs or story or cars or w.e subject you want to use.


I think you really underestimate the amount of 10000 and what it represent imho.

A good point of reference would probably a be with a classical musician i suppose.
Would it be "standard" that he knows 10000 complete classical pieces ?
I doubt it but would be interesting to know.

I understand what you are saying shadrack's that the games take a somewhat logical flow and also you can work backwards from the end and deduce certain moves.

But I'd wager Magnus is way better at it than you.

You dont understand the logical flow as it were of 2800 level games like he does. If you did, you might be rated around 2800. Knowing the logical flow of 10000 games rated between 2000 and 2800 + or whatever they are seems kind of difficult.

I remember a similar claim was published about Kasparov. Even stronger, that he remembered every move of every chess game he had ever seen. That was quietly dropped when someone asked "in that case, why does he sometimes forget his preparation?"

Yasser Seirawan once said Kasparov remember New In Chess verbatim and I think Seirawan is a trustworthy guy.
World Champions been known for super memory. I remember Anand once tested in presscon and he remembers the opponent, year, and venue of his games (seems easy but Anand has played thousands of classical games).

Chessbase infographic: http://en.chessbase.com/portals/4/fi...13/anand08.jpg

Of course he is way better at it. The interesting question would be if he is better at it than Ivanchuk.

Also I didn't claim that I am able to remember 10k games. I can remember a lot of my own games and a lot of positions from classical games. This means that I recognize the game, but I can't reproduce all the moves.

Slightly OT, but things related to the best chess players are often blown way out of proportion by the general public, who simply doesn't have the knowledge about how stuff really works. Most recent example is a piece on Carlsen in the Telegraph, which I am sure most of you've read since it has been posted everywhere chess related. In it, the journalist at one point states that (not a direct quote) "Carlsen can calculate 30-40 moves deep".

On the other hand, I was recently talking to some guy who plays chess at his leisure, but has never studied it or anything. He said something along the lines of: "I bet you can calculate like 3 moves ahead in every position, right?" as if it was the pinnacle of chess skill.

The general populace just doesn't have much clue and we have to accept it. Note, that it wasn't Carlsen himself who said anything about 10 000 games on air, the other guy did

The thing about calculating 30-40 moves deep shouldn't be blown out of proportion.

Carlsen can play blindfold in a way that he can actually "see" a clear picture of the board or a diagram for that matter. This means he can imagine the position and find the best move, and then imagine the resulting position and can find the best move again. By being able to play blindfold he can basically calculate with infinite depth, because he can just look at the next position and the next one and the one after that...

Actually, every GM can do that. It sounds like magic, but it's absolutely normal.

I am sorry, but what you are saying is bogus.

I had a long comment written out but then figured it would look silly if you were trolling, so let me first ask you - if being able to "see" a clear picture of the board in your head while playing blindfold equals calculating at infinite depth (I actually chuckled writing this down, I do not believe for one second that you actually meant it, since you are a smart guy and a strong player) and it's a skill every strong GM possesses, why on earth is the world record for simultaneous blindfold games only ~50ish?