A  Next month, a chess player named Timur Gareyev will take on nearly 50 opponents at once. But that is not the hard part. While his challengers will play the games as normal, Gareyev himself will be blindfolded. Even by world record standards, it sets a high bar for human performance. The 28-year-old already stands out in the rarefied world of blindfold chess. He has a fondness for bright clothes and unusual hairstyles, and he gets his kicks from the adventure sport of BASE jumping. He has already proved himself a strong chess player, too. In a 10-hour chess marathon in 2013, Gareyev played 33 games in his head simultaneously. He won 29 and lost none. The skill has become his brand: he calls himself the Blindfold King. 

A  下个月，一位名叫铁木尔-加列耶夫的棋手将同时迎战近 50 名对手。但这还不是最难的。他的挑战者将正常进行比赛，而加列耶夫本人将被蒙上眼睛。即使按照世界纪录的标准，这也为人类的表现设定了很高的标准。现年 28 岁的加列耶夫已经在蒙眼国际象棋的稀有世界中脱颖而出。他喜欢鲜艳的衣服和不寻常的发型，并从 BASE 跳伞这项冒险运动中获得乐趣。他已经证明了自己也是一名强大的棋手。2013 年，在一场长达 10 小时的国际象棋马拉松比赛中，加列耶夫在头脑中同时下了 33 盘棋。他赢了 29 盘，一盘未输。这项技能已成为他的品牌：他称自己为 “蒙眼国王”。

B  But Gareyev's prowess has drawn interest from beyond the chess-playing community. In the hope of understanding how he and others like him can perform such mental feats, researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) called him in for tests. They now have their first results. 'The ability to play a game of chess with your eyes closed is not a far reach for most accomplished players,' said Jesse Rissman, who runs a memory lab at UCLA. 'But the thing that's so remarkable about Timur and a few other individuals is the number of games they can keep active at once. To me it is simply astonishing.' 

B 但是，加列耶夫的能力引起了国际象棋界以外的兴趣。加州大学洛杉矶分校（UCLA）的研究人员希望了解他和其他像他一样的人是如何完成这样的智力壮举的。现在他们有了第一批结果。加州大学洛杉矶分校记忆实验室负责人杰西-里斯曼（Jesse Rissman）说："对于大多数有成就的棋手来说，闭着眼睛下一盘棋的能力并不遥远。但铁木尔和其他一些人的非凡之处在于，他们能同时保持活跃的棋局数量。在我看来，这简直令人吃惊。

C  Gareyev learned to play chess in his native Uzbekistan when he was six years old. Tutored by his grandfather, he entered his first tournament aged eight and soon became obsessed with competitions. At 16, he was crowned Asia's youngest ever chess grandmaster. He moved to the US soon after, and as a student helped his university win its first national chess championship. In 2013, Gareyev was ranked the third best chess player in the US. 

C加列耶夫六岁时在家乡乌兹别克斯坦学习下棋。在祖父的指导下，他在八岁时第一次参加比赛，并很快迷上了比赛。16 岁时，他成为亚洲有史以来最年轻的国际象棋大师。不久后，他移居美国，并在学生时代帮助所在大学赢得了首个全国国际象棋锦标赛。2013 年，加列耶夫被评为美国最佳棋手第三名。

D  To the uninitiated, blindfold chess seems to call for superhuman skill. But displays of the feat go back centuries. The first recorded game in Europe was played in 13th-century Florence. In 1947, the Argentinian grandmaster Miguel Najdorf played 45 simultaneous games in his mind, winning 39 in the 24-hour session. 

D 对不了解的人来说，蒙眼国际象棋似乎需要超人的技巧。但是，这种特技的展示可以追溯到几个世纪以前。欧洲有记载的第一盘棋是在 13 世纪的佛罗伦萨进行的。1947 年，阿根廷特级大师米格尔-纳伊多夫（Miguel Najdorf）在脑海中同时下了 45 盘棋，在 24 小时内赢了 39 盘。

E  Accomplished players can develop the skill of playing blind even without realising it. The nature of the game is to run through possible moves in the mind to see how they play out. From this, regular players develop a memory for the patterns the pieces make, the defences and attacks. 'You recreate it in your mind,' said Gareyev. 'A lot of players are capable of doing what I'm doing.' The real mental challenge comes from playing multiple games at once in the head. Not only must the positions of each piece on every board be memorised, they must be recalled faithfully when needed, updated with each player's moves, and then reliably stored again, so the brain can move on to the next board. First moves can be tough to remember because they are fairly uninteresting. But the ends of games are taxing too, as exhaustion sets in. When Gareyev is tired, his recall can get patchy. He sometimes makes moves based on only a fragmented memory of the pieces' positions. 

