Chess One wrote:

GM Larry Evans was one of the two most popular writers
in Chess Life according to every CL survey ever taken of the
readership. He was fired because the powers that be
wanted to rid the magazine of its single independent
voice. The editor played ball to get the job and lied to GM Evans.

Used to be most popular. A lot of us got tired of the same old
Fischer rehash.

Can I suppose that these are the same people too tired to write about
chess themselves?


Common ad hominem technique noted. (But why stop here?
Why not "shoot the messenger" outright, and be done with him?)

How can it be ad hominem, when there are no people mentioned, in fact, they
don't even mention their own names nevermind chess topics, they only mention
people with names, and revert the topic to personalities.

Dear IM Innes, the concept of ad hominem requires no
mention of names. On the contrary, it is simply the low
method of arguing "to the person", which is precisely
what is seen above, where you responded to a criticism
of GM Evans by attacking the *person* or persons who
dared to question the current status of GM Evans' column's
popularity. (The only rational alternative description of what
you did above is tossing out insults, in lieu of making some
intelligent remark on the subject under discussion, and I
know you would never stoop to that.)


The 'Fischer rehash' was what shook the mighty Soviets to their core, and
brought chess to the USA in such large numbers that USCF went from 10,000
members says Horrowitz, to 60,000 in 5 years.

Wrong. At the time of the above-mentioned growth surge,
Fischer was anything BUT rehash! His story was fresh, new.
Still in shrink-wrap even. Try to keep up, my boy.

Perhaps there is something in the Fischer-boom that stands outside Fischer's
personality, and which those people

I sense another ad hominem attack comming. [Duck!]

not too tired to notice, continue to
point out? Unless of course we have learned everything there is to know
about Fischer and what promotes chess.

Excellent technique. You have now *changed the
subject* away from GM Evans' rehash column, to
something more interesting. Well done.

But I don't think so, since the
membership needle has hardly moved since, and only one from three adult
rated players is currently active in chess, that's just 10,000 players, the
same as it was pre-Fischer-boom.

Is this an attempt to "justify" GM Evans' rehashing
of all things Fischer? It sure smells like it.


Chess was a bit different then, and Fischer very very active in it,
appearing and playing all over the place, especially simuls which as you
know contact and presumably encourage [?] large numbers of players to actual
do it!


Good. You have managed to stick with your changed
subject (i.e. "changing the subject") consistently.
This is a promising technique vs. the ignorant.


In the four articles that you cite, three were about Fischer
and the other was about a man that hlped a philosphy enslave most of
the world and terrorized the rest. Evans was stuck in the past and
could not break out.

In that case he shares the same opinion as some east-Bloc writers, who
compare all the players around during the Fischer boom, and the quality
of their play with todays drawzzz.

I like that one. Drawzzz. It's high time I started coming up
with new ideas like this one. Maybe I'll patent it. Special
thanks to IM Innes for "inspiring" me. :D

You will need to study actual players to supplement your inspiration.

Nonsense. I am going to begin churning out chess
books, like IM Schiller. All I need are a few snazzy
buzzwords like "drawzzz", a huge database of GM
games, and a computer.


The current Russian Superfinals has the men scoring 13 from 30 decisive
games, but!
The women socred 30 from 40 decisive games.

Therefore, are draws a gender problem related to males? Discuss...


No. In all likelihood, the problem is that these
stronger Russian males have taken to trying to
win games via opening prep, and when it fails
(as quite often happens), they prefer not to fight
but rather to return to the drawing board.
My guess is those 30/40 decisive games were not
wins against male GMs. The "draw death" you
describe tends to trickle down from the higher
levels; weaker players seem to rely less upon
prep and more upon fight.


Those were the days when you had to beat most of the other best players
in
the world to engage in a match with the world champion, and when the
result
wasn't decided by one game of rapid chess.

