Offramp wrote:
David Richerby wrote:
Rich Hutnik wrote:
Derron Brown, poor chess player, beats 9 chess masters.

No he doesn't. The ninth player is the president of a university
chess club. From his position, one imagines that he must be a very
strong player but, in fact, that doesn't follow -- it just means
that he's a student who's enthusiastic about chess.

I think it means that Brown is not a bad chess player; the prez
can't be a complete jobbernowl at chess, can he?

Brown's opponents were GMs John Emms, Julian Hodgson, Jonathan Levitt
and Chris Ward; IM Paul Littlewood; FMs Nathan Alfred, Graham Lee and
Desmond Tan; and RObert Chan, then president of King's College London
chess club. According to one of Chessbase's correspondents[1] he's a
2200-strength player; however, Chan has neither a FIDE nor BCF/ECF
rating (as far as I can see) so I'm not sure what's going on, here.

There's an interesting account of the event, from FM Graham Lee, at
[3]. Apparently, they'd all realised it was going to be an excercise
in move duplication before the games started. I've no idea how he
beat Chan, though.

I also find it quite amusing that if you Google for "derren brown
chess", you get all kinds of fantastical descriptions of his opponents
such as `nine world chess champions and chess grandmasters'. (Three
of his opponents are, at least, former British champions.)


Dave.

[1] http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1610
[2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0558131/combined
[3] http://basic1.easily.co.uk/01201D/01B006/halesontv.htm

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