I just got a flood of email about today’s episode of “My Brilliant Brain” from the non-chess people. It seems to be very positive and engaging for these people. If you have seen it tonight in the UK, please share with others about what you think of it since I have not seen it myself.
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Just saw you on the BBC programme My Brilliant BRAIN. Pretty impressive!
I just watched a television programme about you and your amazing achievements and the way in which your father educated you.
Excellent programme. I think it’ll help chess a lot, especially in research.
I enjoyed it a lot. Very well made and serious programme. The reconstructions of the Polgars’ early life were suprisingly well done. I wonder if the ability to recollect easily huge numbers of positions (one result of Susan’s training) would always be enough by itself to take the player to the very top rank? I would also have been interested to see the results of Susan’s NMR scan for positions taken from games she had not seen before as well as her own games, to see if there was any difference (I don’t want to give away the whole story by explaining this!)
So, food for thought, and Susan came across brilliantly.
You get to see Susan play most of three blitz games (one without sight of the board), which is great fun.
Congratulations to S Polgar! Fans in America will just have to be patient!
Totally brilliant! I loved it. You should be proud. Your performance was completely brilliant.
I found the programme very interesting.
The part where you recreated a complicated chess position seeing the board only for a few seconds, but were unable to recreate the same exercise when a non chess player randomly put the pieces anywhere, I thought was a good demonstration of how the human chess player relies on pattern recognition.
I still find the fact that GM such as yourself, can win against players such as myself with comparative ease, even without sight of a chess board, and while concentrating on other things.
I would like to ask you a question though Susan. How are you when it comes to other strategy games such as Go or checkers. Are you above average with these games too, or are you only average?
brillian program, well done – was most impressed with the simultaneous blindfold/remote games…
at what age do you recommend introducing a child to chess? and any other tips to enhance “brilliance” in kids, esp. in the very early months/years?
cheers
Hi anon,
That’s an interesting point you make about genius. I think maybe it’s one of those things that’s often difficult to define. They seemed to be asking from the outset whether it’s a thing of nature or nuture.
I’ve always tended to think nurture. After watching this, I might be more inclined to think that, in more technical subjects at least, it can be learned.
Interesting programme, im unable to find Bring up Genius on Amazon but would like to have read it.
I did not see it in any listings here in California. How can I watch it?
Well… about the question ‘genius’ is a thing of nature or a thing of nurture:
Some people can have ‘talent’, are intelligent eg…
But NO-ONE in the world ever was born a genius!!! Chess GrandMasters of course DID have talent to start with, but they just became geniusses in their field because of years and years if HARD WORK !!!! (preferrable starting at very young age!)
So yes, genius is all nurture, which can be build on talent. The Polgar sisters are proof for that!!
Nobody will be born with a 2700 Elo!!! No-one will have endgame skills just like that!!
It’s all hard work and lots of study and practice!!
Yes, that was quite interesting. It seemed to avoid the pitfall of “talking down to the audience” when discussing the science of memory, which always helps. I hate being patronised by TV shows!
Susan came across very well – friendly and down to earth as well as looking comfortable in front of the camera.
I watched this programme with keen anticipation, but was a little disappointed. Susan comes across brilliantly but I question the conclusions that have been rapidly drawn. How are we to properly conclude that Susan was trained to be a “genius” if we do not know what she would have been like but for that training? Her training began at 4 so we cannot sensibly conclude that she was not a genius before that time. Further, her father was an intelligent man and, though we were not told it is likely, so was her mother. All of her siblings are also gifted. How, therefore, can it be sensibly concluded that she is evidence of genius being trained? Now, if we took an example of someone who was a slow child and was then trained to be a genius, that would show something. Alternatively, taking a child from a family without any history of intelligence and then training them into a genius would also (though not as convincingly) show signs that genius can be trained. Notwithstanding this, the programme was very interesting.
I left the comment on 18 July at 4.48am (presumably US time) and just wanted to add: I wonder whether Susan’s own impression is that she was trained into being a genius or whether she feels she could have been one in the making in any event?
Saw it on cable in Australia.
I found the program extremely interesting. Some of the things about chess masters are common knowledge but the program also answered some unknowns. The speed she made moves against the amateur was impressive!
(I studied chess for a short while)