On Sep 26, 8:43 am, " wrote:

Unlike Greg Kennedy, I would not imagine that
Arnold Denker's understanding would be called into question
question even if he had missed a mate in one. But as it turned
out, he did not.

FYI: At the time that game was played, the young Mr.
Denker was still in high school, claims to have never
even seen the Dutch Defense in his life, etc.; thus, his
level of understanding was not that of the Arnorld Denker
I Knew and Other Stories. (Many years later, AD was
described as one of the top twenty players in the world,
but not when this game was played.)


Alas, the Denker-Felt game had a misprint.
The move played was 21. ... Bh3 rather than 21. ... Bh6.

My guess is that rather than a printing error, this was
most likely the result of an incompetent translation from
descriptive (B-R6) to algebraic (Bh3/Bh6). It is hardly
surprising that LP would attempt to shift the blame
somewhere else, as that typical for him; but this kind
of denial results in never learning from one's mistakes.
Much better to face the truth, and then go about fixing
the problem, once and for all.

The worst example of this kind of incompetence I have
ever run across was in a translation of a Russian
endgame book; in the algebraic edition, nearly every
other move was wrong, left-to-right being reversed in
countless cases.


With dismay I note that that the mistaken 21.
... Bh6 also appeared in my long Chess Life
appreciation of Arnold (March 2005). On the other
hand, the correct 21. ... B-R6 appeared in the Denker-Parr
volume THE BOBBY FISCHER I KNEW AND OTHER STORIES.

The game makes a better impression (by far) without
the missed mate-in-one, so this is unfortunate. As I
recall, the Web site chessgames.com has 184 games
of Arnold Denker, and this is one of them; their version
is correct, but their commentary may not be if they
happened to borrow from the wrong source, as noted
just above.


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