Identifying talented juniors

[Alex Holowczak]

Just been watching an interesting edition of Horizon on BBC iPlayer.

It asks the question of what makes a genius. One of the clips shown features chess. Stuart Conquest is playing against the host, and their brain activity is compared. From that, the neuroscientist can predict that even if the host were as committed to chess as Conquest, then he would never be able to make it as a Grandmaster. Although, it should be noted that the neuroscientist went to extraordinary lengths to become a Grandmaster, but failed.

The neuroscientist also claims that he can predict whether young players have any hope of becoming a strong chess player just by these patterns in brain activity. If so, the most promising juniors could almost be cherry-picked to be trained up.

[Simon Ansell]

There is some discussion, including contributions from Dr Amidzic on Simon Williams' website here and here.

[Ben Purton]

They include:

Tom Rendle 3050
Simon Mc 3000+(has beaten Nigel Short tones, as well as alot of the worlds elite)- Super talent
Greeb 2900(Sam Williams)
Purton 2900
"TheCodFather" 2500+(despite being 160 otb) and one of the best bullet players.


Despite this most of us are struggling to even get near 2300 otb.

James Adair who will be 2300+ in short order however is around "2400" on the internet but progresses more.

Suggesting that online play needs to be combined with Work OTB like James and Tom do.

Ben