MORE KENNEDY RAMBLING

At least Greg Kennedy does not deny his earlier
nonsense about being a contendah were it not for his
factory job in Indiana as well as his posited picture
of Indiana as a cultural wasteland. Nor does he wish
to address his bogus charge that Larry Evans
"brainwashed America" into accepting Fischer's
match conditions vs. Karpov in 1975.

Now, then, Greg simply lies when arguing that GM
Evans scored well because his column was up front in
Chess Life. Lie. Lie. Lie.

Indeed, Andy Soltis' column came first. If
one searches the pages of Chess Life, one will find
that GM Evans' column generally appeared after the
feature section during the many years when he scored
well in repeated reader surveys. Indeed, on
occasions, he appeared last in the magazine or well
buried in the second half of the magazine. Yet he
repeatedly scored first or second in all surveys.

Greg's next attempt to attack Evans is that --
well, okay -- the veteran GM may have scored well in
reader surveys,but there were columns that readers
did not care for, especially those devoted to a
subject such as, say, the endgame. Such as, for
example, Pal Benko's work.

How low can this guy go! The fact is that Benko
not only wrote a great column filled with analysis
that merited praise from Tal, Geller and others, he
often scored well in these surveys, including if
memory serves, a third place finish in the largest of
all the surveys ever taken.

Greg's next attempt to belittle Evans is to argue
that Anthony Saidy's comment on GM Evans' newspaper
column embarrasses our Greg because Keres wrote a
better one. To my knowledge, Keres was never a
newspaper columnist. More sheer nonsense.

Greg's next attempt to attack Evans is that --
well, okay -- the 5-time U.S. champion may score
well in these surveys but he had little competition.
You see, the readers had so little to choose from that
GM Evans kinda does well by forfeit. Every reader survey
taken involving many thousands of responses show a high
level of overall satisfaction with Chess Life among
the subscribership. Indeed, when one considers that
only half of the members play in tournaments and many
of that half play only once or twice a year, it's obvious
that the magazine is the main attraction for shelling
out 40 or so bucks a year.

Greg's next attempt to attack Evans is to bring
in Mark Twain when comparing any newspaper columns the
latter might have written on American social mores and
other subjects with GM Evans' chess column. Pitiful.

Greg spent years telling us that his failings
were the result of living in Indiana and being stuck
in a piecework job in some factory. He promised
repeatedly to find a spellchecker to hide some of his
weaknesses, though he certainly failed in that quest.
He used to speak about Fischer as a guy who made it
because of the accidental advantages of living in NYC.
By extension, he went after Fischer's friend, GM
Evans, also a product of the remarkable NYC chess
scene of the 1940s and 1950s.

Our Greg can't hide envy of his better. He is one of the
victims of chess -- the would-be contendah who got
kayoed within the first minute of the first round when
trying to move up in weight and class.

And so it goes.




help bot wrote:
On Apr 19, 4:37 pm, "David Kane" wrote:

It's hard to imagine anyone so dense as to believe
that scholastic members would actually want to
read a column by Evans.

What a silly comment! Scholastic players will
hardly be able to tell the difference between a
column by GM Evans and one by any other
random GM, for the content is focused upon
basic chess, not politics or any of the other
areas in which GM Evans frequently stumbles.
(Please tell me if I'm wrong, and his kiddie
column is filled with attacks on Botvinnik, etc.)

You're not. But if your definition of a good scholastic
ariticle is the absence of political ranting and raving,
you are part of the problem.

Your ad hom. tendency is duly noted.

This leads to the explanation
that the column was continued for the Evans' own
benefit.

No, it doesn't. If you would learn to think, you
would be able to see that if the column was in
fact "continued", as you say, then all that means
is that the editors were either not redoing the
children's mag. at that time, or else they saw no
reason to replace GM Evans column, as it was
not flawed in the same way or to the same extent
as his political ranting column in CL. There may
also be a difference in supply/demand of authors
in the two different mags. I seriously doubt that
kids were writing in complaining about GM Evans,
the way adults would do.

His column has not always been in
CL for Kids.

Like I said, I don't read the kiddie publication.
What I write is based on such things as *your*
claim that the column has been "continued"
(a direct quote of you) and many comments
by such writers as Larry Parr, who through a
hissy fit when, as he claimed, GM Evans was
dropped or "fired" (not my choice of word).


It was not in Aug 2006 but
has appeared in each CL for Kids since
Oct 2006. Compare to the chronology
for his CL column, and it appears to me
that the USCF's motivation for putting
his column in CL for Kids was to keep
Evans happy

That's silly. If the editor wanted to keep GM
Evans happy, he would never have "fired" him
in the first place! Clearly, anything along the
lines of what you are suggesting would have
been motivated, not by any desire to make LE
happy, but to get the Evans "cult" to cease
fire. This is precisely the caving I talked about
before.


after his column was
removed from CL (That it demonstrates
utter contempt for scholastic chess
probably doesn't trouble the USCF insider
gang in the least)

Perhaps they are deluded into equating having
a FIDE GM title with being an instructive writer.
This would also explain why they gave similar jobs
to some of the worthless younger GMs in CL.


I was just pointing out that his QA column has been
restored - and is so uninteresting that the readers
apparently aren't even sending in questions.

This may or may not be GM Evans' fault. It is quite
possible that children simply aren't inclined to write
letters anymore. Send emails, yes. Carry cell phones,
yes. Play video games, yes. But write with pen and
paper? So five minutes ago... .

Email questions are accepted. You are perhaps correct
that it would be hard to do well, but certainly none
could do worse. And I am not aware of any laws
requiring columns in the Q&A format.

Well, it seems to be a tradition of sorts for big
magazines like CL to hand out columns to big
names with big titles, regardless of merit. In order
for this to change, it would take a tsunami in terms
of intellectual thinking, a switchover from fame-
ocracy to meritocracy. It may well never happen.

One answer (well, sort of) is to accept the status
quo and search elsewhere for quality chess writing.
Another option is to get inside the USCF, and blow
it up, so to speak. This may be what Sam Sloan
has in mind.

-- help bot