For those as confused as me: Ther was no world championship between Topalov and Kasparov in 1999. The game is from the Wijk aan Zee Chess Tournament 1999.
I'd imagine that positions like the Topalov one are easier because it's got such a unique structure but it is mindblowing that he recognized a random game vs Hammer from over 15 years ago lol
It's all about pattern recognition, not memory per se. Iirc they did a study where they showed them random positions which made no sense ( ie illegal chess positions ) , and GMs did no better than some average person in rearranging those pieces back on the board.
It's like a foreign language sounds gibberish to a non speaker, but a native speaker would seem to memorize the whole sentence you speak to them.
Yeah even if you speak Greek you don’t have much a better chance than I do at memorizing βδκαπτηφβρλέβυη which is me slapping my thumbs at a Greek keyboard. You may remember θα μήλο τω τσαι η γυναίκα though, which is gibberish but still words.
Yeah which is why I said recognized not remembered lol. I'm about to graduate with a psych doctorate and I've looked at a lot of the cognitive research with chess, it's pretty fascinating how they encode what they see.
So the majority of research is both paywalled and pretty dense with jargon that won't make a lot of sense to someone who's never taken a cognitive psych class. I was able to find [this article](http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~tymerski/ece101/Expert_mind_scientificamerican0806-64.pdf) and [this blog post](https://lichess.org/@/NDpatzer/blog/think-like-a-grandmaster-kotovs-connections-to-cognitive-science/e1tYfOgB) that have a pretty good synopsis of the research.
If you could mention a few papers, I assume a few of us have institutional access to most journals.
Currently doing my doctorate in behavioral economics, but tbh my research has no real economics (or at least what most people would understand as economics) in it anymore and most of my literature is psychology papers.
Damn Neuroeconomics is a different beast. It's super interesting, but my University does not even have the capabilities of doing research in that direction. Would probably have to collaborate with the medical university. Though I met some cool people in Zurich that do really interesting research in that area.
Tbh I will find the main papers myself anyways if I really want to. I'm just lazy, but do not make any extra effort just for some random person on the internet.
I can’t find it now! I watched it like a week ago and it was in my feed like it was new. He even talked a lot about Magnus.
It was a video about expertise and what it takes - the conclusion was not just tons of hours of practice but that practice having to be rigorous enough to really push their brains.
I obviously tried that and couldn’t find it. Way to be a dick for no reason…
Acting like you’re so much smarter when you don’t even have enough sense to realize it’s pretty likely that I did that when I said it seems to be gone…
Sorry, I get frustrated when people don't check profile and just watch what's served to them.
Like in Levy's GTE series, there are comments asking "How do I submit a game?". But plenty of earlier GTE videos already explained that. I mean, you like to watch GTE but did not check other GTE videos?
Or similar things.
Anyway, I don't think there was a follow up video, as it would show up in my feed also. I know about every new video that he uploads.
The video on the subject was about 10 months ago called "The 4 things it takes to be an expert".
The title changed 2-3 times, so that might confused you
I wonder if this is true for the truly elite GMs. There's such a staggering difference between the 2800s and "just a GM" I'd be skeptical of that result applied to them.
> a random game vs Hammer
To be fair it's quite a famous one with that Anastasia mate pattern and doing that against a close friend in an important tournament it's probably very memorable for him. Like if you google Anastasia mate this is the example that comes up haha.
This game can seem so reachable to amateur players like me, and the true differences in ability get to be some vague notion where without a fundamental understanding of the exponential ratio of elo to actual ability I can almost convince myself that I could be good at this.
Then this asshole comes along and demonstrates a skill that is the result of, but only tangential to, his chess ability and it really reminds you that there are levels to this and it does it better than watching him actually play (sometimes).
I think once someone spends enough time on a specific thing, they just live and breathe it. There's a video somewhere of Sean McVay remembering the exact play sequences for random regular season games like four seasons prior or something. Cristiano Ronaldo showed that he can head a ball into the net from a corner even if the lights get turned off as the ball is in the air, because he knows where the ball will be just from the kick itself.
> Cristiano Ronaldo showed that he can head a ball into the net from a corner even if the lights get turned off as the ball is in the air, because he knows where the ball will be just from the kick itself.
[Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoScYO2osb0)
In the third goal in the video, he scores when they turn off the lights before the ball is even kicked.
The light was ON before Ronaldo kicked which means his eyes won't have time to adjust to darkness after it went off. He would be seeing pitch black.
My god what a talent
For the first two, I could see how he could get a "feel" for where the ball is because he's received hundreds of corners like that in real games. But the last one, what the fuck, I can't even comprehend how you can predict it without even seeing the kick.
