“Are you following the Candidates’ Tournament?”
Not closely.
“Nepo is itching for another crack at Magnus.”
Probably. However, I’m not sure he’ll get it. Magnus said that he’s faced (defeated) the prior generation, and the current generation, and would continue to play if he faced the next generation. But who knows?
I watched an old series on the senses. A master chef had far more taste buds on his tongue than normal. Cause or effect? Rod Laver had a very large right forearm. I wonder if the greatest chess players have more brain cells for spatial relations. I briefly read about a 12-year-old grandmaster. It is hard not to believe that he has a gift. We may all be blank slates at birth, just not the same blank slate.
Meaning Firouja, who is in last place.
Seems to me that Moriarty was interested in Sherlock's cranium.
Major league baseball players' sons become stars themselves wildly disproportionally to statistical expectation: Griffey, Guerrero, Biggio, Boones, Tatis.... Where are the offspring of Capablanca and Morphy and Fischer?
I think there's something to the assertion that there are *differences* btwn normal humans and master chefs for example (& a good example it is!), or brilliant chess players on the other hand...
Their way of collating and remembering information exists on another level! I saw a video of Magnus playing @ 12 experts all at once...except Magnus was facing away! from all the players - keeping 12 games only in his mind.
I remember feeling the same amount of awe for Isaac Newton when I took *the* calculus.
Certain Genius is beyond my ability to grasp!
The brain wiring that makes genius also flirts pretty closely in many cases with *flawed wiring* as well. Flawed genius is often a co-morbidity in fact. I present for your examination 1. Bobby Fischer and 2. Paul Morphy, and in another field, Van Gogh.
National Geo did a documentary on Susan Polgar titled: "My Brilliant Brain" Give it a look!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wzs33wvr9E
In short, they did a fMRI (functional MRI) while she solved chess problems, and found she did a lot of *processing* in the fusiform, or facial recognition area of her brain. Very interesting!
Although she'd mop me all over the board, it's also interesting that there have been no female world champions.