How many rating points is a photographic memory worth?

If you are referring to the one I quoted from, the problem rests with the website, not the author. In its original printed published form, the paragraph breaks are present.

 You mean the fact that your research is a single incident and doesn't use the scientific model or that the fact that someone doesn't have social skills doesn't have anything to do with improving chess?

 Fiar enough...But, it did really make it unreadable for me unfortunately(it looked like it may be interesting)

It is interesting, and it is a pain to read.

I always take the "old man" bye in weekend chess tournaments so I can rest at home Saturday evening instead of playing late into the night, and then playing poorly on Sunday due to lack of sleep.

The drug Modafinil, which is much of the focus of the article, if safe and legal, could offer an alternative.

You are correct that a single example has no significance in a scientific sense.

My point was to highlight the terminology itself, and a single well-known case that illustrates differences between photographic memory, on the one hand, and the sort of recall of opening theory that interests Ozzie, on the other hand.

If we could avoid the misleading terminology, the OP's question could lead to a productive discussion.

As a NM, Ozzie has demonstrated his chess skill to a reasonable level. (He has also clobbered me when we have played blitz on this site.) Could he improve to FM, IM, or even GM if he possessed an extraordinary long-term memory, and had an effecient method of storing opening data in that memory?

Or we could agree to understand what Ozzie meant and go ahead and have that productive discussion anyway without getting hung up on semantics.

"If you could remember databases perfectly, your OTB skill would match your ability in correspondence chess."

Actually that seems pretty logical to me. I'd never thought about it that way.

Assuming you make use of opening databases when playing correspondence chess, that does make sense assuming volume of information wasn't an issue.

The real kicker would come from memorizing endgame tablebases too, though, so it's not a perfect comparison.

Endgame tablebases are forbidden in correspondence chess where engines are forbibben, such as this site.

I think that may have been his point.  Memorizing endgame tablebases would help OTB in a way that corr. chess couldn't duplicate.

 No, Marilu Henner is correct, the actress from " Taxi". My memory was faulty.

I would guess 300-400 points, you can know thousands of lines of play, but if a novely is played, even if it is a dubious one, you would lose unless you are already a great chess player in terms of tactics and strategy. 

Paul Morphy was renowned in his day for his memory which wasn't chess-specific.  He was also highly creative and incisive. I'm not sure what a "photographic memory" entails, but I imagine some people with highly developed memories can use them advantageously, some can't.  I think generalizing can be dangerous.

Such a feat also would require vastly more mental resources.

My oldest computer easily stores the largest commercially available databases of games (5.1 million), as well as the complete Encyclopedia of Chess Openings, and PDF files of the Encyclopedia of Chess Endings. This old computer cannot accomodate the 5-piece tablebases, but has the 3 and 4-piece. My newer computers have all these plus the 5-piece tablebases.

The 6-piece tablebases are available, but I do not yet have a computer with the necessary 1.5 TB hard drive needed to store both these and the essential software.

That's certainly beyond me...

This website says the memory capacity of the brain is 2.5 petabytes.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-the-memory-capacity

1 petabyte, as I understand it is 1024 therabytes.

Keep in mind that 1 bit maybe is not the same for a computer than for a human.

Terrific stuff! I'm gonna guess that eight-piece tablebases, when they eventually become available in a decade or so, will require require greater storage capacity than exists in the human brain.

As I say, keep in mind that a bit is not the same for a computer than for a human.

A bit for a computer is either 1 or 0. This is the smalest posible data for a computer, and it translate everything to chains of bits. The main reason why the computers use binary system is becouse the computer is electronic. So to say to prevent mistakes on reading, (midle terms) or to prevent easy data distortion (on time manectic disk can actually change or even out magnectic sectors. As I was saying to prevent this problems and many more they decided to make the bit a clear 1 or 0.

Still we can speculate with the posibility of better systems, for instance exagecimal system will store in 1 bit the same amoount of information binary system will do using 8 bits, speculating even more whildly a system base in 100 millions will store in 1 bit the same amount of information a base 2 will store in 1 therabyte, if we get to build a magnetic sensor such acurate to read it. This is of course a grading of several magnectic strenghs. Or perhaps other means of storage that are sensible to diferent gradings will suport a more eficient system than the binary. For example NASA is experimenting with atomic means to storage information, In the face of a dimond a micro arm ensambles athoms of hidrogen and oxigen (as I recall) representing 1s and 0s. The quimical table gives us some arround 200 elements to play with, there is not need to be stuck in the poor eficient binary system that was chossed over 40 years ago for people that didn't even dream on the toys we have today.

About the human brain. We don't really know, or understand how it formats and storage information, we know it is quimical base, besides this there is litle we really know. So this is open land for philosophy. However we have hints that indicates us that it is more eficient than the binary system.

I like to think that the basic data unit a huuman handled is the idea. there are ideas more complex than others, but still ideas, and there are ideas that combine different ideas (this is actually eficient). An example of this is, when you read the word "pencil" there is something that flash in your mind relate to this word, that single thing that flashed is an idea. Some of this ideas come with visual recall, some recalls involve more than 1 sence. We can brake down this idea into detail ideas, like "the point:", "the erraser", "the wood", this is linked ideas to the pencil idea. We can also use this idea to compose more complex ideas. for instance wens ask to recall the desk as detaily as posible, there may surface the idea of the pencil. So the person interacs with the desk on dayly basis, may have a place where the pencil must be (I call this the shadow), and some 80% of the days there is a pencil on the desk, when the person is ask to describe the desk will mention the pencil even thoug there was none in the last 3 days. The person will be describing the idea of the desk (object) no the actuall desk. At least that is how my own memory works.

Also we need to consider that the human have diferent kinds of memories, The so call "photographic memory" is just the storage of the straig picture whit the lest posible formating of the mind. This is no just a way of memory but a way of observation. For instance visual artist, like painters, are train to paint what they see, no what they interprete of what they see, big difference. This is, as I understand, the mechanims behind photographic memory, to actually store what is seen and to be able to recall it with proficient level of acuracy, my only gues of why my mind storage ideas and not actual pictures, is becouse eficiency. I would like, however, to jump from one to another. and in some level people does, they may refer to this as levels of conciusness or to levels of focusing. A trained painter can see something hapening and recall it on the canvas hours later, maybe can sketsh the composition rigth away on paper and use it to help him complete the picture later on.

So comparing 2.5 computer petabytes does not necesary equals 2.5 human petabytes. For maybe the human can use some few houndred bytes on human formating data the same equivalent amount of information a computer in binary needs 2.5 petabytes. This becouse a computer bit is just 1 or 0 while a human bit can be way more than that.