By KEN KORCZAK
The most unusual chess match ever played between a deceased Grandmaster and the living №2-ranked player in the world provides solid evidence that people survive death to live on in the Afterlife
Some scholars suggest that rigorous proof of the survival of consciousness after physical death is provided by a chess match played at the game’s highest levels. Two world-ranked Chess Grandmasters played the single game over seven years and eight months — the longest-ever championship-level chess match.
One player was alive. His opponent was dead.
The Living Player: Victor Korchnoi
A Russian born in the Soviet Union in 1931, he later defected and became a citizen of Switzerland. One of the greatest players of all time, Korchnoi never won a World Championship, although he did win the Senior World Chess Championship. He was rated the №2 player in the world in the 1980s. Korchnoi died in 2016.
The Deceased Player: Géza Maróczy
Born in Hungary in 1870, he is also one of history’s greatest chess players. He was rated 3rd in the world in 1900. He was among the first to be named a Chess Grandmaster when that distinction was created by the World Chess Federation in 1950. Maróczy died in 1951.
The famous chess match between Korchnoi and Maróczy began in 1985 — about 34 years after the death of Maróczy.
HOW IT CAME ABOUT
The unusual setup was the brainchild of Swiss economist Wolfgang Eisenbeiss, Ph.D.
An amateur chess enthusiast, Eisenbeiss was a friend of the well-known trance medium Robert Rollans who lived in Germany. One of Rollans’s esoteric skills was automatic writing. His abilities were extraordinary. He could tap into the mind, spirit, consciousness (or whatever) of deceased people and engage them in detailed conversations with evidentially verifiable information.
Rollans was a man of stellar reputation. A well-to-do musician, he never charged a penny for any mediumship sessions, including channeling Maróczy for the game with Korchnoi.
SELECTING THE MATCH
In1985, Eisenbeiss got things started by asking Victor Korchnoi, then in his mid-50s, what chess master from history he would like to play if he had the chance. Korchnoi suggested the Cuban world champion José Raúl Capablanca who died in 1942. Rollins attempted to contact Capablanca but had no luck.
Next, Korchnoi suggested the great Estonian Grandmaster, Paul Keres. He died in 1975. Again, Rollans’s mediumship radar failed to locate Keres in the Afterlife.
Finally, Korchnoi suggested Géza Maróczy. Success! Rollans connected with Maróczy and soon developed a robust dialogue with the deceased chess genius. Indeed, “the spirit” of Maróczy told Rollans he agreed to the first-ever Living-Against-Dead chess smackdown was:
“… because I also want to do something to aid mankind living on earth to become convinced that death does not end everything, but instead, the mind is separated from the physical body and comes up to us into a new world, where individual life continues to manifest itself in a new unknown dimension …”
This was communicated to Rollans via automatic writing.
PLAY BEGINS
From his perch in the Afterlife, Géza Maróczy would play white and so had the first move. His opening salvo was “e4” sent into the mind of Robert Rollans; e4 means advancing the king’s pawn two squares.
Through an intermediate party, probably Eisenbeiss, the opening was sent to Korchnoi. He responded with “e6” — a French defense that prepares to advance the d5 pawn, challenging Maróczy’s white pawn on e4 …
… and the transdimensional chess match was off and running!
Note that Rollans and Korchnoi never met personally during the duration of the nearly eight-year match. The game played out over 47 moves and ended with the spirit of Maróczy admitting defeat in 1992. Victor Korchnoi had become the first player in history to vanquish a deceased Grandmaster.
KORCHNOI DOUBTED AT FIRST
As the opening moves played out, Korchnoi became dubious that he was playing a great Chess Grandmaster, dead or alive. That was because Maróczy’s game was weak. However, as the match proceeded Maróczy recovered and began to significantly challenge the skills of Korchnoi.
If Maróczy’s game seemed off at first, expert chess observers point out that he was immersed in the strategies of his early 20th-century era — another indication that this truly was the spirit of Maróczy. In the decades since 1900 when Maróczy was world-ranked, new chess strategies had been developed. The game evolved to a higher level, a distinct advantage for Korchnoi.
MORE EVIDENCE IT WAS TRULY MARCOZY
To bolster the case that Rollans was authentically communicating with the deceased Maróczy, Eisenbeiss prepared an extensive list of questions for Rollans to ask the Hungarian Grandmaster. about his life and times. These included carefully selected questions to which only the real Maróczy could have known the answers, such as personal questions and facets of his life outside the world of chess.
To make a long story short, a statistical analysis of correct answers vs. errors in the responses Rollans obtained via automatic writing was better than 97%. (79 correct answers out of 81). Indeed, many of the answers were so difficult to authenticate, that Eisenbeiss hired a professional historian to track down each point of fact. The historian concluded that the only plausible scenario was that Rollans was genuinely in contact with the spirit of Maróczy.