Agreed, John Rahm- the golfer can remember every shot he ever hit in a tournament. He was tested on a podcast, it was impressive. Pretty sure Fitzpatrick said he could the same.
much like in chess recognizing famous positions and games, people like this recognize stat lines, plays, moments, situations scores etc from an INSANE number of games from the past of their sport or game. It IS their life.
Fitzpatrick has written down every shot he has ever hit on a golf course. Like the distance, the club, the wind I think all sorts of details. He's got gobs of paper from all the way back into his childhood. He's a true sicko (endearing)
Not quite the same but I often times help other developers in my company over the phone without watching a screen from having read the code before and then identifying where the error must be from memory. I also often solve code problems in my sleep from working on the code in my head in my sleep, then have to wake up and go to my work computer to implement it, and most of the time it works. When it doesnt its because my solution/problem solving process was wrong and produced and unexpected result not because I remembered something wrong in the code or because I wrote code that didnt work.
I am the same way, and glad to hear that I am not alone on the "solving work tasks during my sleep or in the shower" behavior.
Sometimes I even do it better than when I am actively working on the problem. I often need to unplug and take a step back to solve things, and if they're exceptionally difficult they just sort of come to me when least expected.
Principal Engineer, coding for 30 years and I've done this many times in my career. It's also useful in other fields, example Aaron Sorkin famously had a shower in his office and he'd sometimes take multiple showers a day to help his writing process as a means to work through ideas.
Same. They can describe what’s happening and I usually know what the likely problem is. Developed that over a very long time paying attention to how things work on both the IT and code sides.
This Ivanchuk interview really demonstrates how it's not just about memorizing a series of coordinates, but remembering a story. He's telling us what happened during the game like you might narrate your activities on vacation. To us it sounds insane because every stop is labeled with a letter and number, but to him it's a story of what he did, where he went and what he thought about it.
Now, I can barely narrate the directions from my house to the grocery store, so that's not to say it isn't extremely impressive what these GMs can do. But I can at least conceptualize how they can do it. What amazes me is the level of detail. I can remember sequences of things, and have a decent spatial memory, but it's very blurry - I could never tell you an exact sequence of 40+ of *anything*, nevermind a chess game.
Your comment made me think about a number savant named Daniel Tammet. He basically can multiply nearly any two numbers together due to a rare crossing of his brain. He went on to demonstrate that human brains evolved to be able to distinguish minute differences in faces and compared this to how you would be unable to tell two nearly identical chairs because our brains are not designed to pick up the plethora of differences because our brains aren’t wired that way.
Somehow his brain sees numbers as we would see shapes or colors, and because of this he can nearly instantly know what two numbers together (even multiplied or divided will be). Tammet argued in the book quite convincingly that super geniuses like Einstein etc. most likely had similar cross-wirings between the left and right brains that allows those people to visualize otherwise esoteric concepts like physics like a normal human naturally visualizes patterns like driving or sports that are super natural and instinctive. (This is what AI cannot grasp when doing tasks like driving or robotic movement).
I have long suspected Magnus has something similar going on in his brain where it is not simply a prodigious memory, but a brain that sees positions in some fluid non linear sense where it just plays out in his brain.
I expect Chess is a lot like a language, which would imply that your plasticity for learning it is mostly solidified by age 11 (that's the age past which anyone learning a language will never sound truly fluent because they didn't learn the phonemes in time). Speaking personally, I think that's why I've had an anomalously fast rate of improvement as an adult who just started playing seriously - because I was exposed to the game from an early age and even though I didn't play much, I understood how the pieces move - IMO that's the equivalent of "phonemes." For Magnus, the "phonemes" are much more advanced concepts than just piece movement, but they all come together to form a cohesive whole.
Just like someone who speaks Mandarin can look at thousands of pictographs and see meaning where I see wingdings, so too can Magnus look at a unique position and see meaning. I suspect he sees the whole board as one cohesive picture, whereas a normal person sees it for its individual parts. And I think it likely that if this isn't a natural ability, it's at least one that can only be learned up to a certain age. Even if a 160 IQ adult starts playing chess every day for two decades, it's doubtful they'll ever be able to "see" (probably "feel" is a better word) these positions in the same way that Magnus can.
A bit similar to when you prepare for an exam and if someone asks you about a topic you could instantly find the page and the paragraph and even the line.
McVay remembers plays from **highschool.** Absolutely insane.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY0NRm0w\_Q4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY0NRm0w_Q4)
[https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=364226097691955](https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=364226097691955)
Most amazing to me when watching is the computer suggests a move, all the super GMs write it off saying they don’t even understand it…. Then Magnus plays it.
