Dead Man's Chess

[Malerin]

Korchnoi was very capable of fooling himself. If he thought he was playing a ghost he'd expect the play to be old-fashioned. Another possibility is that whoever was playing him was using openings etc from previous Maroczy games therefore of course they'd seem old fashioned.

Yes, Korchnoi may have been predisposed towards the idea of the supernatural. However, that does not make him a sap. He was ranked 3rd in the world. Just because he believed he might be playing Maroczy does not mean his powers of analysis went out the window. Korchnoi could just as likely believed Maroczy had been paying attention to chess in all the years since his death. We would have to personally ask Korchnoi what he thought. Absent that, all we have are his own words and conjecture about his state of mind.

Why not? Well you give one possible answer to your own question: 'painfully obvious early on that the world could care less about the game'. Ie there was little to be gained by it.

Then why spend 8 years playing the game at all? If there was nothing to be gained by it, publicity-wise, why waste 8 years playing a meaningless game?

Also if it took 8 years that would seem a hell of a lot of effort so I can quite understand why they didn't do it again.

It was a hell of a lot of effort for no monetary or publicity gain, which would have become obvious very early on in the game. Not only would they not have done another game, they wouldn't have finished the first one! How hard would it have been for the medium to have "lost contact" with Maroczy? They ceraintly wouldn't have done all the research that required travel to Hungary and interviews with Maroczy's family.

I was a very average chess player but often beat superior players by a combination of confidence and aggressive style. They'd fool themselves into thinking there was more behind my moves than there was and waste time countering a perceived threat that I wasn't even aware of. Psychology plays a large part in chess - especially at this level. You don't just analyse your own moves ahead but your opponents and if you think your opponent is a good player, you'll work out good moves for him from the current position.

Hmmm, just a wild guess, but you're experience playing Grandmasters is probably nil (doubly so your experience of playing one of the top ranked players in the world, but this is the internet, so feel free to claim otherwise). Also, a game by mail is rather dry and abstract. Not as suscetipble to the kind of psychological tricks you could employ.

This is just a supposition on my part, but I'm pretty sure that even if you played "confidently and aggressively" against the 3rd best player in the world, you'd have your ass handed to you in short order.

You're assuming Korchnoi spent all his time between moves thinking about that game.

46 moves over 8 years? One move every ten weeks? Yeah, it's likely he spent some time thinking about the game. I would guess about as much time as the mysterious gifted chess player the medium and Eisenbeiss were in contact with. Oh wait! I forgot. Eisenbeiss had access to a high-ranking chess player who had absolutely nothing better to do than spend the entire day studying the game!

I'd suggest that someone with Korchnoi's profile would be busy with other things (and indeed other games) whereas his opponent may have had considerably more time to spare on this as it would probably be the only game he was playing.

If Korchnoi's opponent could make Korchnoi, 3rd ranked player in the world, doubt the outcome of the game, Korchnoi's opponent would ALSE be busy with "other things (and indeed other games)". Ah, but I keep forgetting- Korchnoi's opponent was a skilled enough player to nearly beat a Grandmaster, but had nothing better to do than analyse a game because a medium asked him to. That's VERY reasonable

Oh, and to top it all off, AFTER it became clear the game was getting no publicity and no money was at stake, they spent 70+ hours of research on Maroczy's life, travelled to Hungary, interviewed Maroczy's family, and studied old chess programs. That's also very reasonable.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Malerin,

Do you play chess? I believe not or you would not be ignoring comments by a couple of chess players here.

There's speed chess, tournament chess, multi-player exhibition/speed chess, and casual chess. (And forty or fifty other variations.) The clincher in many of them is RUNNING OUT OF TIME. Given enough time, e.g. weeks between moves, a talented club level player can play a very good game. A Master or GrandMaster can do even better and you'd be surprised how many of those are out there. Fisher once said he and other IGMs usually worked 10/15 moves in advance. Not that it played out that way, but they envisioned all the logical reactions to logical moves and played them out in their miinds while waiting for their own move, or waiting for their opponent.

Conversely, when the best in the world play rooms full of people they often come away with, say, 11 wins, 7 draws, and 2 losses. The problem is RUNNING OUT OF TIME. 2 losses! To local club level players. Morphy would beat a room full of master level players and loose to the local librarian. (I made that up... just a euphemism for an "average/unknown".)

