Believe it or not

Remember Ripley`s Believe it or not? It was syndicated for a long time not only in print media but also on radio and TV about bizarre events and items so strange and unusual that readers question its authenticity.

It has been commonly accepted for about a decade that computers are better than people at chess. But a couple of weeks ago, a widely circulated story out of Ukraine suggested that a man who learned to play the game less than a year ago had beaten the world’s best chess program.

According to the press release the man “Andriy Slusarchulk beat Rybka 4 , the strongest and smartest commercially available program in the world , in a two-game match, winning one and drawing the other. He not only won, he played what is known as blindfold chess, meaning he called out his moves and had the computer’s relayed to him. The match was taped in front of an audience and broadcast on television.
Slyusarchuk claims to be a genius. He says he has memorized 20,000 books and can recite pi to 30 million decimal places. And he was widely quoted in newspaper, television and Web site reports as saying he had memorized 3,000 chess books in eight months — more than 12 a day — in preparation for his match against Rybka.”
Andriy Slyusarchuk does not apply for the title of grandmaster. He just wanted to show the audience that the potential of the human brain is incredible. Slyusarchuk is an amateur in chess playing – he is a 39 year old neurosurgeon who specializes in studying the brain as well as improving memory.
If he recited digits of Pi at one digit per second, day and night, 24-hours a day without a break, it would take him about one year to get to the 30 millionth digit. Still, both these claims pale in comparison to the idea of a chess amateur reading three thousand books and then beating Rybka blindfold.
In another demonstration of his abilities, he “memorized” where pieces were on 80 boards in 41/2 mins and then had a grandmaster move a piece on four of them, which he had to identify .
Cepca vs Lapulapu A 10 board match was played last weekend in kawayan Grill in Mabolo and Cepca won ,just barely. The score was 10.5-9.5.
Here are the game results: board 1. Jojo Muralla- Ramil Resuera 2-0 2. Dante Arguelles-Aldwin Daculan 1-1 3. Mike Banebane- Alvin Rigodon 1.5-0.5 4. Manny Manzanares- Judy Tamala 2-0 5. Mandy Baria-Amado Olea 1-1 6. Gerry Ouano-Norman Olayvar 1.5-0.5 7. John Dunne-Dodong Ferrer 0-2 8. Fabio Abucejo-Wynard Abucejo 1-1 9. Mat Matuco- Jerome Moncopa 1-1 10. Ely Berciles-Caesar Fewrnandez 0-2.
This is the 8th straight year that both clubs have met and the tournament director and arbiter was Jun Olis who is a member of both clubs.
Candidates Matches The FIDE Candidates matches are being held in Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, from May 5-26 with eight strong GMs competing to qualify as Challenger for the 2012 World Champion match vs Viswanathan Anand.
The total prize fund of the candidates matches is 500,000 Euros.
The quarterfinals is over and the big surprise is the elimination of the top favorite,Levon Aronian (2808) of Armenia by Alexander Grischuk (2747) of Russia via tiebreaks 3.5-4.5.
Another big surprise was Gata Kamsky (2732) of the USA prevailing over veteran Veselin Topalov (2775) of Bulgaria 2.5-1.5.
Boris Gelfand (2733) of Israel also won over Shak Mamedyarov (2772) of Azerbaijan and Vladimir Kramnik (2785) of Russia over Teimour Radjabov (2744), also of Azerbaijan, which was decided by blitz games.
The semifinals pit Kamsky vs Gelfand and Kramnik against Grischuk which were being played starting yesterday.