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Magnus Carlsen shows off insane memory by recreating 26-piece position after 2-second glance at chess board

Magnus Carlsen not just recreated the position -- which had appeared during Bobby Fischer’s game against Donald Byrne in 1956 -- but also started to play out the next moves that were played in the game with almost full accuracy.

File image of Magnus Carlsen competing at the Tata Steel Rapid and Blitz tournament in Kolkata. (Express photo by Partha Paul)

Tales of Magnus Carlsen’s memory have always been part of chess folklore. There is a popular anecdote of how, by the time he was six, he had memorised the flags and names of over 200 countries of the world. But just in case anyone was wondering how good his memory is at present, the five-time world champion has answered. In a recent video, he has shown off his impressive memorisation skills by recreating a 26-piece position on the chessboard after looking at it for just two seconds.

In the video, posted online by the chess app Take Take Take, Magnus Carlsen is given memory tests by grandmaster David Howell, who allows Carlsen various time limits — 60 seconds, 30 secs, 15 secs, 10, 5 and then finally two seconds — to look at a position before asking him to recreate the position on the board in a minute. On each occasion, there are 26 pieces on the board.

The position that Carlsen was asked to recreate after looking at the board for just two seconds had appeared during Bobby Fischer’s game against Donald Byrne in 1956 when Fischer was just 13. Carlsen not just recreated the position but then also started to play out the next moves that were played in the game with almost full accuracy.

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What’s incredible is that Carlsen gets all the positions of the 26 pieces right in most time controls except two times: when he has 30 seconds (where he puts three out of 26 pieces on the wrong square) and 10 seconds, where he mis-places two pieces out of 26.

WATCH: Magnus Carlsen shows off his memory

When given the 30 seconds challenge, he got 23 pieces right but knew that he had messed up somewhere. After that, he gets the 15-second challenge right perfectly.

At one point, Howell asks Magnus Carlsen, “So having 15 seconds didn’t change anything?”

“Naah, it doesn’t matter,” says the world no 1.

What was remarkable was that during the video, when Carlsen has 10 seconds to look at a position, he immediately says, “This has got to be (a position that came up in) freestyle chess!”

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He does get the position of two pieces wrong after looking at the board for 10 seconds.

“This was difficult. By far the most difficult position so far,” Carlsen said.

But then, Magnus Carlsen redeems himself by getting the five-second and two-second challenges right.