So it applies on both sides of the game. Winning or losing. I can play a pretty fair game of chess, but Korchnoi's third cousin four times removed could beat me in regulation time. But given a week between moves, access to books and friends for advice (and even a primitive 80s chess computer), and I'm pretty sure I could play him to a draw. And I was never ranked. (Never played enough tournaments when I was serious about the game.)


So, please stop talking about the credits of the person who was playing him. From everything I've read, Maroczy couldn't have played Korchnoi to a draw, anyway. He was a very defensive player, but lacked in imagination what he had in conservative skills. The 1910/20 game's 3rd or 10th best player (he was only tops really early on when no one had seen his style... my theory is that he bored opponents into blundering) would probably not be up to Korchnoi's level. Viktor gave Karpov a pretty good game, IIRC.

 

[Mark Felt]

Why would taking part in an anonymous poll have any bearing on your business?

Who says that it's anonymous? The guys running the poll? If you're the kind of tricky bastard that would lie about religion in order to drum up business, wouldn't you suspect the guys doing to poll to be lying about the anonymity of the poll and act accordingly?

Then why spend 8 years playing the game at all? If there was nothing to be gained by it, publicity-wise, why waste 8 years playing a meaningless game?

You're the one that keeps saying that the apparent lack of material gain is evidence that something else was at work here. I say it's just evidence that the motive wasn't publicity. Best guess? Someone who knew about Korchnoi's wooish beliefs wanted to screw with his head and paid the medium to perpetrate the fraud. One move every ten weeks? Hell, you don't even need the medium to do any research, provide the moves yourself.

 

[Ethan Thane Athen]

Yes, Korchnoi may have been predisposed towards the idea of the supernatural. However, that does not make him a sap. He was ranked 3rd in the world. Just because he believed he might be playing Maroczy does not mean his powers of analysis went out the window. Korchnoi could just as likely believed Maroczy had been paying attention to chess in all the years since his death. We would have to personally ask Korchnoi what he thought. Absent that, all we have are his own words and conjecture about his state of mind.





Then why spend 8 years playing the game at all? If there was nothing to be gained by it, publicity-wise, why waste 8 years playing a meaningless game?



It was a hell of a lot of effort for no monetary or publicity gain, which would have become obvious very early on in the game. Not only would they not have done another game, they wouldn't have finished the first one! How hard would it have been for the medium to have "lost contact" with Maroczy? They ceraintly wouldn't have done all the research that required travel to Hungary and interviews with Maroczy's family.





Hmmm, just a wild guess, but you're experience playing Grandmasters is probably nil (doubly so your experience of playing one of the top ranked players in the world, but this is the internet, so feel free to claim otherwise). Also, a game by mail is rather dry and abstract. Not as suscetipble to the kind of psychological tricks you could employ.

This is just a supposition on my part, but I'm pretty sure that even if you played "confidently and aggressively" against the 3rd best player in the world, you'd have your ass handed to you in short order.



46 moves over 8 years? One move every ten weeks? Yeah, it's likely he spent some time thinking about the game. I would guess about as much time as the mysterious gifted chess player the medium and Eisenbeiss were in contact with. Oh wait! I forgot. Eisenbeiss had access to a high-ranking chess player who had absolutely nothing better to do than spend the entire day studying the game!



If Korchnoi's opponent could make Korchnoi, 3rd ranked player in the world, doubt the outcome of the game, Korchnoi's opponent would ALSE be busy with "other things (and indeed other games)". Ah, but I keep forgetting- Korchnoi's opponent was a skilled enough player to nearly beat a Grandmaster, but had nothing better to do than analyse a game because a medium asked him to. That's VERY reasonable

Oh, and to top it all off, AFTER it became clear the game was getting no publicity and no money was at stake, they spent 70+ hours of research on Maroczy's life, travelled to Hungary, interviewed Maroczy's family, and studied old chess programs. That's also very reasonable.

You're missing my point. Korchnoi nearly beat himself, was my point.

As for your other points, I admitted in my post that I was an average player and of course I haven't played any Grand Masters. My point still stands - if someone believes they are playing someone good then they will read that into the game...at least in the early stages. As for postal games, in my (limited) experience, people do not spend much of the intervening time thinking about the game or their next move.

I am not asseting any of my 'theories' as proof, nor that all hang together as one coherent whole, more that there are a number of possible (and real world) explanations for each of the 'proofs' you assert.

