On Feb 23, 2:16 pm, "Rob" wrote:

I beg for the whooping so I can learn from my mistakes. There are lots
of better players than me who have suffered the same fate to Phil. If
anything, he is modest when describing his abilities because his ego
and self worth are not measured by rating points.
Rob

I agree; it is obvious that nearly-an-IM, recently demoted to master
Innes in no way derives his puffy ego from his *actual* rating, nor
from his *actual* title. To the contrary, it is all based upon
imagined
titles and ratings, such as the 2450 he claimed as Othello or Hamlet
or whoever, not to mention all the names he has offhandedly "dropped"
over the years, inflating his own balloon via "association" with the
rich
and famous in chess.

It is notable that while insisting that *others* refrain from
teaching
patzers like yourself a lesson or two about chess, the self-demoted-
to-master Innes himself enjoys doing precisely this! As for myself,
I am currently in the middle of one heck of a struggle in one game
at RedHot, against a mere 1300 player! The way I see it, I may, if
I'm really lucky, be able to escape with my life into a Rook and pawn
ending, where it goes without saying I win proceed to win easily due
to my vastly superior understanding of chess. How this patzer
managed to get me into such a tight spot is easy to explain: he got
lucky.

All my other games are going well, and in fact I am just about to
deliver checkmate to one poor chap, having brilliantly conducted an
attack on my opponent's King, whose required shelter had of course
been compromised due to my amazing positional skills, etc., etc.
Quite the norm for me, you know. A few famous GMs of old were
known for similar feats, but of course back then nobody knew how
to defend, nor would they have even had they known. Modesty
keeps me from posting my amazingly brilliant wins here, which of
course would leave all others looking dull by comparison.

In my experience, Mr. Mitchell, it is not sufficient to merely get
beaten, again and again, by a superior player; for often as not, the
reason you lost is not entirely clear, unless by a simple tactical
blow. In many cases, the true reason is obscured, such as how
did you know my pawn could simply be attacked and eventually
won? Why, of course because it was such-and-such *type* of
pawn, which every good player "knows" is weak, and cannot
easily be defended for long, etc. The fastest route is to play a
much stronger player face-to-face, asking questions and having
subtleties carefully explained, as required. But lacking any such
opportunities you can also gain much from carefully replaying
the games of great masters, who basically demonstrate what
to do, while leaving explanations of "why not this move" to a few
examples, consisting in their opponents' actual mistakes. This
method can be tedious, however, and there is no possibility for
asking questions such as: "Mr. Capablanca, why is this move
often given between two and four exclamation points by annotators,
when all it does is lead to a draw by agreement, which was not
entirely clear on the board?"

Such is life.

-- help bot