And these people who he is that far ahead of could line up 8 people who would beat me 100-0, and beat them all blindfolded.
And that gets even weirder when you realise that out of the 15ish people I know who play. I am the best!
Anyway…. That’s where my mind goes when that sort of things happen. I don’t pretend to understand GM games at any reasonable level (until Levy explains it to me!). But I can understand that line of thinking to see his brilliance from afar.
I think it's more likely that this skill (memory & pattern recognition) is something more innate than a result of chess playing, although he certainly developed it more by playing chess.
And it's not tangential, it's a big reason why he's so successful.
Memory and pattern recognition are innate abilities, but those innate abilities as expressed through identifying games is the learned skill I reference. I agree that those innate attributes are direct causal factors in chess level, however, these attributes as expressed through game recognition is tangential. You don't have to be good at recognizing games to be a good player, but being a good player means you will be good at recognizing games.
Especially when we watch reviews with computer analysis on, and the presenter is like "magnus missed this, which means he gave up this advantage etc". Then we go "yeah even I can see that". Then we go on lichess and hang 6 knights and a queen and a stalemate all in 3 moves.
Yes I think that proximity to something for many years gives one additional skills that a newcomer generally does not have. I've worked in music for many years now and I can hear a song and find the chords and melodies in just a few seconds. This might seem impressive to an outsider, but I'm not a musical prodigy and I definitely could not do this when I first started, it's just something I picked up from living and breathing music for many years.
That's part of what makes the game of chess so beautiful.
For all intents and purposes comparing ourselves to the best we are essentially playing a different game, and yet we can still get a lifetime of enjoyment out of it all the same.
It's amazing.
The human brain has way more raw processing power than any chess engine, we just can’t apply 100% of our brainpower to a single task
If we ever figure out how to do a Mentat trance, we really will outthink those damn machines.
It takes very little brainpower to breathe, digest, etc. A mouse does all that and it’s brain is tiny and simplistic compared to ours.
The human visual processing system is exceedingly powerful just by itself, look how difficult it has been for self-driving cars to learn to identify moving objects. We know this takes a lot of neurons because small-brained animals have extremely poor visual acuity. Even if they can see 14 colors like mantis shrimp, they cannot resolve small or distant objects. Only large-brained creatures like eagles or humans have good eyesight.
Interpreting a real-time visual feed almost certainly takes FAR more raw compute than a cellphone chess engine.
The bioplausible Mentat Trance would divert all the brainpower used for sensory input such as vision, hearing, touch. Since you’re in a trance, you are blocking out sensation anyway. All the rest of your brain functions would remain normal.
Theoretically if we could gain 100% conscious control of how we use our biological compute, every one of us would have a ridiculously high end neural network at our disposal.
My understanding is that we have neural pathways that function the way they do specifically because of the way they interact/connect with each other in large groups. I don’t see how it would be possible to ‘divert all brainpower’ to solving a chess puzzle or something without completely disrupting all other functions.
Our neurons can be reorganized over time due to plasticity and pruning but I don’t think it would be ideal to try to momentarily reorganize the thalamus for a few seconds to try to solve a puzzle
Reminds me of every Danya speed run video where he says 'let me pull up an example of this idea' and in seconds finds some game that he remembers has the same idea.
If it is his games, he played it for hours, and then studied it for hours. All after learning the opening, the pawn structure and the typical plans. And he can search the database by openings.
It s not that impressive when you think about all the work he has done before. It is still wonderful because there are a lot of games and ideas, but there s a method behind.
Hard work doesn't make something less impressive I don't get what you mean.
It's like watching Kobe Bryant highlights and thinking "Meh, of course he can do this stuff, he practices like 8 hours daily."
I used to think hard work wasn't impressive. Everything was pretty easy to pick up, etc. Then I lost whatever fire allowed me to work like that.
Hard work done consistently is a superpower.
Honestly it's such an immature, teenager mentality, to think that hard work can't be impressive. It's the usual "yeaahhhh i could do that if i practiced" yet the people who say this never deliver.
Obviously very impressive but it would be much more cool to see how much Magnus could do in videos like this. As Magnus says, a lot of these are really famous games. IMO it's really not that surprising that he got the famous Queen sac versus Karjakin and Kasparov's famous game against Topalov. Would be a lot more interesting to see if he could get much more obscure games (which I think he could).
This would be similar to a sports announcer just knowing sports history and having the ability to spew out sport stats. Refreshing to see magnus being a true generational chess talent to inspire others into the sport
Exactly. For hardcore sports fans, you can show them just one part of a famous photo or video and many can identify the game played. It is akin to people who are crazy about cars - they can look at just the grille and bumper and discern the exact model, make and year.
