A Chess Novice Challenged Magnus Carlsen.

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The saga of Chess.com member Max Deutsch, who successfully bested 11 very tough challenges in his free time in one year. (Learning to play a blues solo, doing 40 pullups, solving a Rubik's cube in 17 seconds, etc.)

His final challenge- beating world champion Magnus Carlsen at chess.  Rather than study chess, he decided to try to create an algorithm that could be executed by a human at the chessboard.  (He did also come to chess.com to play a few games and do a bunch of tactics training problems in the last month.)

Find out in the WSJ article.

Here’s the list of challenges:
November: Memorize the order of a deck of cards in less than 2 minutes
December: Draw a realistic self-portrait
January: Solve a Rubik’s Cube in under 20 seconds
February: Land a standing backflip
March: Play a 5-minute improvisational blues guitar solo
April: Hold a 30-minute conversation in Hebrew on the future of tech
May: Build a self-driving car
June: Develop perfect pitch — identify 20 random musical notes in a row
July: Finish a Saturday NYT crossword puzzle in one sitting
August: Complete one continuous set of 40 pull-ups
September: Continuously freestyle rap for 3 minutes
October: Defeat world-champion Magnus Carlsen at a game of chess

He did the first 11 successfully.

from: Monthtomaster.com

Was he able to accomplish any of the ones you mentioned?

Yes

There are "machine learning experts" who can barely tie their own shoes...

I already have perfect pitch, and I have finished many NYT crossword puzzles in one sitting, and when I was a kid I could do 40 pullups, and I'm sure that I could blather on for three minutes about any subject assigned to me (retired litigator, I've done it for much longer than that in court and I was paid handsomely for it).  Beating Magnus Carlsen is a whole 'nother thing.  Nope.   

Memorizing openings... impressive, but not a lot to show for a month's work. I am surprised he didn't do worse, though. 

Funny. Of course he has still a lot to learn even to make once a draw against Magnus in 1,000 games.

It was an interesting concept for an interesting guy.

The 40-pull ups in a month bit drew my attention (would be really hard if done correctly), but then I saw that he didn't do even 1 real pull up and set rules so that he didn't have to. 

The article actually said he was winning after 8 moves and then started to go astray, dropping a piece on move 14.

I am surprised that no one on the Journal editorial staff bothered to question the writer's contention that Deutsch was winning after 8 moves. I thought that they still had editors.  

I have to give the guy credit for playing 13 more or less reasonable moves before a blunder and for mastering so many other difficult skills over a year. 

I take my hat off, but on this one he (or anyone) was simply biting much more than he could chew.

They agreed to have a rematch AFAIK and if Deutsch wins we can say farewell to cheat free serious chess ...
I don't even get why did Carlsen accept all of this this.

I literally laughed out loud when they said Max was winning at move 9. Since when was +0.1 eval "winning"? Sheesh, don't newspapers do any research these days? I could play 1. e4 and according to the WSJ I'd be "winning"--just by being White and having a positive evaluation.

Then again, the media is not exactly known for their accuracy in reporting on chess-related events.

Colin, it is impossible IMO. Take for example the second challenge. The learned how to draw, not how to put Leonardo and Michelangelo to shame.

It's kinda funny how he puts "Continuously freestyle rap for 3 minutes" on par with "Defeat world-champion Magnus Carlsen at a game of chess". That's like a DIYer saying "This year, I'm going to build a go-kart, a crossbow, and a spaceship that will go to Mars."

Yep.

"His peak rating is higher than that of anyone else who has ever played chess, but his career winning percentage in competition is only 62.5%."

Only 62.5%?

Come on... is that one really that hard?