Carl Ja­cobs

When is a ge­nius not a ge­nius? The sim­ple straight for­ward an­swer is, when he on­ly pos­es as one. The prob­lem with this sit­u­a­tion, how­ev­er, is the num­ber of gullible peo­ple who are so eas­i­ly lured in­to be­liev­ing the fan­tas­tic claims which the self-styled 'ge­nius' of­ten makes for him­self. As one fas­ci­nat­ing ex­am­ple, let us look at the case of Ukrain­ian pro­fes­sor Dr An­driy Slyusarchuk who is now cre­at­ing some­thing of an in­ter­na­tion­al sen­sa­tion as a re­sult of his boast to pos­sess "an im­mense­ly ad­vanced brain" and the mys­tery that sur­rounds his re­cent blind­fold vic­to­ry over su­per­com­put­er Ry­b­ka, win­ning one en­counter and draw­ing the oth­er in a two-game match. Re­port­ing on this 'phe­nom­e­non', Chess To­day, the In­ter­net-based chess news­pa­per, says "it is an im­mense­ly dif­fi­cult task to ex­plain to non-chess-play­ers in Ukraine that some­thing un­fair might have tak­en place." In any case, the pa­per ob­serves, there is ap­par­ent­ly no way of prov­ing that the "mys­ti­fi­ca­tion", which the 39-year-old chess am­a­teur claims he ex­er­cis­es, took place at all. "What can help are Slyusarchuk's nu­mer­ous ab­surd state­ments which show his com­plete ig­no­rance of chess - quite un­for­giv­able for a guy who has read, as is claimed, more than 2000 chess books with­in sev­er­al months!" the re­port ob­serves.

"When The Ab­surd Tri­umphs" is the head­line of the ar­ti­cle writ­ten for Chess To­day by GM Mikhail Gol­ubev who tells about wide cov­er­age by Ukran­ian TV plus the "sig­nif­i­cant spon­sor­ship" and gov­ern­ment sup­port the event had re­ceived. This pub­lic­i­ty, he notes, "ex­ceed­ed the lev­el of cov­er­age of the Ukrain­ian 2010 Chess Olympiad vic­to­ry," so much so that he sus­pects "the ma­jor­i­ty of my com­pa­tri­ots are sure now that a re­al ge­nius is liv­ing among us." Lured by the dra­ma of this episode, the in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia quick­ly jumped on the sto­ry and YouTube, for one, pro­duced a num­ber of films doc­u­ment­ing the 'brain­man's' stunts. Read­ers of Chess To­day re­act­ed vig­or­ous­ly and var­i­ous­ly, rang­ing from com­plaints-Since when are you pay­ing at­ten­tion to worth­less news items like this?"-to a num­ber of let­ters se­ri­ous­ly dis­cussing the mys­te­ri­ous pow­ers of the hu­man mind. As far as Dou­ble Rooks is con­cerned, Chess To­day has tak­en the most sen­si­ble, al­beit cyn­i­cal, ap­proach in jus­ti­fy­ing its se­ries of ar­ti­cles on the Ukrain­ian pro­fes­sor's out­landish claims. "We be­lieve," the pa­per states, "that Slyusarchuk is do­ing some tremen­dous­ly im­por­tant work and con­tribut­ing to our un­der­stand­ing of the hu­man mind.

"Re­al­ly. He is show­ing us vivid­ly just how gullible peo­ple are, how ab­surd a claim can be and still be ac­cept­ed by the gen­er­al pub­lic and the me­dia.

"An­driy is demon­strat­ing how far you can push things and still be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly."It is in­ter­est­ing to note that a short re­port about the match with links was post­ed on the Ukrain­ian Fed­er­a­tion Web­site but then re­moved abrupt­ly. Re­ports in the Chi­nese me­dia and oth­er sources say that the Ukrain­ian 'ge­nius' can al­so re­cite 20,000 books by heart and has mem­o­rised 30 mil­lion dig­its of Pi. Per­haps the most re­veal­ing-and amus­ing-of Slyusarchuk's at­tempts to demon­strate his prodi­gious men­tal pow­ers oc­curred re­cent­ly at the Kiev Lyceum be­fore an im­pres­sive group of sci­en­tists and stu­dents. His amaz­ing boast was that he could re­mem­ber the lo­ca­tion of pieces placed at ran­dom on 80 chess boards and, more­over, re­store the po­si­tion on four boards where changes would be made, af­ter view­ing them for on­ly four and a half min­utes. Among the par­tic­i­pants were the crew of Chan­nel 1+1 and less

than a hun­dred stu­dents who placed the pieces on their boards in ar­bi­trary po­si­tions. The pro­fes­sor, who was there with his friend, a video cam­era­man, walked along the boards, spend­ing about three sec­onds on each and then left the room. Ukraine GM Geor­gy Tim­o­shenko, who was in­vit­ed to the event by the pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion sta­tion, made changes on four of the boards. When he re­turned some time lat­er, how­ev­er, the self-styled "men­tal­ist" had se­ri­ous prob­lems in restor­ing the four moves and af­ter some 11 min­utes asked for a break.

It was not clear whether he left the room. On re­sum­ing, he was able to re­store two moves, then threw a tantrum over the third and fi­nal­ly got hope­less­ly stuck on the fourth. Ac­cord­ing to Tim­o­shenko, "the ge­nius ob­vi­ous­ly had dif­fi­cul­ty with iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the queen and king." The sit­u­a­tion be­came even more bizarre when the GM dis­cov­ered that the "men­tal­ly prodi­gious" pro­fes­sor was to­tal­ly ig­no­rant of long castling which was the fourth move he was sup­posed to re­store. Tim­o­shenko con­cludes: "In my com­men­tary for the film crew, I said that I could be 99.9 per­cent cer­tain that the en­tire show was a scam.

"Mr Slyusarchuk clear­ly had con­tact with his as­sis­tant in the room-re­mem­ber his friend­ly cam­era op­er­a­tor?–and had re­ceived the board num­bers and the moves I had made. "Be­cause of his poor knowl­edge of the rules of chess, how­ev­er, he could not al­ways show these moves on the board.

"A few days lat­er, I re­ceived a call from a girl at the TV com­pa­ny and was told that the film would not be shown as Slyusarchuk had threat­ened le­gal ac­tion." As a re­veal­ing foot­note, it seems im­por­tant to record that the "su­per-brained" pro­fes­sor has no in­ter­est in com­pet­i­tive chess or a pos­si­ble match with GM Ivanchuk but is try­ing in­stead to raise mon­ey for a "Brain In­sti­tute" which he plans to cre­ate and lead.

In this genre, Dou­ble Rooks is re­mind­ed of Kir­san Ilyumzhi­nov, pres­i­dent of the world chess body, who claims he was ab­duct­ed by aliens and tak­en to an­oth­er plan­et. No doubt he al­so has his own be­liev­ers.

Oh, the won­ders of hu­man gulli­bil­i­ty.