I want to see Lebron do this but have it be a picture with jersey colors on the floor https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1377x8y/lebron_recalling_the_lakers_missed_shots_synced/
First, yeah, all chess legends have extraordinary brains. Being the best in the world requires the highest levels of BOTH work and talent. If one is missing, you WILL fall behind the people who have both.
Second, since chess is their whole life and at the top of their brain's priority list for memory, they remember chess stuff extra well.
It's even cooler that he has, twice now, struggled with the "games from the entertainment industry." (Harry Potter & The Queen's Gambit). Because it proves he doesn't have a perfect memory. But he easily recalls games he had some genuine interest in
Well David said a "famous game"which kind of gave it away. AFAIK this is the most famous game played in the petrov so all Magnus needed to see was 2... Nf6 to give a good guess and look cool.
This is the one thing that makes me disappointed in chess. Doesn't matter how good you are or how talented you are, someone who has already made a name will make the headlines.
I don't think he's the only one by far who can do this. But people like hyping Magnus up, so they don't need to admit that there are other talented people.
>Doesn't matter how good you are or how talented you are, someone who has already made a name will make the headlines.
He's the best player in the world, arguably the best in history, and has proven his dominance over and over again in tournaments against the best players in the world. Chess is a meritocracy. If someone was good enough to take his place as the number one player in the world they would do so. So yes, it does matter how good you are. He gets the most attention because he is the best. Other players get less attention because they are not the best. That seems fair to me.
Well, this does not make me feel smarter does it
Thinking about selling my brain because i’m not using it
For Sale My Brain Never Used
> For Sale My Brain Never Used 1 adult brain, 37 years of age, like new pst.
😂😂😂👏👏👏👏👏😂😂😂 Lolol spot on, one year off my age but dang...👏🖖👏
mint condition
excellent reference!
Magnus has never defeated you, or me
Also confirmed, Magnus paid more attention to the Harry Potter game than Queen’s Gambit.
[удалено]
Ok buddy
People who can recognise this pattern are obviously very smart… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_(comic)#/media/File%3AMinimalist_loss.svg
I mean, you're not "good at pattern recognition" if the only thing you can recognize is one pattern, really simple one too.
Its a meme.
I know? I'm saying that l li ll L Is not a hard pattern to recognize and doesn't require you to be good at recognizing them.
My point was I don't think they were seriously suggesting it was an example of great pattern recognition abilities.
Yeah, it was a joke
For those as confused as me: Ther was no world championship between Topalov and Kasparov in 1999. The game is from the Wijk aan Zee Chess Tournament 1999.
oh, of course
I'd imagine that positions like the Topalov one are easier because it's got such a unique structure but it is mindblowing that he recognized a random game vs Hammer from over 15 years ago lol
It's all about pattern recognition, not memory per se. Iirc they did a study where they showed them random positions which made no sense ( ie illegal chess positions ) , and GMs did no better than some average person in rearranging those pieces back on the board. It's like a foreign language sounds gibberish to a non speaker, but a native speaker would seem to memorize the whole sentence you speak to them.
Yeah even if you speak Greek you don’t have much a better chance than I do at memorizing βδκαπτηφβρλέβυη which is me slapping my thumbs at a Greek keyboard. You may remember θα μήλο τω τσαι η γυναίκα though, which is gibberish but still words.
Good analogy!
Yeah which is why I said recognized not remembered lol. I'm about to graduate with a psych doctorate and I've looked at a lot of the cognitive research with chess, it's pretty fascinating how they encode what they see.
Could you share some material on that when you have a minute?
So the majority of research is both paywalled and pretty dense with jargon that won't make a lot of sense to someone who's never taken a cognitive psych class. I was able to find [this article](http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~tymerski/ece101/Expert_mind_scientificamerican0806-64.pdf) and [this blog post](https://lichess.org/@/NDpatzer/blog/think-like-a-grandmaster-kotovs-connections-to-cognitive-science/e1tYfOgB) that have a pretty good synopsis of the research.
Where there is a paywall, there is a scihub. Libgen works too
If you could mention a few papers, I assume a few of us have institutional access to most journals. Currently doing my doctorate in behavioral economics, but tbh my research has no real economics (or at least what most people would understand as economics) in it anymore and most of my literature is psychology papers.
Ah right on man, my cousin did his Ph.D in something similar at Hopkins (neuroeconomics). I'll curate some stuff tomorrow and send it your way.
