"help bot" wrote in message
oups.com...

and actually directly said he wouldn't be
interested in acquiring 'the habit'.

Where did he say this, and in what context?

In the same place that he said anyone who played chess instead of going out
on a date, was nutz@!

Was he
just attempting to psychologically justify his loss? Or
was this his deeply-considered opinion on the issue,
period?

The trouble with 'what we know' about Capa is that almost all writing about
him is by chess fans. It is therefore interesting to read the Cuban exile
[London] Infante, and his book Mea Cuba, which has a good essay on Capa in
it, from the cultural point of view. Probably more insight into Capa there
than any other single source.

This point is important when you consider anecdotal
material which seems to skewer the idea that JC
"never" studied, that he was just a natural-born genius,
who snatched the right moves out of thin air, using
magic or alchemy.

But we know that this 'magic' is the result of lessons learned - that is, of
things sufficiently pre-digested. It is a new idea these days, so that time
at the board is not spent figuring out what to do, but instead figuring out
how to solve it as 'elegantly' as possible. Chess as art more than chess as
craft.

Interestingly, and somewhat in support of your point, Adorjan says to
Kasparov, that it is not his opinion that moderns are as creative or
inventive as the previous generation. I see from his note that he
particualrly admires [on the subject of the Opening Revolution]:-

Fischer, Larsen, Korchnoi, Portisch, Petrosian, Fridrik (Olafsson),
Gligoric, Geller, Smyslov, Bronstein, Mecking, Timman, Stein, Karpov,
Hort, Spassky, Ribli, Sax, Ivkov, Keres, Tal, Kasparov, Tseskovsky,
Polugaevsky, Andersson, Belyavsky, Romanishin, Ljubojevic,Miles, Hübner,
Uhlmann.

-----

And let's not pretend that the addition of a sizable
prize fund has no effect. Or the huge ego "fix".

But also the artistic 'fix'. What a shame that the final of Master Game was
canned because of a BBC strike, since Miles beats Karpov. No sizeable prize
on that occassion, and Tony was no big head - though he probably enjoyed
beating an adult [lol!]

What people who speak of ELO can forget is that ELO it is not
/predictive/
in any specific case, and is an average over most cases, given sufficient
'X' exposure to a broad group of players.

In this particular case, the authors took a rather small
sample of games from some players, such as GM Fischer,
who faced only a single opponent in his world championship
match.

OK, 'my' comments above are actually a paraphrase of Khalifman. In that case
he said that top GMs on the tour only played each other and if you were 100
points less it was almost impossible to get into the tour, for the
tautological reason, that you could never play anyone high enough to score
that extra 100 points. Therefore, if you stalled at 2625, its very difficult
to refind any momentum. The few exceptions seem to be players who go back
'to the provinces' slaughter everyone there by massive win/lose margins,
then re-enter a tournament with the big boys that way. But its hard for them
to stabilise themselves there since other games have been relatively easy,
and they need more resilience at top levels which their sparcity of
experience hasn't provided them.

Capa was #1 for quite other reasons. He was the best player of his time;
given approximately ?equal opportunity? and resources as other strong
players,
he was /psychologically/ capable of beating them all.

I had the general impression that JC did not have to
really work for a living, and that therefore his situation
put him at an advantage to most other people.

Once he made it to the top [which I think means as a result of his work, and
performance] /then/ he was awarded a sort of diplomatic salary. Not quite
the same as Russian system, when only rarely did top players fail to gain
support. Even though Botvinnik gained an engineering degree, its rare to
hear how much he deployed it - but as Champion I think it is much mentioned
since it made him 'one of the people', rather than a pampered games-player
whose success was at the cost of atypical life-support in the USSR.

During the time in which GM Lasker was mostly
inactive, it seems a bit of a reach to give JC full credit
for being "the best of his time", especially when he
went on to lose the title so quickly after gaining it.

I wonder? Staunton ducked Morphy, but I think there is no doubt that Morphy
deserved the accolade of world champion, as an active player rather than as
was-once credential. Chess is a show me game, not a tell me game.

Pity JC had to play AA twice. I wonder what would have happened if Alekhine
had to display his repetoire by fighting 3 tough pre-amble matches [a la
Fischer] and so disclose his repetoire? Or perhaps more importantly to alert
JC that this was going to be a real fight. Isn't this why we think Garry
lost to DeepDuh, in terms of being psyched, he seemed to be sleep-walking!

OTOH, we do not know for certain if and when the
Cuban grandmaster first superseded his great
predecessor. Still, you would have to assume that
"his time" did not extend into the realm of GM
Alekhine's reign, though he still was far from old.

He became isolated from the Euro scene, especially the Russian one, and
though New York was a powerhouse of chess, it suffered from insufficient
players and ideas to stimulate a top player to further effort. After all, if
you have been world champ already, and also beaten most of your
contemporaries, what is there left to prove to anyone, to yourself?\

What bugs me is the way in which JC's record is
presented, always mentioning the period of years
"without a single loss" while at the same time,
deliberately omitting the fact of his relative inactivity
during the very same time-frame. This smacks of
cheapness and deception -- things which are rarely
required when a stunning record can be recounted
matter-of-fact-ly.

Because everyone like to beat on Alekhine, I think Capa also put up rather
stringent barriers, inhibiting much contact with himself.

I'm not down on GM Capablanca; it's just that any
man who cannot see the brilliance of GM Alekhine's
play is obviously a patzer. In fact, I might go so far as
to say that such brilliance was *required* in order to
defeat a player such as GM Capablanca.

In that no one else even looked like doing it - I think you are right.
Alekhines technique was, after all, not to refute Capa's style of play, but
to study it so deeply that he could out-Capa Capa.

That imitation is no insult to either of them.

Phil Innes

-- help bot