 

[Basilio]

If ya just look at how much time each move took, 8 years and gave up on 48th move, so about 2 months a play, you could set up a board and run your move and possible counter moves, with a handy reference book. In an hour you could run counter moves up to maybe 2 plays ahead, write them down, and compare to older player's style. All low tech. As others have said, time was on the medium's side, cuz in real one on one, the clock and your nerves are against you. Most simple (and so, most possible) answer is that no woo is involved. Check and mate.

 

[Civilized Worm]

Peronsally, I've had two supernatural experiences. They're real to me, but would be anecdotal to you.

Just out of interest, what were these experiences?

 

[drkitten]

So that means nearly 13% of doctors who believe in god don't believe in an afterlife? Why would you bother to believe in god if you don't believe in an afterlife? It seems odd to me.

(76%-59%=17% ... 17% of 79% = 12.92%)

My understanding is that Judaism believes in God, but not an afterlife. For more details, Conversations with Rabbi Small is pretty good -- and written by a genuine Conservative rabbi. (Kemmelmann? Something like that, anyway).

 

[Cuddles]

There was a thread discussing this a while ago. I really love the way that someone taking 8 years to lose a game of chess is somehow supposed to be proof of the afterlife.

 

[Pup]

Also, there were many crop circles and fairy photographs done. There's been ONE game of chess between a grandmaster and a "ghost". Why stop with Korchnoi? Why not grab another medium, the same chess "adviser" and challenge another grandmaster? Unlike crop circles and fairy pictures, the "hoax" was never attemtped again. Why not? Is there a shortage of unscrupulous mediums out there?

I'd say that's a better argument for a non-paranormal explanation. If talented dead people can be channeled, where are the new books by Shakespeare? The new compositions by Beethoven? Why not more chess games by other dead masters? If talent doesn't die with an individual, and all you need is a medium to communicate it, why don't we see a broader mix of talent from a single medium who can channel a composer one day and a physicist the next?

 

[Jimbo07]

It all has to do with speed and access to information. It's possible to win a single game over 8* years, especially given access to books, early programs, etc.

The difference between any one of us with 8 years, books, computers and so on and a grandmaster is that the grandmaster wins tournaments consistently. So it is in every sport/contest.

Given enough time, e.g. weeks between moves, a talented club level player can play a very good game. A Master or GrandMaster can do even better and you'd be surprised how many of those are out there... But given a week between moves, access to books and friends for advice (and even a primitive 80s chess computer),

Thanks for reiterating my point (almost in its entirety, including the primitive computer ). Maybe Malerin will address it this time?

 

[Ersby]

There's been ONE game of chess between a grandmaster and a "ghost". Why stop with Korchnoi? Why not grab another medium, the same chess "adviser" and challenge another grandmaster? Unlike crop circles and fairy pictures, the "hoax" was never attemtped again. Why not? Is there a shortage of unscrupulous mediums out there?

There is quite a shortage of Grandmasters, though.

This isn't the only tale I've heard of a ghost playing chess, nor would it be the only occasion where a seemingly impossibly brilliant chess player turned out to be a hoax.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk

 

[Malerin]

So it applies on both sides of the game. Winning or losing. I can play a pretty fair game of chess, but Korchnoi's third cousin four times removed could beat me in regulation time. But given a week between moves, access to books and friends for advice (and even a primitive 80s chess computer), and I'm pretty sure I could play him to a draw. And I was never ranked. (Never played enough tournaments when I was serious about the game.)

So now the claim is, given enough time to study the board, you, an unranked player, could play one of the top Grandmasters in the world to a draw? And people here think the supernatural explanation is loopy!??!? There are probabaly over 100,000,000 chess players in the world. There are about 900 Grandmasters.

You guys have gone so far off the deep end trying to "rationalize" this, you've made the supernatural position STRONGER!

 

[ihaunter]

That's an interesting analysis by an admittedly biased observer:
"This great hokum was reported in The National Enquirer decades ago and was revived last year in a lead article for the British journal of Psychical Research"

An observer that YOU brought to the discussion as a relevant expert. You were bragging about his credentials when you were misrepresenting his opinion of the game.

