BCN wishes Happy Birthday to Demis Hassabis CBE FRS FREng FRSA (27-vii-1976)

From https://achievement.org/achiever/demis-hassabis-ph-d/ :

Demis Hassabis, the eldest of three, was born in London on July 27, 1976, to a Greek Cypriot father and a Chinese Singaporean mother.

(Originally his surname was spelt Hassapis and his brother George retained this spelling.)

“Demis Hassabis was born in London, England. He is of both Greek and Chinese ancestry; his father came from Cyprus, his mother from Singapore. Demis and his family moved frequently as his father pursued a variety of business and creative ventures.

Demis was four years old when he saw his father and an uncle playing chess and asked them to teach him the game. He took to it quickly and was soon beating both of them. He showed a precocious aptitude for all games employing logic and strategy. ”

When 13 (in 1989) Demis achieved a FIDE rating of 2300 which, at the time, was the second highest rating for his age.  First highest was Judit Polgar.

Demis was SCCU Under-18 champion in 1989 and was presented with the “old Trophy” according to the SCCU report.

Demis was a Candidate Master and brother of George Hassapis.

Demis started off with Hampstead Junior Chess Club.

He then played for Barnet Knights, Queens College College Union and Finchley chess clubs.

According to Tryfon Gavriel :

Demis wrote a hit computer game called “The theme park”, that was at the top of the charts for six months and sold than more 3.5 million copies. He also did quite well in the 1997 Mind Sports Olympiad.

Hassabis returned to academia to obtain his PhD in cognitive neuroscience from University College London (UCL) in 2009 supervised by Eleanor Maguire. He sought to find inspiration in the human brain for new AI algorithms.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPEU3NXxI7s[/embedyt]

Danny Gormally wrote (in March 2014) this :

“Demis Hassapis is a former chess prodigy who recently sold his company to Google for £400 million. Demonstrating that if you have the brainpower to be good at chess, you are far better off putting that intelligence to use in some other activity where you might actually get rewarded. Then in fairness, even most strong chess players aren’t as bright as Demis.”

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcLU0DhDhi0[/embedyt]

Demis was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2018

In May 2021 Demis was cited by Dominic Cummings in his evidence to the  Commons Heath, and Science and Technology committees as having played an important contribution  to managing and understanding the PHE and NHS data during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK.

Here are his listed games

[pgn]
[Event “BCF-chT2 9900 (4NCL)”]
[Site “Birmingham”]
[Date “2000.01.22”]
[Round “5.2”]
[White “Anderton, Matthew”]
[Black “Hassabis, Demis”]
[Result “0-1”]
[ECO “B22”]
[WhiteElo “2216”]
[BlackElo “2235”]
[Annotator “British Chess News”]
[PlyCount “43”]
[EventDate “1999.10.??”]
[EventType “team”]
[EventRounds “11”]
[EventCountry “ENG”]
[SourceTitle “EXT 2001”]
[Source “ChessBase”]
[SourceDate “2000.11.22”]
[SourceVersion “1”]
[SourceVersionDate “2000.11.22”]
[SourceQuality “1”]
[WhiteTeam “Guildford II”]
[BlackTeam “Invicta Kts II”]
[WhiteTeamCountry “ENG”]
[BlackTeamCountry “ENG”]

{[%evp 0,43,27,27,46,0,15,-20,-15,-15,-6,-8,10,10,40,32,25,44,35,23,66,22,15,
-16,20,-33,-1,25,35,21,51,2,8,-18,-4,-99,-50,-87,-121,-145,-125,-179,-216,-220,
-197,-244]} 1. e4 c5 2. c3 d5 3. exd5 Qxd5 4. d4 Nc6 5. Nf3 Bg4 6. Be2 cxd4 7.
cxd4 e6 8. Nc3 Qa5 9. h3 Bh5 10. d5 exd5 11. Nd4 Bg6 ({Relevant:} 11… Bxe2
12. Qxe2+ Be7 13. Nxc6 bxc6 14. O-O Kf8 15. Re1 Bf6 16. Bd2 Qd8 17. Rac1 Ne7
18. Na4 Rb8 19. a3 h5 20. Qf3 h4 21. Nc5 Kg8 22. b4 Rc8 23. Rc2 Ng6 24. Nd3 Qd7
25. Rec1 Kh7 26. b5 Ne7 27. Qh5+ Kg8 28. Qg4 Qxg4 29. hxg4 Kh7 30. bxc6 Rhd8
31. Kf1 g5 32. a4 d4 33. c7 Rd7 34. Ba5 Nd5 35. Rc6 Kg7 36. Nc5 Re7 37. Nb7 Be5
38. Nd6 Bxd6 39. Rxd6 Nb6 40. Rdc6 f6 41. Bb4 {Ponomariov,R (2585)-Babula,V
(2575) Elista 1998 1-0}) 12. Bb5 {[#]} Nge7 $146 (12… Bb4) ({Predecessor:}
12… Rc8 13. O-O Nf6 14. Re1+ Be7 15. Bg5 Kd8 16. Nb3 Qc7 17. Nxd5 Nxd5 18.
Qxd5+ Qd7 19. Qxd7+ Kxd7 20. Rxe7+ {1-0 (20) Kosintseva,N-Skrochocka,J Menorca
1996}) 13. O-O O-O-O 14. Nce2 (14. Qg4+) 14… Nxd4 15. Nxd4 {[#]} Nf5 $1 16.
Bf4 $6 Bd6 17. Nxf5 $2 Bxf4 18. Qg4 Bc7 19. Nd4+ Kb8 20. Rac1 a6 21. Be2 Rhe8
22. Rfd1 $19 0-1
[/pgn]