CBC "Fifth Estate" on child prodiges in chess...

[Frank Dixon]

Genius:
The term 'genius' has been defined by some as anyone with an IQ of 140+. That represents perhaps the top 2 per cent of the population.

Nona Gaprindashvili:

Nona Gaprindashvili, born 1941, was women's world champion from 1962 to 1978, when she lost to Maia Chiburdanidze, who was 17 years old. Nona received the full GM title in 1978 for her results in Open and round-robin tournaments, scoring norms. A norm usually requires a performance rating of 2600+. Nona defeated quite a few good Soviet masters, and had some excellent results in Open events and round-robins. GM Tal tells a nice story about her, from his book "The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal' (1975). They had travelled together to play in the international round-robin at Reykjavik 1964. She received a major Soviet award during the event, for winning the world championship, the Soviet women's championship, and for other achievements. Tal hosted a celebration party for her at the event. When it came time to play their game, Tal said he wasn't prepared to play for a win, given Nona's status. She replied that he must play only for a win, given the close battle for the lead (GM Gligoric was close behind). Tal said, "All right, then pick an opening you would like me to play." She agreed to this; Tal won that game and the tournament, with Gligoric second. Tal qualified his win by saying that he wanted revenge for Nona finishing ahead of him in a lightning tournament at Hastings just before this; he was playing the main event there (and won), she was in a secondary tournament, Hastings 'B'.

Chessmetrics.com is a website which very thoroughly documents historical ratings for players, and tournaments, from eras BEFORE official FIDE ratings.

From chessmetrics.com: Nona's career results are very thoroughly documented. Ratings and performance ratings on this site are a bit higher than FIDE ratings of the time, when both exist, to account for the relative inflation of FIDE ratings in recent years.
Some of Nona's top career results are:
1) Women's Olympiad, Split 1963: 11.5/12
2) Hastings 'B' 1963-64: 6.5/9
3) Dortmund 1974, round-robin, she was the only woman, 8/11, T3-4, perf. 2551
4) Sandomierz 1976, Swiss, 7.5/11, T2-3, 2643
5) Lone Pine 1977, very strong Swiss with many GMs, T1, 6.5/9, 2638
6) Dortmund 1978, T2-3, 7.5/11, 2606
7) Reggio Emilia 1982-83, RR, 8/11, 1st, 2560
8) Albena 1985, RR, 7.5/13, T2-4, 2596
9) Polanica Zdroj 1986, RR, 6.5/12, 2581
10) Brussels mix 1987, four men, four women, 1st, 2632

Using chessmetrics ratings, her highest world rank was #113, in August 1978, and her highest rating was 2614 in June 1988.

[Hans Jung]

Thanks for the research Frank. It shows clearly that she was the first woman to earn the GM title.

[Vlad Drkulec]

What you say about genius versus being elite at chess is spot on. To me, the elite in chess are like robots. They have been trained all their life to play one particular game extremely well. But if you change just one rule (which I am experimenting with right now, see my thread on chess with one rule change) and all their specialized knowledge gets thrown out the window. They might still be strong players of the new game, but no longer elite, at least until they can master all the new opening theory and endgame theory and tactics of the new game.

This is the characteristic of present day robots. They are programmed to do one or at most a few things very well, better than humans. Change one rule and they have to be reprogrammed. In the case of a perfect information game like chess, even the robot will adapt more quickly than than the human, generally speaking.

I have long felt that if we teach chess in schools, we should also teach poker. Not using money of course, the only prizes would be chips so that it's not considered gambling. The thing about poker is that it teaches skills that chess doesn't teach. The primary one is how to deal emotionally when you do everything right, play perfectly, and still lose. That is part of the real world which chess does not encapsulate, although in chess you can do everything right and still settle for a draw.

Another skill poker teaches is patience and variety. The player who is going all-in on most hands is soon eliminated once his or her pattern is detected. Chess can teach patience too, but not so much the variety.

And one big thing in poker that isn't nearly as prevalent in chess is psychology. Figuring out your opponents (called "reading" your opponents) is as important in poker as knowing your own hand. And a lot of times you have more than one opponent to figure out.

The skills that poker teaches would go a long way to creating very smart and savvy entrepreneurs and business operators and managers.

Okay Paul.

[Neil Frarey]

Genius:
The term 'genius' has been defined by some as anyone with an IQ of 140+. That represents perhaps the top 2 per cent of the population.

Yep, not a single 'genius' ever lived pre-20th century.

[Brad Thomson]

Yep, not a single 'genius' ever lived pre-20th century.

If humans had produced even one genius instead of nothing but varying degrees of idiots we would not be on the verge of complete self-annihilation.

[Neil Frarey]

I tend to agree, and certainly think that the "creativity" element is vastly overblown. We do not "create" the best chess games/moves, we discover them. We do not invent them, we find them.

