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Chess Survival

Neppe VM: A detailed analysis of an important chess game: Revisiting  ‘Maróczy versus Korchnoi’. Journal Soc. Psychical Research 2007; 71(3):129-147


The following article is regarded as a landmark paper in research on survival after bodily death.
This is so as it uses a new methodology (computers).
It also examines both data and skill facets making it unique.

 

The author carried out a detailed computer simulation and his own analysis of the 1985–1993 chess game between two leading chess ‘grandmasters’ (the allegedly discarnate Géza Maróczy vs. Victor Korchnoi). Overall, it appears that ‘Maroczy’ played at Master or very disputably low rusty grandmaster level, and this was possibly equivalent to his standard of play while alive; the winner, Korchnoi, played at the level of an accomplished grandmaster. Because of major stylistic differences, the computer could not have simulated the game, nor could many living chess players play at this high a level. Early outside validation (news media, analysis by an expert player) militate against fraudulent collaboration. In this instance, superpsi appears to be a less parsimonious hypothesis than survival, as superpsi would require the active cogitation of a master chess player or players while alive, extended over a prolonged period of time, with forty-seven appropriate responses. Fraud would be extremely difficult to perpetrate and would require multiple collaboration. This case involves a possibly unique combination of the controlled application of a skill with provision of data. In this case, as reported by Eisenbeiss and Hassler (2006), chess at a very high level was combined with detailed biograph­ical information, the confirmation of the correctness of which was very difficult to locate. This may be one of the most remarkable cases to give evidence for survival of an intelligent component of human existence after bodily death.

 

Download Neppe Chess Survival article (this is a prefinal version of the published article).


 

 

 

 


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