I read an article that stated he was winning in the opening, which is laughable, and that at one point Magnus looked nervous. I doubt Magnus actually entertained the idea that the guy created software as strong as he claimed.

I'm leaning towards believing his whole speed learner persona is nothing but self promotion fakery, and his previous one-month challenges involved either rigging or faking the demonstrations, or doing things he was already able to do to begin with. 

All his talk about a magical software algorithm that's both powerful enough to beat Magnus and yet simple enough that he can somehow memorise and replicate it OTB, is too facile a notion to convince anyone with the degree of intelligence or erudition he's claiming, so the only conclusion I can draw is that it's PR nonsense designed to bamboozle the majority who know nothing about chess or computing.

Wondering if this wasn't just a con that went bad.  He probably would have claimed to have beaten the Play Magnus app -- his original intention -- but the WSJ crossed him up by arranging the real thing.  #1 rule of the con:  never break character.  He must have known that he had no chance.  And now, to keep up appearances, he claims he didn't put in enough time.

Give me a break.
 
 

Haha that link from kylemeister was entertaining: "I committed 34 hours to the pursuit of defeating Magnus. It turns out that 34 hours isn’t quite enough, but, knowing what I know now, I don’t think it’s too far off." Sure thing buddy...

I suspect he should have made the challenge 'defeat a chess master' rather than the world champion. I can imagine after a month of training he might score a victory in a blitz match against a weak master of some sort, especially if you include national master titles. Beating Magnus is completely out of line with his other challenges, like 'do a back-flip', 'freestyle rap for 3 minutes' and 'draw a self portrait'...

Here is someone whose wish is to make a circus show out of his own brains. Does he love that? Magnus loves chess.

He's no Michael de la Maza.

A better test would be to take a supersmart novice, subject them to a month of non-stop chess, enter them in some local tournaments, and see what kind of a rating they could achieve. 

Take Mr. Deutsch, for example.  Instead of setting himself the challenge of beating the world champion in chess, what if he had posed himself the challenge of trying to achieve a certain FIDE rating in a month.   What would be realistic?  1600, 1700, 1800? 

Mr. Deutsch wasn't starting from a standing stop.  I think he had at least played before.  But, even so, I wouldn't think that, with just a month of study, he could hit, say, 2000.