An exception being Frank Marshall, who managed
to play matches against players he couldn't beat
if his life depended upon it! (Just to see what
would happen, I transported back in time and just
as I expected, the result was a clean score -- 8-0!
But I had expected to win, not lose by this score.
Oh well. At least he didn't embarass me with one
of those Q-g3!!! thingies. Having lost fair and square,
I paid up by showering the board with newly minted,
brightly shining pennies, which some fool mistook
for gold pieces!)


Yes, but trying to convince someone like
Larry Parr -- who is also stuck in the past --
is like arm-wrestling Arnold Schwartzennegger.

That is not such a specific comment that can be answered, but if the
comparison is the Current World Champion playing Fritzzzz,

As so often happens, IM Innes has lost the thread.

We had been discussing a man called Botvinnik, and
the comment above related to him being the first WC
to have faced frequent, *mandatory* matches against
the most dangerous challengers

[[except of course, Russian ones, and presumably I lost that thread since it
wasn't mentioned]]

Is this a clouded reference to the "throwing" of games
by other Russian players, or his lack of participation
in Russian tourneys after gaining the title? Who did you
want him to play -- Stein? Kortchnoi?

-- quite unlike his
predecessors. This was all in connection with a
commentary which maintained that MB had no claim
to the status of "best of all time", due to such items
as his drawn matches and ultra-narrow wins.

I veered off into a generalized comment regarding how
it seemed pointless to try and convince Mr. Parr of *any*
rational take on these matters.

That word rational is from 'ratio', meaning to measure, and thus gain
proportion - against whom do you measure Botvinnik?

Almost everybody. Unlike so many others, GM
Botvinnik did not duck his competition. Instead,
he lost a match, then won the title back from them.


It had nothing whatever
to do with WC Kramnik voluntarily playing Deep Fritz.

Which was my comparison, what was yours again?

Mine was the one I already described in some detail.
Perhaps if you wanted to change the subject altogether
the best way would be to start a new thread, or at the
very least, not place your non-response in as though
it were a response. Just a thought.


It had to do with trying to convince a braindeader by
using something called reason, which they don't ever
seem to comprehend.

If reason be having the conviction to follow logic through to its
conclusion, and may be seen to be so, then it does not rely on convincing by
rhetoric, as much as by a demonstrated process. Which of those did he not
fail to appreciate?

IMO, the word "conviction" most often appears where
reason is tossed out the window, and something else
is placed in its stead. (See Matt Nemmers and the war
in Iraq, for instance.)
As for [I am guessing you meant] Larry Parr, he has
the conviction part down, and all the rhetoric you could
ever hope for, but his logic skill is appalling.


and, say, a match
between Evans and Taimanov with Che Guevarra and Castro looking on; or
Reshevsky vs Tal; or even a chance encounter between Botvinnik v Keene
[Keene won their game, and laugh I think its fair to say scared
himself!]
then these are the comparisons.

This makes no sense to me, but then I was on the
original thread, while IM Innes has ventured into the
wild unknown, alone and unarmed.

It must have been the veering during your rational take - as if to say,
these were the things against which you measure Botvinnik's achievements -
but such veerings were risible, it seems!

Incomprehensible, and most likely, intentionally so.

I gather that your point is something to do with GM
Evans writing about historical events listed above, but
this ducks the issue we had been discussing, which
related more to the term "rehash", and how some
Chess Life readers may have gotten tired of eating the
same old Fischer-casserole every night. There is a
famous quote which says that variety is the spice of
life. Now where is the *variety* in rehash-stew?

People like these are blinded to their own
handicap, and perceive the whole world as
being the real problem. In view of the utter
hopelessness of trying to get one of these
guys to snap out of it, I have come to accept
the fact (as I see it), that only time can solve
their problem.

I foresee a similar problem with the USA as
a whole (not just in chess) being superceeded
eventually by China, at least economically.
War is one possibility. Bitter resentment,
moaning and groaning inevitable.