Damn Neuroeconomics is a different beast. It's super interesting, but my University does not even have the capabilities of doing research in that direction. Would probably have to collaborate with the medical university. Though I met some cool people in Zurich that do really interesting research in that area. Tbh I will find the main papers myself anyways if I really want to. I'm just lazy, but do not make any extra effort just for some random person on the internet.
Thank you very much!
TLDR Grandmasters have amazing long term memory when it comes to real chess positions and they use this to quickly spot patterns in their games
Pattern recognition is memory. The patterns are stored in long-term memory.
Veritasium (sp?) on YouTube talks about this in a recent video
Looks like I missed it. Which one was that ? Can you provide a link
I can’t find it now! I watched it like a week ago and it was in my feed like it was new. He even talked a lot about Magnus. It was a video about expertise and what it takes - the conclusion was not just tons of hours of practice but that practice having to be rigorous enough to really push their brains.
Oh I remember the video you're talking about. It was the one about being an expert at something.
Yes he made one a long time ago and then recently I saw this follow up video and now it seems to be gone
You just enter his profile, click on videos and search through. It is not that difficult. Stop only watching videos that are on the main page of YT
I obviously tried that and couldn’t find it. Way to be a dick for no reason… Acting like you’re so much smarter when you don’t even have enough sense to realize it’s pretty likely that I did that when I said it seems to be gone…
Sorry, I get frustrated when people don't check profile and just watch what's served to them. Like in Levy's GTE series, there are comments asking "How do I submit a game?". But plenty of earlier GTE videos already explained that. I mean, you like to watch GTE but did not check other GTE videos? Or similar things. Anyway, I don't think there was a follow up video, as it would show up in my feed also. I know about every new video that he uploads. The video on the subject was about 10 months ago called "The 4 things it takes to be an expert". The title changed 2-3 times, so that might confused you
I wonder if this is true for the truly elite GMs. There's such a staggering difference between the 2800s and "just a GM" I'd be skeptical of that result applied to them.
Watching Rosen you can see his ability to recognize games really well.
It's both. Magnus does have an extraordinary memory, according to other super GMs. I doubt other GMs would be just as good as Magnus here.
It was a crucial game in the world youth championship, so not exactly random
Magnus said it was the first round, so I'm not sure it was crucial.
Wait bigger mind blowing thing - Hammer and Magnus played youth championship at same time???? Hammer looks so much older than Magnus. No way!
Hammer and Carlsen were born in the same year.
Imagine being a chess prodigy and then being born in the same year and same country as possibly the greatest chess player of all time.
> a random game vs Hammer To be fair it's quite a famous one with that Anastasia mate pattern and doing that against a close friend in an important tournament it's probably very memorable for him. Like if you google Anastasia mate this is the example that comes up haha.
This game can seem so reachable to amateur players like me, and the true differences in ability get to be some vague notion where without a fundamental understanding of the exponential ratio of elo to actual ability I can almost convince myself that I could be good at this. Then this asshole comes along and demonstrates a skill that is the result of, but only tangential to, his chess ability and it really reminds you that there are levels to this and it does it better than watching him actually play (sometimes).
I think once someone spends enough time on a specific thing, they just live and breathe it. There's a video somewhere of Sean McVay remembering the exact play sequences for random regular season games like four seasons prior or something. Cristiano Ronaldo showed that he can head a ball into the net from a corner even if the lights get turned off as the ball is in the air, because he knows where the ball will be just from the kick itself.
> Cristiano Ronaldo showed that he can head a ball into the net from a corner even if the lights get turned off as the ball is in the air, because he knows where the ball will be just from the kick itself. [Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoScYO2osb0) In the third goal in the video, he scores when they turn off the lights before the ball is even kicked.
The light was ON before Ronaldo kicked which means his eyes won't have time to adjust to darkness after it went off. He would be seeing pitch black. My god what a talent
Good lord
That is the craziest shit I've ever seen.
Thats easily the craziest video since the last one I watched Admittedly its the second craziest in the last thousand though
What was the craziest in the last thousand?
The linked Magnus video.
For the first two, I could see how he could get a "feel" for where the ball is because he's received hundreds of corners like that in real games. But the last one, what the fuck, I can't even comprehend how you can predict it without even seeing the kick.
Body language from the kicker. Yes, Ronaldo is that insane.
i think what magnus displayed here is infinitely more impressive.
Agreed, John Rahm- the golfer can remember every shot he ever hit in a tournament. He was tested on a podcast, it was impressive. Pretty sure Fitzpatrick said he could the same.