E  棋艺高超的棋手甚至会在不知不觉中掌握盲棋技巧。下棋的本质是在脑海中演算可能的棋步，看看它们是如何走出来的。由此，普通棋手会对棋子的布局、防御和攻击形成记忆。加列耶夫说："你会在脑海中重现棋局。很多球员都能做到我现在这样。真正的智力挑战来自于同时在头脑中进行多盘棋。不仅要记住每块棋盘上每颗棋子的位置，还必须在需要时忠实地回忆起这些位置，并根据每位棋手的棋步进行更新，然后再次可靠地存储起来，以便大脑能继续下一盘棋。第一步棋可能很难记住，因为它们相当无趣。但棋局结束时也会让人疲惫不堪。当加列耶夫疲惫时，他的记忆会变得模糊不清。有时，他只能凭借对棋子位置的零碎记忆下棋。

F  The scientists first had Gareyev perform some standard memory tests. These assessed his ability to hold numbers, pictures and words in mind. One classic test measures how many numbers a person can repeat, both forwards and backwards, soon after hearing them. Most people manage about seven. 'He was not exceptional on any of these standard tests,' said Rissman. 'We didn't find anything other than playing chess that he seems to be supremely gifted at.' But next came the brain scans. With Gareyev lying down in the machine, Rissman looked at how well connected the various regions of the chess player's brain were. Though the results are tentative and as yet unpublished, the scans found much greater than average communication between parts of Gareyev's brain that make up what is called the frontoparietal control network. Of 63 people scanned alongside the chess player, only one or two scored more highly on the measure. 'You use this network in almost any complex task. It helps you to allocate attention, keep rules in mind, and work out whether you should be responding or not,' said Rissman. 

F 科学家们首先让加列耶夫进行了一些标准的记忆测试。这些测试评估了他记忆数字、图片和文字的能力。其中一个经典测试是测量一个人在听到数字后能正反重复多少个数字。大多数人大约能复述七个数字。里斯曼说："他在这些标准测试中都没有出类拔萃的表现。'除了下棋，我们没有发现他似乎在其他方面有超常的天赋。'但接下来是脑部扫描。加列耶夫躺在机器里，里斯曼查看了棋手大脑各区域的连接情况。虽然结果还只是初步的，尚未公布，但扫描发现，加列耶夫大脑各部分之间的交流远远超过了平均水平，而这些部分构成了所谓的前顶叶控制网络。在与加列耶夫同时接受扫描的 63 人中，只有一两个人的得分更高。在几乎所有复杂的任务中，你都会用到这个网络。它能帮助你分配注意力，牢记规则，并确定是否应该做出反应，"里斯曼说。

G  It was not the only hint of something special in Gareyev's brain. The scans also suggest that Gareyev's visual network is more highly connected to other brain parts than usual. Initial results suggest that the areas of his brain that process visual images – such as chess boards – may have stronger links to other brain regions, and so be more powerful than normal. While the analyses are not finalised yet, they may hold the first clues to Gareyev's extraordinary ability. 

G 这并不是加列耶夫大脑中唯一的特殊暗示。扫描结果还表明，加列耶夫的视觉网络与其他大脑区域的联系比平常更加紧密。初步结果表明，他大脑中处理视觉图像（如棋盘）的区域可能与其他脑区有更强的联系，因此比正常人更强大。虽然分析结果尚未最终确定，但它们可能是加列耶夫非凡能力的第一批线索。

H  For the world record attempt, Gareyev hopes to play 47 blindfold games at once in about 16 hours. He will need to win 80% to claim the title. 'I don't worry too much about the winning percentage, that's never been an issue for me,' he said. 'The most important part of blindfold chess for me is that I have found the one thing that I can fully dedicate myself to. I miss having an obsession.' 

H为了打破世界纪录，加列耶夫希望在大约16小时内同时进行47次蒙眼游戏。他需要赢得 80% 的胜利才能夺冠。他说："我并不太在意胜率，这对我来说从来都不是问题。对我来说，蒙眼棋最重要的部分是我找到了一件可以全身心投入的事情。我很怀念这种痴迷的感觉。