Creativity ... to be creative or not ... is one of my life long interests. I've found Creativity to be a deeply fascinating and totally disturbing occurrence. I know its source. And, I also know why it must exist and how it exists.

I hope my second short film will expose (probably not the right word) Creativity for what it truly is and how Creativity can present itself, whether we want Creativity or not, within each and every one of us.




.

[Neil Frarey]

If humans had produced even one genius instead of nothing but varying degrees of idiots we would not be on the verge of complete self-annihilation.

Interesting. Apparently we've faced complete self-annihilation before and survived ... I'm OK with that.

Queue Beethoven playlist ...

[Erik Malmsten]

Creativity ... to be creative or not ... is one of my life long interests. I've found Creativity to be a deeply fascinating and totally disturbing occurrence. I know its source. And, I also know why it must exist and how it exists.
ily
I hope my second short film will expose (probably not the right word) Creativity for what it truly is and how Creativity can present itself, whether we want Creativity or not, within each and every one of us.




.

I come from a family who have artists and musicians so I'm used to being creative, to having the creative force within me. By applying creativity to chess means looking for moves outside of the rigid "rules" such as knights towards the centre, rooks are worth more than knights. It means exploring ideas that pop up out of a dream, not found through mathematical analysis. Not playing the straight-ahead best move but the unclear off-centred move. Not playing like a conservative accountant, but to take your opponent to where no man has gone before. It is looking for the joy of a coordinated checkmate rather than gobbling up material. It is often messy and disastrous but kept me and my opponent stimulated.

[Brad Thomson]

Queue Beethoven playlist ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv2WJMVPQi8

[Brad Thomson]

I come from a family who have artists and musicians so I'm used to being creative, to having the creative force within me. By applying creativity to chess means looking for moves outside of the rigid "rules" such as knights towards the centre, rooks are worth more than knights. It means exploring ideas that pop up out of a dream, not found through mathematical analysis. Not playing the straight-ahead best move but the unclear off-centred move. Not playing like a conservative accountant, but to take your opponent to where no man has gone before. It is looking for the joy of a coordinated checkmate rather than gobbling up material. It is often messy and disastrous but kept me and my opponent stimulated.

Is Tal therefore more "creative" than Karpov? Or at a Canadian level, Day more "creative" than Nickoloff?

[Pargat Perrer]

I come from a family who have artists and musicians so I'm used to being creative, to having the creative force within me. By applying creativity to chess means looking for moves outside of the rigid "rules" such as knights towards the centre, rooks are worth more than knights. It means exploring ideas that pop up out of a dream, not found through mathematical analysis. Not playing the straight-ahead best move but the unclear off-centred move. Not playing like a conservative accountant, but to take your opponent to where no man has gone before. It is looking for the joy of a coordinated checkmate rather than gobbling up material. It is often messy and disastrous but kept me and my opponent stimulated.

Erik I congratulate you on playing with a style that has mostly disappeared from chess. It might even be a good idea to take your games collection and write a book about creative chess, with examples from your own play. I agree that the things you mention are examples of some degree of creativity in chess.

At the top levels of chess today, this kind of playing is almost extinct.

At the same time, I hope you and others can appreciate that what I want to introduce to chess with the idea of "UberPawns" (Pawns that capture diagonally AND forward, and can move forward AND diagonally, see my thread on Chess with one rule change) is creativity. You would like this form of chess, because already having my engine just play 20 games so far, I have noticed a lot of Rook play on the a- and h-files, then Rooks getting into the thick of things in the center ahead of the UberPawns, and UberPawns moving diagonally towards the center from the wings, and all kinds of other new ideas. A UberPawn becomes more like 2 points in value so even an idea like exchanging a Bishop or Knight for two UberPawns, followed by trying to promote an extra UberPawn, is evident.

[Brad Thomson]

At the top levels of chess today, this kind of playing is almost extinct.

At slow time controls over the board, yes. But we do have the online active games that are full of "creativity" and mistakes.

[Frank Dixon]

On 'genius', modern scientists have identified people such as Isaac Newton, Nicolas Copernicus, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Paul Morphy, along with certain other outstanding personalities, from before the 20th century, as being geniuses, using backwards analysis and extrapolation techniques.

[Vlad Drkulec]

Thanks for the research Frank. It shows clearly that she was the first woman to earn the GM title.

https://michaelbluejay.com/misc/womengrandmasters.html

The CBC fact checkers believe that to be a mistaken notion. They say she got it by virtue of being women's world champion. It is possible that she earned norms after being given the regular GM title. The driving force behind that particular segment Alex Shprintsen read this thread on chesstalk.

Susan Polgar was the first to earn a regular GM title by the norm process in place at the time.

[Sam Sharpe]

So this is akin to them saying that whomever wins the FIDE World Junior championship didn't really earn the GM title because they did it in one event rather than via norm attainment? That's silly. It doesn't matter how it's earned; if it's earned, it's earned. Norms are simply one of the ways to gain a title.