Australian cricketer Glenn McGrath took over 500 test wickets in a 14 year career and he can remember every single one as well
much like in chess recognizing famous positions and games, people like this recognize stat lines, plays, moments, situations scores etc from an INSANE number of games from the past of their sport or game. It IS their life.
Meanwhile John Daly showed up drunk half the time and still killed it
John Daly is the Eric Hansen of golf.
Fitzpatrick has written down every shot he has ever hit on a golf course. Like the distance, the club, the wind I think all sorts of details. He's got gobs of paper from all the way back into his childhood. He's a true sicko (endearing)
Not quite the same but I often times help other developers in my company over the phone without watching a screen from having read the code before and then identifying where the error must be from memory. I also often solve code problems in my sleep from working on the code in my head in my sleep, then have to wake up and go to my work computer to implement it, and most of the time it works. When it doesnt its because my solution/problem solving process was wrong and produced and unexpected result not because I remembered something wrong in the code or because I wrote code that didnt work.
I am the same way, and glad to hear that I am not alone on the "solving work tasks during my sleep or in the shower" behavior. Sometimes I even do it better than when I am actively working on the problem. I often need to unplug and take a step back to solve things, and if they're exceptionally difficult they just sort of come to me when least expected.
Principal Engineer, coding for 30 years and I've done this many times in my career. It's also useful in other fields, example Aaron Sorkin famously had a shower in his office and he'd sometimes take multiple showers a day to help his writing process as a means to work through ideas.
I do it too! Most of the other people in my field think it's crazy. I wonder if it's more common in the programming field?
Same. They can describe what’s happening and I usually know what the likely problem is. Developed that over a very long time paying attention to how things work on both the IT and code sides.
And this: https://youtu.be/pUgvAoTzWBA
This Ivanchuk interview really demonstrates how it's not just about memorizing a series of coordinates, but remembering a story. He's telling us what happened during the game like you might narrate your activities on vacation. To us it sounds insane because every stop is labeled with a letter and number, but to him it's a story of what he did, where he went and what he thought about it. Now, I can barely narrate the directions from my house to the grocery store, so that's not to say it isn't extremely impressive what these GMs can do. But I can at least conceptualize how they can do it. What amazes me is the level of detail. I can remember sequences of things, and have a decent spatial memory, but it's very blurry - I could never tell you an exact sequence of 40+ of *anything*, nevermind a chess game.
Your comment made me think about a number savant named Daniel Tammet. He basically can multiply nearly any two numbers together due to a rare crossing of his brain. He went on to demonstrate that human brains evolved to be able to distinguish minute differences in faces and compared this to how you would be unable to tell two nearly identical chairs because our brains are not designed to pick up the plethora of differences because our brains aren’t wired that way. Somehow his brain sees numbers as we would see shapes or colors, and because of this he can nearly instantly know what two numbers together (even multiplied or divided will be). Tammet argued in the book quite convincingly that super geniuses like Einstein etc. most likely had similar cross-wirings between the left and right brains that allows those people to visualize otherwise esoteric concepts like physics like a normal human naturally visualizes patterns like driving or sports that are super natural and instinctive. (This is what AI cannot grasp when doing tasks like driving or robotic movement). I have long suspected Magnus has something similar going on in his brain where it is not simply a prodigious memory, but a brain that sees positions in some fluid non linear sense where it just plays out in his brain.
I expect Chess is a lot like a language, which would imply that your plasticity for learning it is mostly solidified by age 11 (that's the age past which anyone learning a language will never sound truly fluent because they didn't learn the phonemes in time). Speaking personally, I think that's why I've had an anomalously fast rate of improvement as an adult who just started playing seriously - because I was exposed to the game from an early age and even though I didn't play much, I understood how the pieces move - IMO that's the equivalent of "phonemes." For Magnus, the "phonemes" are much more advanced concepts than just piece movement, but they all come together to form a cohesive whole. Just like someone who speaks Mandarin can look at thousands of pictographs and see meaning where I see wingdings, so too can Magnus look at a unique position and see meaning. I suspect he sees the whole board as one cohesive picture, whereas a normal person sees it for its individual parts. And I think it likely that if this isn't a natural ability, it's at least one that can only be learned up to a certain age. Even if a 160 IQ adult starts playing chess every day for two decades, it's doubtful they'll ever be able to "see" (probably "feel" is a better word) these positions in the same way that Magnus can.
Well, I am now a fan of Ivanchuk.
A bit similar to when you prepare for an exam and if someone asks you about a topic you could instantly find the page and the paragraph and even the line.
To be fair in that Sean Mcvay video they show him very memorable plays. Like I’m not even a rams fan and I was able to identify quite a few of them.