There we are, argue for your limitations and sure enough, they will be
yours.

I see it a bit differently. As I see it, the real limitations
belong to such stubborn nincompoops as LP, and I am
merely noting the fact. :D

Well, these are your own precepts against which you conclude the end of the
USA.

Not the end of the USA; just the end of her economic
world-dominance. Yet the blow to our egos is such
that this distinction may not matter much. :D


I suppose there is even some truth in them, if nothing happens to
change the picture - but that's where I came in with a similar analogy to
what seemed inevitable about Soviet chess, then this outlaw lone-wolf
Fischer ruined their whole schtick!

Not really. His interruption was fairly brief, as he
lacked staying power.
In some discussions of Sammy Reshevsky, it is
often claimed that he was somehow cheated by the
Russians, that he had some immense talent, etc.
And then there is GM Fine, who some have touted
as a strong threat to the Soviets at some particular
moment in history. And of course there was Bent
Larson, who stole first place in some big international
events, though never the title of world champion.
Be that as it may, the Russian hegemony continues
to this very day (Deep programs notwithstanding), with
only brief interruptions.


I would have thought that the country with the first and towering world
genius of chess, Morphy; then the country with the strongest team at
chess
for a decade in the 1930's when international competition became viable;
and
then the thunder and lightning of a Fischer, would need reminding that
someone put them all TO SLEEP!

But who? I mainly feel sleepy when replaying the
games of Nimzowitch, who some call a "hyper"-modern.
Yet to me he is dull and boring. His games, I mean.
Not him personally. For all I know, he could have
been a great guy, who simply failed to comprehend
real chess.

All pioneers must seem boring to people who follow the same trail on the
old-pensioner's climate controlled tour bus, you look out the window and
they have enclosed the wilderness as a park, and there is not the slightest
danger of anything happening to you to keep you awake, unless of course, you
set off into it without a map to re-discover it yourself - which is another
form of being there, called curiosity.


Oh, come on. Nimzowitch gets so much of the credit
for the hypermodern style, yet he was not yet born when
this style was already being practiced by his forerunners.

I think Nimzowitch's games are boring because they
are longwinded, manuevering affairs, where it appears he
was waiting for a blunder as opposed to seeing the prize
and going directly up to snatch it, like say, Morphy.

As for curiosity, I believe those who preceded Nimzo-
witch are the ones who truly explored with no maps.
I recall another thread in which there was a contest of
sorts between a couple of antagonists who each wished
to prove they had the superior games database. Every
time some example of hypermodernism was shown by
one, the other reached back still further to unveil an
even older game which trumped it. Every one of these
examples was collected from published sources, which
players like Nimzowitch would have been able to read.


And falling asleep in the world is a bad American habit caused by
physical isolation.

Canada? Mexico? Iran? Japan? We have plenty of
next-door neighbors. You seem to vastly underestimate
our dominion! Isolationism is dead; we now practice
world domination (or at least *think* we do).


Let us, for all love, not also engage in intellectual isolation,
evn from our own past.

I don't see the Evans ratpack as being "isolated" from
things intellectual, really; I see them more as being
incapable of rational thought, and that in turn is what
separates them from intelligent thought. (Is this splitting
hairs?)

You somewhat miss the point. Just like the pioneers above, you won't
understand Evans until you get off the bus and walk out into the trailess
way yourself - otherwise its easy from your armchair to feel absolutely
nothing at all, and those who don't feel also have nothing to think about
that is their own experience.

You seem to be "justifying" again. If GM Evans'
rehash problem is the result of emotional sentimentality,
that is not going to change anything. The criticism that
he just rehashes Fischer and lives in the past, is IMO,
valid. This is why I think he ought to write chess books,
so those for whom this is fresh material can buy them,
while those for whom it is "rehash", the same old
Fischer-casserole leftovers year after year, can get
some fresh food for a change. I'm not saying that
Joel Benjamin -- or whoever took his spot -- is going
to be any better. Just that GM Evans does live in the
past, that he is very negative toward chess today, and
that I don't expect this will ever change. Negativity
(as opposed to the "last independent voice" hype) is not
something which will promote chess.


