Le Coin des Immortels (chess videos): Error as the mother of art | The corner of the immortals

Gawain Jones (England, 1987) appeared on the cover of Guardian at 9 years old because he was the youngest recipient of an international master’s degree in history. It’s already common news today: the influence of training with very powerful computers has produced a list of 8-year-olds who overthrow great teachers.

But in 1997, only multinationals like IBM could have analysis modules like Deep Blue (Gari Kasparov’s executioner the same year) which calculate millions of taps per second and work today on a mobile phone. Jones was a child prodigy trained in human chess, not silicon. This is why he dared, in 2016, to make a high-risk, long-term queen sacrifice, which would not work against a machine, but against a flesh-and-blood rival. The courage with which Jones plays in this video reminds us that in chess, beauty is the daughter of error. For this reason, human-to-human games will thrill fans forever and ever.