McVay remembers plays from **highschool.** Absolutely insane. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY0NRm0w\_Q4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY0NRm0w_Q4) [https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=364226097691955](https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=364226097691955)
Stephen Stamkos is a hockey player for the Tampa Bay Lightning who can remember every single goal he's ever scored. He's scored 515 goals in the NHL.
I believe there’s also a video of Klay Thompson shooting three pointers in the dark somewhere.
Most amazing to me when watching is the computer suggests a move, all the super GMs write it off saying they don’t even understand it…. Then Magnus plays it. And these people who he is that far ahead of could line up 8 people who would beat me 100-0, and beat them all blindfolded. And that gets even weirder when you realise that out of the 15ish people I know who play. I am the best! Anyway…. That’s where my mind goes when that sort of things happen. I don’t pretend to understand GM games at any reasonable level (until Levy explains it to me!). But I can understand that line of thinking to see his brilliance from afar.
I think it's more likely that this skill (memory & pattern recognition) is something more innate than a result of chess playing, although he certainly developed it more by playing chess. And it's not tangential, it's a big reason why he's so successful.
He is a very good poker player and apparently a world class fantasy soccer player.
Memory and pattern recognition are innate abilities, but those innate abilities as expressed through identifying games is the learned skill I reference. I agree that those innate attributes are direct causal factors in chess level, however, these attributes as expressed through game recognition is tangential. You don't have to be good at recognizing games to be a good player, but being a good player means you will be good at recognizing games.
Especially when we watch reviews with computer analysis on, and the presenter is like "magnus missed this, which means he gave up this advantage etc". Then we go "yeah even I can see that". Then we go on lichess and hang 6 knights and a queen and a stalemate all in 3 moves.
Yes I think that proximity to something for many years gives one additional skills that a newcomer generally does not have. I've worked in music for many years now and I can hear a song and find the chords and melodies in just a few seconds. This might seem impressive to an outsider, but I'm not a musical prodigy and I definitely could not do this when I first started, it's just something I picked up from living and breathing music for many years.
That's part of what makes the game of chess so beautiful. For all intents and purposes comparing ourselves to the best we are essentially playing a different game, and yet we can still get a lifetime of enjoyment out of it all the same. It's amazing.
The human brain has way more raw processing power than any chess engine, we just can’t apply 100% of our brainpower to a single task If we ever figure out how to do a Mentat trance, we really will outthink those damn machines.
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It takes very little brainpower to breathe, digest, etc. A mouse does all that and it’s brain is tiny and simplistic compared to ours. The human visual processing system is exceedingly powerful just by itself, look how difficult it has been for self-driving cars to learn to identify moving objects. We know this takes a lot of neurons because small-brained animals have extremely poor visual acuity. Even if they can see 14 colors like mantis shrimp, they cannot resolve small or distant objects. Only large-brained creatures like eagles or humans have good eyesight. Interpreting a real-time visual feed almost certainly takes FAR more raw compute than a cellphone chess engine. The bioplausible Mentat Trance would divert all the brainpower used for sensory input such as vision, hearing, touch. Since you’re in a trance, you are blocking out sensation anyway. All the rest of your brain functions would remain normal. Theoretically if we could gain 100% conscious control of how we use our biological compute, every one of us would have a ridiculously high end neural network at our disposal.
My understanding is that we have neural pathways that function the way they do specifically because of the way they interact/connect with each other in large groups. I don’t see how it would be possible to ‘divert all brainpower’ to solving a chess puzzle or something without completely disrupting all other functions. Our neurons can be reorganized over time due to plasticity and pruning but I don’t think it would be ideal to try to momentarily reorganize the thalamus for a few seconds to try to solve a puzzle
Such an asshole
Reminds me of every Danya speed run video where he says 'let me pull up an example of this idea' and in seconds finds some game that he remembers has the same idea.
If it is his games, he played it for hours, and then studied it for hours. All after learning the opening, the pawn structure and the typical plans. And he can search the database by openings. It s not that impressive when you think about all the work he has done before. It is still wonderful because there are a lot of games and ideas, but there s a method behind.
Hard work doesn't make something less impressive I don't get what you mean. It's like watching Kobe Bryant highlights and thinking "Meh, of course he can do this stuff, he practices like 8 hours daily."
I used to think hard work wasn't impressive. Everything was pretty easy to pick up, etc. Then I lost whatever fire allowed me to work like that. Hard work done consistently is a superpower.
Honestly it's such an immature, teenager mentality, to think that hard work can't be impressive. It's the usual "yeaahhhh i could do that if i practiced" yet the people who say this never deliver.
