"Taylor Kingston" wrote in message
ups.com...

On Nov 9, 9:01 pm, "Chess One" wrote:
"Taylor Kingston" wrote in
glegroups.com...

On Nov 9, 4:38 pm, "Chess One" wrote:

"Taylor Kingston" wrote
Sounds odd coming from him. While Alekhine did have strong natural
talent, it was probably not nearly as great as Capablanca's or
Reshevsky's, probably also below that of Lasker, maybe even below that
of Marshall, Janowski, Keres, Fine and a few other of his
contemporaries.

"Probably not nearly as great" but without saying why?

Since natural talent by definition is inborn, it goes without saying
that the "why" lies mainly in the genes.

**What's this now? The other guys had a Chess gene? )

A typically nonsensical Innes comment.

**looks like a direct retort to this new idea you have of chess genes, why
don't you tell us more about your interesting idea?

If you mean which specific
genes were involved, that I cannot say.

**Oh, I get it, this is a joke thread.

Posts by Innes are almost by definition objects of laughter.

**I can't account for what Taylor Kingston finds amusing, since he has
become vague, and replaces any explanation by abuse.

This is to turn usual
appreciations on their head.

No, it is merely to dispense with stating the obvious. But of course
that often leaves our Phil confused.

**? Alekhine is regarded by most people as the most substantial player on
the planet since he left Russian in 1921 until the advent of the second
world war in 1939 - minus a few years off for booze. I am only confused by
Kingston's two opinions, that he was worse than his list above,

The question was the relative level of *_natural talent_*, not the
level of overall success as a player. Two related but distinctly
different things.

**Yes - the question may be of 'natural talent', but I am still struggling
to understand what you mean by that, especially since you insist this is
'distinctly different' than overall success.

**So the question was why you should say that Alekhine had less of this
unidentified and possibly gene-related talent, than those you cited, being
Capablanca's, Reshevsky's, Lasker, Marshall, Janowski, Keres, Fine and 'a
few others.'

**Whether my incredulity is a typical or even atypical nonsense statement
seems to rely very much on two things: (1) what you can have meant by
*_natural talent_* which is so far unexplained, and (2) if you are sourcing
some aspect of geneology you have encountered to which I am unaware in
positing a chess gene.


and why he
has to do his usual ad hominem stuff. But I forgot - the strong the player
the greater the (

The more Innes posts, the more nonsense.

** As above let's see what is nonsense or not by looking at the Idea you
present.

No one else successfully took on the new-age of hyper-modern chess and
evolved their play to anything like the degree that Alekhine did ...
Lasker was a creature of the late C19th, and while being the
epitome of the post-Morphy late Classical tradition, was not the sort of
person to be able to span such a huge development in chess.

Nonsense. Lasker adapted quite well to the hypermodern era. He had a
+3 -1 =4 lifetime score vs. Alekhine, a combined +3 -1 =2 vs.
Nimzovitch and Réti, +4 -1 =2 vs. Bogolyubov, +3 -0 =3 vs. Tartakower,
and 3-0 vs. Euwe, i.e. virtually all the top "hypermodern" players. His
takedown of Réti at New York 1924 is legendary.

I think in 1924 that the force was not yet developed by the hypermoderns,
and citing 25 selected games total including 11 draws is not exactly
compelling.

Jeez, Phil, you can't even count. I cited 30 games, not 25, and at
least a third of them date from after 1924, which you would know if you
actually relied on real data about Lasker's career instead of yoyur
imagination.
And since those 30 games represent the entirety of Lasker's serious
play against the leading hypermoderns, it's hard to see what other
games would be more relevant or more "compelling."
You also demonstrate ignorance of the chronology of hypermodernism,
which was in full stride by 1924.

**Well, we can put Lasker's 2.5 games a year aside for the moment, since
although he did well - and I never disputed it! some players engaged in as
many serious games in a month as Lasker played in a dozen years. But this is
an aside to any point of who tackled the hypermodern game and to what extent
he was already in full stride - the point is the relative one of Alekhine's
performance.

Alekhine and Euwe did not finish ahead of Lasker in a tournament
until 1934, when Lasker was 65. Capablanca didn't manage it until 1936.
Nimzovitch and Réti never did. As late as Moscow 1935 Lasker could
finish ahead of Capablanca and almost all the best of Soviet chessdom,
just a half-point behind Botvinnik and Flohr, without losing a single
game.

**Very good record! And I am not writing to say he was not a great
player! -
But your comment about Alekhine hardly serves as comment on who was world
champion -

The question I addressed was *not* "Who was world champion?", but
"Who had more natural talent?". Again, not the same thing, but our Phil
as usual attempts to shift ground.

**Excellent - then we should let this pass, and return to your idea at the
top of the post: of Natural Talent and an unidentified chess gene to explain
it. Otherwise there is the danger of dissing Alekhine even more than the
authors of The Soviet School of Chess, the most politicised chess title
since the Nazis had a go with Ralf Woelk's /Shach unterm Hakenkreuz./.

to to relegate that player, Alekhine, as less than these others,
is not something most people are 'confused' about. Please make a note of
it.

Mainly, Phil, I make a note of the fact that along with being a
spewer of semantic nonsense, you are an ignoramus about the meaning of
the term "natural talent," and about chess history, besides much else.

** Those are rather generous aspersions, and are all very well except that
in this entire post you have not expanded on your rather unusual idea of a
chess gene - nor amplified your sense of 'natural talent', and its unclear
to me if in fact you have already written everything you know - therefore
people who are still curious about such 'facts' are perceived as
'ignoramus'.

**Should you be manage to become less vague, you might escape the danger of
seeming to appear to have exhausted your own powers of presenting your very
interesting ideas, and resorted to yelling Mullah-like at those infidels who
have not completely grokked their fullness.

Phil Innes