Vernon Neppe and Helmut Metz make different claims. Neppe is obviously predisposed toward the paranormal (but also an outstanding scientist (http://www.parapsych.org/members/v_neppe.html). I don't read German (or whatever language Metz wrote in), so I can't evaluate where he's coming from. It seems that the person's view of reality colors their perception of the game.

This goes towards what I was saying before: the game garnered so little publicity, analysis of the game itself is hard to find.

bolding mine
Yet you seem to think that Korchnoi was immune to this. Why? Because he was a Grandmaster at chess? Or, because it supports your personal view of reality?

 

[Jimbo07]

So now the claim is, given enough time to study the board, you, an unranked player, could play one of the top Grandmasters in the world to a draw? And people here think the supernatural explanation is loopy!??!? There are probabaly over 100,000,000 chess players in the world. There are about 900 Grandmasters.

You guys have gone so far off the deep end trying to "rationalize" this, you've made the supernatural position STRONGER!

No. Now you're being (deliberately?) dense. Grandmasters, like Olympic athletes, are amazing, and arguably push the boundaries of human capability (unless, of course, you believe that only thought exists and therefore, anything goes ). The thing that separates a champion from some schmuck who got lucky is the ability to win consistently, and perhaps as importantly, under pressure. Remove either of those constraints, and knowing who is the Grandmaster merely provides a way to bet.

Heck, I may not even be able to beat a disabled octagenarian chess grandmaster in a fistfight, but that doesn't mean that under the right circumstances they can never be beaten! Foolmewunz used the language of humility, and was merely explaining a background that provided some familiarity with chess. Regardless, there are many clever people who don't routinely play chess, to borrow one population. Sometimes hoaxers are quite clever themselves.

 

[Malerin]

When Grandmasters lose, they are invariably defeated by other grandmasters or prodigies who later become Grandmasters themselves (David Howell, Fabiano Caruana).

If you think it's possible for a grandmaster to lose or draw to an average player, then find the match. It's almost unheard of for a Grandmaster to lose even to a master. But you guys just throw that out there like it happens all the time. "Sure, give me enough time and I'll play anyone in the world to a draw! I'll also paint a masterpiece, write a bestselling novel and compose a piece of timeless music. All's I need is some time!"

The fanaticism here is almost Christianesque.

 

[Ashles]

I'd say that's a better argument for a non-paranormal explanation. If talented dead people can be channeled, where are the new books by Shakespeare? The new compositions by Beethoven? Why not more chess games by other dead masters? If talent doesn't die with an individual, and all you need is a medium to communicate it, why don't we see a broader mix of talent from a single medium who can channel a composer one day and a physicist the next?

Now that would be something - some new branch of physics or some new theory generated by a medium who had no background in the subject.

Strange how that never happens.

 

[Hellbound]

Now that would be something - some new branch of physics or some new theory generated by a medium who had no background in the subject.

Strange how that never happens.

Yeah, the "simple" proof of Fermat's Last Theorem from someone without a mathematics background would go a long way

 

[Ashles]

Yeah, the "simple" proof of Fermat's Last Theorem from someone without a mathematics background would go a long way

Well if the implication is that the dead can continue to process information, analyse problems and communicate with us, what might we look forward to from Einstein, Heisenberg, Newton, Schrodinger, Bohr...

And I wouldn't mind Douglas Adams finishing the next Dirk Gently book while we're at it.

 

[Civilized Worm]

When Grandmasters lose, they are invariably defeated by other grandmasters or prodigies who later become Grandmasters themselves (David Howell, Fabiano Caruana).

If you think it's possible for a grandmaster to lose or draw to an average player, then find the match. It's almost unheard of for a Grandmaster to lose even to a master. But you guys just throw that out there like it happens all the time. "Sure, give me enough time and I'll play anyone in the world to a draw! I'll also paint a masterpiece, write a bestselling novel and compose a piece of timeless music. All's I need is some time!"

The fanaticism here is almost Christianesque.

But he didn't win.

What were your "supernatural" experiences?

 

[Ashles]

Yes, Korchnoi may have been predisposed towards the idea of the supernatural. However, that does not make him a sap. He was ranked 3rd in the world. Just because he believed he might be playing Maroczy does not mean his powers of analysis went out the window.

Why does it not mean that?
We know that is often exactly the case.

See Confirmation bias

Many very intelligent and talented people have been fooled by their desire to believe something.

Look at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and The Cottingley Fairies for example.