"Benjamin Jordan" wrote in message
...

My best theory is still that he will trick them into
actually playing each other.

LOL! Brilliant, I never thought of that. Let half of them play white, and
copy their moves in the games where he is playing white.

Errrr... what about the ninth opponent?

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

Chris Cowley wrote:
David Richerby wrote:
Chris Cowley wrote:
My guess would be that the 'masters' are actually each unwittingly
playing their games against a computer, and some clever signaling
method is being used to pass the details of the moves to Derren Brown.

That would be so easy to do that it would be completely pointless.

Have you seen any of the shows in the previous series?

I've not seen his shows but I've read things about him in the newspapers
and looked up the pages about his shows on the Channel 4 website.


It's far from being entirely about psychology and mind-control. The guy
does magic tricks. Illusions. And I'm sure that's exactly what this will
turn out to be in some form or another. It's no more pointless than any
other illusion.

It would be pointless for him to do it that way as it doesn't showcase his
skills as an illusionist or as anything else.


Anyway, we'll (apparently) know for sure tomorrow when the show is aired
and the trick is explained.

I *bet* I put the wrong time into the video.


Dave.

--
David Richerby Transparent Pointy-Haired Boss (TM):
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ it's like a middle manager that's
completely clueless but you can see
right through it!

On 22 Apr 2004 11:04:39 +0100 (BST), David Richerby
wrote:

Mike Murray wrote:
David Richerby wrote:
My two guesses are that he'll either use very close observation of the
players' body language and involuntary reactions to things he does to
work out what move each opponent is most worried about or he'll somehow
implant in them the idea of playing a certain losing variation.

Are you serious?

Absolutely. If I'm playing against you and you've seen that I have a
strong knight move, you'll react slightly when I reach for the knight.
Now, I probably wouldn't notice that but this is the sort of thing Derren
Brown uses. The problem is that he'd have to hover his hand over each of
the pieces in turn which would be really obvious, so I doubt he'll do
exactly that.

Interesting point, but it's not enough to know which piece to move --
you also must know where to move it. In most positions, the candidate
piece would have multiple legal options. While a GM would probably
discard most of these options almost instantly, to a casual player,
many would seem reasonable.

"John Rowland" wrote in message
...
"Benjamin Jordan" wrote in message
...

My best theory is still that he will trick them into
actually playing each other.

LOL! Brilliant, I never thought of that. Let half of them play white, and
copy their moves in the games where he is playing white.

Errrr... what about the ninth opponent?

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes



One draw would produce two steps toward the goal of "beating or drawing with
the majority of them." So, one loss against the ninth player would just be
a red herring. It would still be quite a trick to do it without being
obvious, and to negotiate the draws, but misdirection and "reading people"
is his forte.

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Benjamin Jordan said:

My best theory is still that he will trick them into actually
playing each other. If just one game draws, he has accomplished
his objective.

I've just seen the programme -- yes, your theory is correct. He played
nine games; winning four, losing three, drawing two. Two of the wins
were against the strong GMs Julian Hodgson and John Emms.

He explained afterwards that he had been duplicating moves, drawing
cluttered-looking diagrams to explain and talking in a hushed voice
as if this were a fantastic and new idea. I was shocked to see the
GMs talking about how incredible the feat had been; since move
duplication had been on your mind, I presume it was on theirs too.

The win against the ninth player was apparantly legitimate, but the
ninth player was the only untitled player in the group, and was an
(apparantly strong) university student.

- Chris.
--
Chris Ball http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~cjb/
Inference Group: http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/is/

Chris Ball wrote:
On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Benjamin Jordan said:

My best theory is still that he will trick them into actually
playing each other. If just one game draws, he has accomplished
his objective.

I've just seen the programme -- yes, your theory is correct. He played
nine games; winning four, losing three, drawing two. Two of the wins
were against the strong GMs Julian Hodgson and John Emms.

He explained afterwards that he had been duplicating moves, drawing
cluttered-looking diagrams to explain and talking in a hushed voice
as if this were a fantastic and new idea. I was shocked to see the
GMs talking about how incredible the feat had been; since move
duplication had been on your mind, I presume it was on theirs too.

Dull, dull, dull. I'm very surprised they didn't realise what was going
on, especially as he wasn't doing the usual simul thing of walking up to
a board, seeing the opponent's move and replying. Rather, he would walk
up to a board, see the move that had been made and not reply to it until
he'd been round to the opposite board and back. The physical arrangement
(the nine challengers sitting in a circle, facing outwards, with screens
in the middle to stop them seeing through) was also immediately suspect.

I'd discounted move replication as an `anyone could do that' strategy.


Dave.

--
David Richerby Slimy Hilarious Windows (TM): it's
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ like a graphical user interface but
it's a bundle of laughs and covered
in goo!

Chris Ball wrote in message ...
On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Benjamin Jordan said:

My best theory is still that he will trick them into actually
playing each other. If just one game draws, he has accomplished
his objective.

I've just seen the programme -- yes, your theory is correct. He played
nine games; winning four, losing three, drawing two. Two of the wins
were against the strong GMs Julian Hodgson and John Emms.

He explained afterwards that he had been duplicating moves, drawing
cluttered-looking diagrams to explain and talking in a hushed voice
as if this were a fantastic and new idea. I was shocked to see the
GMs talking about how incredible the feat had been; since move
duplication had been on your mind, I presume it was on theirs too.

The win against the ninth player was apparantly legitimate, but the
ninth player was the only untitled player in the group, and was an
(apparantly strong) university student.

- Chris.

I agree Chris , I presume the masters comments were edited to make it
look like they believed Brown was actually playing the games. I am
sure lots of them knew the trick and just went along with it to
collect their appearance fee or get some publicity for chess. Also the
9th player's strength was not clear but he could be very weak - his
title was the impressive sounding to the uninformed "president of
King's College London's chess club" but he could easily have been a
poor player.

It does rather reduce my opinion of Brown's other tricks and shows
that Stephen Fry's or the taxi driver's apparent comments can't be
taken at face value either in the other parts of the show.