On May 20, 7:57 am, "Chess One" wrote:

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

A false dichotomy; only handsome players like JC or
Boris Spassky have to choose between these; the rest
of us are playing chess *because* we cannot get a date!


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.

Am I going to rush out to buy this book? No.
I want *free* information, like I get every day at
Wikipedia [ducks for cover].


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.

Maybe. But some would argue that JC's (among others)
talent for drawing is the antithesis of artistic creation,
pointing instead to players like Anderssen (sp? Not Ulf)
or GM Bronstein as "artistic".


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.

Offhand, I don't recall JC having severe troubles in
the opening against his rivals; this seems to indicate
a reasonable level of preparation on his part.


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.

I recall a pair of loony chess matches, one of them
between GMs Karpov and Timman, the other between
GMs Kasparov and Short. Talk about an ego fix for the
winners!
Maybe the "artists" should have focused more on
correspondence play, like GM Keres did.


No sizeable prize
on that occassion, and Tony was no big head - though he probably enjoyed
beating an adult [lol!]

Wait a minute. Not too long ago, small-head TM was
caught bashing Ray Keene for having the temerity to
claim he was the world's foremost authority on chess;
maybe this was wholly deserved criticism; or maybe
there is an ego thing here; or maybe a little of both.

Okay, I know that in theory, there are maybe a few
top level GMs out there who have not got an overblown
ego, but I have yet to meet one who is still living.


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.

Wrong. As was demonstrated by such players as
GMs Fischer and Bogolubov, it is possible to "get in"
by simply beating the tar out of the rabbits! Look: my
GetClubbed rating was the highest of all time, and did
I play anybody good? No! I simply beat Sanny's
program over and over, and the rating slowly but
steadily climbed until it superseded even players such
as a famous nearly-an-IM, and a "towering" 2300+!

If you took someone like GM Fischer or GM Kasparov
today, and took away 500 rating points, it would be
maybe a year before they would both be back in the
Linares tourneys, having regained 400 points apiece.
[I secretly replaced the fillings in BF's teeth and can
now use KGB-developed mind control to force him to
play chess again.]


Therefore, if you stalled at 2625, its very difficult
to refind any momentum.

But if you stall at only 2625, then you don't really
belong at Linares, do you? Go back to the USA and
take your U.S. Open prize money, and quit whining!


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.

Then, lacking both the rating (i.e. results) and the
experience, they really didn't belong at Linares any
more than the other low 2600's. I expect that the
REAL complaint is that the very top players are
getting the vast majority of the money in chess.
But I still find it hard to feel sorry for those who can
and do charge a hundred bucks an hour for mere
chess lessons. Whiners!


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.

One famous story is that for his first appearance at a
famous chess club -- frequented by the well-to-do -- he
rented a fancy carriage and emerged in full view of the
occupants dressed, well, a bit like a King! He didn't
really need a carriage to get there, it was just for show.
This smacks of what I said before. Let me tell you, that
never in my life have I even considered doing such a
thing with my hard-earned money; I just drive up and
park my Huffy bicycle somewhere near the door, then
tie it to a post using a piece of twine I foraged out of
a rusty dumpster behind the McDonalds where I work.
;D


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.

But you are comparing apples to oranges; saying that
Paul Morphy deserves to be considered world champ
is not comparable with saying that a man is "the best
of his time", unless you want to narrow the "time" part
down to the period of his demonstrated superiority
over all others.

IMO, it was GM Lasker himself who contributed most
to this problem by not defending his title on a regular
basis, and against all worthy comers. But even after
the title shifted to JC's possession, it is not entirely
clear who among the top three was the best; some
argue that it was grossly unfair for AA to deprive JC
of a rematch, and further, that he would likely have
won it. But that aside, the tournament results during
the time were such as to confound the issue further,
for the world champions did not always dominate
these any more than GM Steinitz did in his heyday.

The championship title was disposed of in a relatively
few matches, but there are also the major tournaments
to be considered here.


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?

Who do you propose as being "tough"? (GMs Lasker,
Lasker, and Lasker again?)

And what were these mystery matches of GM Fischer,
which you tell us were "tough"? I know about the one
with GM Reshevsky, and the one that never happened
against a Russian lady at Knight odds (**VERY** tough!),
and of course the match with GM Petrosian.

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!

I think possibly he threw the match. Look at Chess
Life magazine, where patzers like us are instructed not
to fall for obvious book traps like... well, like the one
GK fell into in an opening he practiced often against AK.
Very suspicious. And his commentary afterward included
remarks about how much money it would take for him to
do this sort of thing; not surprising, in his case. Then
there was the resignation in a drawable position -- just
a little odd. I suspect that he would have thought a
lucrative rematch to be automatic, should he lose.


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?\


Uh, that you can in fact take the title back, because
you are the greatest chess player alive? I can't explain
it, but something about being the top player in the
entire world is powerfully addictive. (I know this because
I was the greatest player of all time at GetClubbed.)


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.

Halitosis, eh? Or maybe frequent methane gas
emissions.


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.

I seriously wonder just how much truth there is to this
idea. Did those writers who came up with this really
understand his style well enough to say that all AA did
was copy it and add a bit of improvement? Maybe AA's
style was different, in the same way that his choice of
openings was different. For instance, as Black AA
seemed to like playing to win using the Queen's Indian,
whereas JC looked to be trying to draw using a certain
line of the QGD which led to quick piece trades.

In two games (at some time in their careers), GM
Capablanca lost both sides of the French Defense, as
White and as Black. As White, he was out-calculated
in a relatively open position, costing him a pawn. As
Black, he remained cramped because AA deliberately
avoided any piece trades. IMO, the impression was that
AA's style was no mere copy of JC's, but rather it was
more like working very hard at the board against a man
who was extremely talented, but a bit lazy.

I recall something akin to this from one of my own
experiences, in which I found myself in a bad way in
a cramped position against an opponent who seemed
to effortlessly whip off his opening moves in the
expectation of spotting some winning combination
when we reached mid-game. Unfortunately for him,
his big chance to cash in came just one move sooner
than expected, and he didn't even look before whipping
off a routine developing move instead. By the time he
decided to have a serious think, I had already fixed the
problem and when it came his turn to err, I pounced.
It seems to me that I took the game a bit more
seriously, and worked harder at the board, thinking
on every move. This is the general impression I got
from replaying *some* of their games as well.

-- help bot