Ange1o DePa1ma wrote:
"Kenneth Sloan" wrote
"Knowing the rules" is by no means the bottom rung on the ladder.
We needn't have a philosophic debate about what it means to "know the
rules." I drew a game I should have won several years ago (against a young
man who is probably of IM strength today) because I did had forgotten the
rule for time forfeits that requires the winner keep a complete scoresheet.
Your original statement, I believe, mentioned a player who knows how the
pieces moved, not someone who knows as much about chess legal trivia as an
international arbiter.
I'm not talking about trivia. I'm talking about en passant, castling,
and of course the classic "how the horsey moves", etc. When I say
"knows the rules", I mean someone who does not need
to think hard, or resort to a cheat sheet, to immediately see all of the
legal moves in a position.
He need not know the proper procedures for claiming a draw due to
repeated positions when the arbiter asks him to seal his next move.
If you haven't watched thousands of sub-1000 rated kids playing
tournament chess, you may not be able to appreciate hoe HIGHLY you
can be rated (that is, how strong a performance you can turn in) without
yet reaching the stage of "knowing the rules".
On the other hand, it's possible for a player to be absoutely BRILLIANT
most of the time - but have gaping holes in his basic competence.
So now that I know you are a director, and have seen 100s and 1000s of
sub-1000 players, do you have any data on, say, 900-rated adults vs.
900-rated kids? I'd bet there's no difference (except maybe the kids are
improving quickly and the adults are stuck).
Data? No.
Observations. Yes.
0900 rated kids are usually excellent tactical players who like to go
for quick kills. They are always dangerous, because sometimes their
suicide attacks can occasionally succeed.
0900 rated adults simply play 3rd best moves, all game long, with little
imagination and no flair. They can beat players who drop pieces faster
than they do, but no one else.
Given the choice in a "win this game, or die" situation, I'll take the
0900 rated adult as my opponent. All I need to do against him is
develop my pieces into the center and wait for him to give me pieces.
Against the kid, I actually have to stay awake and not fall for a cheapo.
Note that these are comments about players with reasonably STABLE
ratings of 0900. There's also the issue of how fast the player is
improving. Kids improve in fits and starts (very Piaget-like), and
sometimes play in pools that deflate their ratings. So, the 0900 rated
kid is even *more* dangerous. He might be underrated because we
measured him badly, or he might be underrated because he just learned
how to checkmate with only one rook. Yes, indeed, in my experience there
are lots of 1000 rated players who cannot mate with KRk. Over and over
again I've seen sub-1000 players who have memorized the Morphy Opera
House Game, love the Fried Liver Attack, and know the Albin
Counter-Gambit 15 moves deep - but cannot mate with KRk. To draw
against such a player, you simply have to ward off the cheapos. You can
sac a rook to get out of immediate trouble and then wait for them to
flounder in the endgame. You can't *win* that way, but you can draw.
Even the worst player in the Kindergarten section occasionally scores a
draw by sacrificing all of her pieces and then walking into stalemate.
Of course, there is also the small problem of *recognizing* stalemate
(knowing the rules, again). I've seen tens of games where both players
were in check for more than 10 consecutive moves. Unless you've been
there, you really don't know the rich texture of sub-1000 chess.
--
Kenneth Sloan
Computer and Information Sciences +1-205-932-2213
University of Alabama at Birmingham FAX +1-205-934-5473
Birmingham, AL 35294-1170 http://www.cis.uab.edu/sloan/