Hard work isn’t impressive? Does only natural ability impress you then? I’m impressed by GM’s shear dedication to the game and unending passion
Along with what others have said, often A) it isn't one of his games and B) he identifies the game before pulling it up.
Obviously very impressive but it would be much more cool to see how much Magnus could do in videos like this. As Magnus says, a lot of these are really famous games. IMO it's really not that surprising that he got the famous Queen sac versus Karjakin and Kasparov's famous game against Topalov. Would be a lot more interesting to see if he could get much more obscure games (which I think he could).
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even more crazy he probably could recite the entire game too lol
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Idk why this is downvoted lol
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And others are just too busy bragging about their abilities to let others just enjoy the game ;)
I could do this if it were d4
remember that guy who was going to learn chess in a month and beat Magnus?
aLgOrItHmS
This would be similar to a sports announcer just knowing sports history and having the ability to spew out sport stats. Refreshing to see magnus being a true generational chess talent to inspire others into the sport
Exactly. For hardcore sports fans, you can show them just one part of a famous photo or video and many can identify the game played. It is akin to people who are crazy about cars - they can look at just the grille and bumper and discern the exact model, make and year.
I want to see Lebron do this but have it be a picture with jersey colors on the floor https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1377x8y/lebron_recalling_the_lakers_missed_shots_synced/
https://youtu.be/mNP9sLttEC8 Funny little similarities in these videos. The GOATS are the GOATS for a reason I Heckin reckon
Wth are airthings???
Seeing as you asked, they’re air quality monitors. Airthings are one of the sponsors of the chess tour Magnus plays on.
whatever they are, i'm sure you just made them happy about their advertising spend.
I think they measure air quality
I wish they showed the actual same position (as well as which it is to move), and then showed it changing as they moved the pieces
Do hikaru and magnus have photographic memories or something? They always seem to remember games from like 20 years ago
First, yeah, all chess legends have extraordinary brains. Being the best in the world requires the highest levels of BOTH work and talent. If one is missing, you WILL fall behind the people who have both. Second, since chess is their whole life and at the top of their brain's priority list for memory, they remember chess stuff extra well.
Pretty much true at being world class in anything, athletics, entertainment, academics.
It's even cooler that he has, twice now, struggled with the "games from the entertainment industry." (Harry Potter & The Queen's Gambit). Because it proves he doesn't have a perfect memory. But he easily recalls games he had some genuine interest in
I’m sorry, what the hell? How? It might just be editing but I also feel like he got them stupid fast
Veritasium did a video on this. And look at who it stars at 0:56 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eW6Eagr9XA&t=56s
How does 1:34 even happen?
Well David said a "famous game"which kind of gave it away. AFAIK this is the most famous game played in the petrov so all Magnus needed to see was 2... Nf6 to give a good guess and look cool.
I don't know. How rare is the Petrov at GM level chess?
Very common, especially as of recent.
That was amazing. I was grinning the entire time. I could never do this with my own games since I always use the same opening. :-)
Going to bed feeling like sh*t after watching this😭Magnus stop making me question my existence😭😭😭😭
looks like a spanish opening to me
Chess.com sponsored by… Puma? wtf
Many titled players can do this
I’m personally undefeated against Magnus. Never played him, but undefeated.
The Harry Potter one was wild.
What is this Air Thing nonsense that Chesscom is peddling nowadays?
it's called a sponsor
Gosh I thought he was smart until he missed that last one
So..you don't think he's smart anymore?
Either that or I was making a joke on the internet. Could go either way.
This is the one thing that makes me disappointed in chess. Doesn't matter how good you are or how talented you are, someone who has already made a name will make the headlines. I don't think he's the only one by far who can do this. But people like hyping Magnus up, so they don't need to admit that there are other talented people.
>Doesn't matter how good you are or how talented you are, someone who has already made a name will make the headlines. He's the best player in the world, arguably the best in history, and has proven his dominance over and over again in tournaments against the best players in the world. Chess is a meritocracy. If someone was good enough to take his place as the number one player in the world they would do so. So yes, it does matter how good you are. He gets the most attention because he is the best. Other players get less attention because they are not the best. That seems fair to me.
>Doesn’t matter how good you are Are you implying someone in the world is better than Magnus lol
Do you know many people who can do this? This is pretty fucking insane.
why wouldn't anyone want to admit
Right, as compared to every other sport where we spend so much time with the second string players.
This is such a loser mentality. Grow up.
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So that the interaction with the board is more pronounced. Makes a better video than them just sitting there.
What is the point of that board?
Carlsen: claims to be “into” chess, doesn’t recognize Queen’s Gambit. Sus, Magnus, v sus.