On Apr 19, 12:37 am, "David Kane" wrote:

I do not in any respect hate GM Evans.
I find it sad that Evans lacked the insight
to voluntarily give up the column 20 years
ago. He could have done so with his head held
high and the broad esteem of the American
chess community. It would have been a
great time, had he wanted to, to move
on to more meaningful projects in the
chess world. In his place, somebody
with connections to contemporary
players could have breathed new life into
the column.

Instead (at Parr's urging no doubt) he clung
to his government post with the tenacity
of a Kremlin apparatchik. His output
became that of an irate old man, botching
questions left and right - out of touch not
only with his earlier positions, but with
reality itself.

There is a very real possibility that GM Evans has,
like GM Fischer, had a sort of parting of the ways
with reality not merely regarding chess, but in a
more general manner. His knee-jerk attacks on
critics for pointing out date errors, for instance, is
indicative of a mind which quite simply is deranged in
believing itself incapable of even the smallest mistake.
This raises the question: can such a deranged mind
be held accountable, as if it were operating on all
cylinders? Or do we treat the man just as though he
were completely insane? Murky waters.



His Q&A column in its current form reveals
him to be someone who has zero connection
with the scholastic audience for which the
magazine is written. [to the point that the
editor is begging and bribing people to send
questions]

How about an example, for those of us who are not
still young enough to get this mag., like yourself?

IMO, one of the better ways to keep an old-timer
around is to give him the endgame column. Many
younger GMs would not want this job anyway, and
the endgame is a realm in which experience often
plays a large role. However, there are problems
here, too, as we have seen with GM Benko.


Evans comes across as scarcely
interested in chess and contemptuous
of his readers - traits one also associates
with Larry Parr. GM Evans' is as much a
casualty of his being given lifetime employment
as the rest of us are.

Well, even if the CL columns were taken away
altogether, GM Evans would have other outlets
for his rants. I expect the point is to be able to
retain this on his "resume" for prestige, and of
course the sheer number of people who can be
influenced through CL.

To be fair, some of the *youngest* players I have
seen given a column in CL were ****-poor writers,
churning out slop fit for hogs, not people.

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