Vicarious experience is quite different, and unless you have been anywhere,
you can only understand the easy bits.

I am all for GM Evans writing endlessly about his personal
experiences with regard to GM Fischer. But do it in a book.
This is 2006 for crying out loud. The world keeps on turning,
even if GM Fischer dies tomorrow. As in the Beatles song,
life goes on (with or without GM Evans).


It is well said that America is the sleeping giant of chess,

Who said this?

I did.

You're biased!

And why are they not aware of how
silly it sounds, to the better-informed?

Kasparov said it too.

He is a nincompoop. GM Kasparov will do or say
practically anything. How about something more
substantive?

But he said that although it seemed true to him, it
felt silly talking to the dead.

Karpov also said it,

Yes, yes, I know. He said "I'm scared of Fischer!"
"I will go down in history as a chicken. Bwaaak!"


but as you might imagine, far more diplomatically, and
only referred to the American chess establishment as 'frozen'.

That simply meant that GM Kamsky was in school,
and for the time being, inactive. :D


My view is that China and India are the most likely
"sleeping giants" of chess, due in part to the size of
their populations relative to others (like us for instance).


and rather than
it being all over, chess here is only newly born ~ and I never heard of a
country that likes games more than this one.

Okay, but one day you may read about a small country
named China, and about how its people *love* games,
and about how this can be capitalized upon by astute
investors.

Fischer wasn't 'capitalised upon' by astute investors, and chess here
happened anyway.

You are lost in a fog of delusion. Bobby Fischer was
not how chess "happened" in this country. Rather, it
was because chess was already happening that he
got an opportunity to play and to learn. Look at any
map. You will see the city called New York. Now, this
city happened to already be the center of strong chess
here, and only because BF's family moved there and
not some place like say, Kansas, that he was given
an opportunity to play *frequently* and have strong
coaching. Rather than attribute his great chess skill
to some kind of magic, you ought to consider the
objective facts as to what came first, and what was
the result. God help you if your heart gives out when
you learn that the Russians themselves acted as his
coaches, in the sense that he read their chess
magazines and studied their games and annotations!


Oh, and I should also mention cellphones;
they love cellphones, and because they outnumber us
a bazillion to one, there is vast opportunity here as well.

Antropology tells us that even though Chinese people want to be like
American middle-class people, the world can only support one country
behaving like Americans, since there are not enough resources in it for two
to do so. Besides, there isn't enough room in China for all the Chinese to
spread out, or even feed themselves.

China doesn't have to become imperialistic like the USA
in order to surpass us economically. They can -- and already
do -- take control of vital resources around the world, even
in Canada, for example.
Think of it like this: there is going to be a chess match
next week: Vermont vs. New York state. Who should
win? Assuming you don't play, the New Yorkers have
a vast statistical advantage, due to superior numbers.


US is only busted if it stays asleep and doesn't change its OWN behavior,
instead of trying to change that of others. Its still true that almost
everyone wants to be an American if they could swing it, [after all, the
whole world contributed its own sons and daughters to create the place] and
if the current crop of Americans fell asleep in their Easy-boys in front of
the TV, then new Americans will come to do the work, and also to remind each
other that in a real sense America is the World's country, and to start to
behave in a way consistent with that responsibility.

We could change the way we behave, but we would
still be vastly outnumbered. The only "winning move"
would be to think so far ahead that we ourselves
exploit the problems of China as a developing power.
For example, they have serious pollution problems,
and an American company could conceivably solve it.
But the population disparity and their apparent advantage
in terms of work ethic and education ultimately leaves us
a piece down.


Of course, if sleep is preferred, you are in the right of it.

In the thick of it?

-- help bot