COULD IT HAVE BEEN THE MEDIUM PLAYING?
Skeptics naturally pointed out an obvious counter-explanation to thwart a life-after-death contact scenario. They suggested that Korchnoi was not playing a dead Grandmaster at all — but rather Robert Rollans, the medium himself! However, this is absurd in the extreme for several reasons.
Remember, Korchnoi was the 2nd ranked player in the world. Not just any guy off the street could beat him. Indeed, Korchnoi is known to have defeated more Chess Grandmasters and champions than any other player. In individual matches, he beat every great Chess Master in the world at one time or another. Korchnoi knocked off the mega-brilliant likes of Bobby Fischer, Boris Spassky, Anatoly Karpov and Gary Kasparov.
Rollans, on the other hand, had never learned to play chess! Indeed, to prepare Rollans for the match, Wolfgang Eisenbeiss taught him the fundamentals of the game and then gave him an elementary overview of a few advanced strategies. This was so he could better communicate with the deceased Hungarian Grandmaster.
Furthermore, Dr. Vernon Neppe, a South African medical doctor who also holds a Ph.D. in neurophysiology –and who is his country’s former chess champion — analyzed all 48 moves of the Korchnoi-Maróczy match. He said that “the level of play could not have been achieved by the medium (Rollans)” even if he had undergone extensive training and had years of practice.
Skeptics attacked again, suggesting that all Rollans had to do was consult with other world-class chess players and ask them what moves to make against Korchnoi. Other skeptics suggested that Rollans got help from a computer chess program. Both of these skeptics’ suggestions are thin gruel, however.
First, computers in 1985 were not good enough to beat a man of Korchnoi’s skill. The first computer to beat a grandmaster came in 1996 when IBM’s Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov in a 6-game match. Remember, the Korchnoi-Maróczy match ended in 1992.
Second, marshaling a team of top players would not only be logistically difficult but would also require a “conspiracy of silence” among the “elite-of-the-elite players” for their role in the ruse. It’s unlikely in the extreme that the top masters of the day would have risked their reputations and a shot at the world championship merely to play — what? — an elaborate gag on the esteemed Victor Korchnoi?
Furthermore, a Grandmaster’s style of play is like a person’s signature. The moves brought out by the deceased Maróczy were indicative of his style of play. For another person to imitate this quality would be incredibly difficult if not impossible.
Another point: The aforementioned South African champion Dr. Vernon Neppe was a player of great skill. He once played 80 opponents simultaneously and defeated them all — but he admits that even his considerable talent for chess would not have been adequate to defeat either Korchnoi or Maróczy.
It is interesting to note that trance medium Robert Rollans died of natural causes about three weeks after the chess match ended in 1992. Again, he never received compensation of any kind for channeling and relaying the moves of Maróczy in his match with Korchnoi, nor was Rollans seeking to bolster his image as a medium to gain fame or more clients — none of whom he ever accepted money from for his services anyway.
The progenitor of the match, Dr. Wolfgang Eisenbeiss, did not receive pay or gain any other material benefit for arranging the game.
SKEPTICS ROUTINELY GET AWAY WITH MURDER
It’s not my intention to comb through every charge and countercharge between skeptics and afterlife proponents concerning the most unusual chess match ever played.
I will add, however, that in reading hundreds of comments on debunking sites, I found a fantastic level of pettiness and a gullible willingness on behalf of the skeptics to impose circular-logic explanations to debunk the cosmic, after-life chess match.
For example, most skeptics start with the premise that: “People don’t survive death because it is impossible.” The great psychologist Abraham Maslow said: “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Thus, even when evidence is supplied to support survival of death, it is rejected by skeptics as a priori impossible.
Skeptics invariably and frequently trot out an adage made famous by astronomer Carl Sagan: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” But for the skeptics, this phrase is actually code for: “When extraordinary evidence is delivered, just move the goalposts and demand even more rigorous evidence.” Then rinse and repeat.
One of the more irritating ploys of the skeptics I noticed is to frequently and deceptively identify Dr. Vernon Neppe only as “a parapsychologist.” Dr. Neppe is a world-renowned expert on brain function and among the most noted and peer-reviewed authors in scientific journals on neurophysiology and psychopharmacology. He’s also a gifted mathematician and his nation’s former chess champion. He is among the most accomplished and respected mainstream medical research scientists in the world.
One of the most caustic skeptical critics of Dr. Neppe is Mick West. West is a video game developer.
About 20 years ago, I read Dr, Neppe’s book, Reality Begins with Consciousness: A Paradigm That Works. It was co-authored with physicist Edward R. Close, Ph.D. It remains among the most extraordinary books I have read.
To view an excellent interview with Dr. Neppe, I suggest viewing his interview with Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove in his New Thinking Allowed program which you can find here.
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NOTE: For more stories about the afterlife and paranormal events, please see: KEN-ON-MEDIUM