On Nov 13, 1:05 pm, Larry Tapper wrote:
On Nov 12, 10:37 pm, " wrote:
...As Larry Tapper points out, its main value
was an experiment in forensic game analysis. It was because of
this article that the case has been re-examined extensively.
Right, but I put it in the form of a conditional:
"It seems to me that if Evans contributed anything of value to the
debate, it had to be his experiment with forensic game analysis."
And in this case I believe that the antecedent is false.
It seems to me that Evans' theory of forensic analysis was basically a
non-starter because of his criteria for fishiness. Evans made the
reasonable conjecture that a top GM looking to throw a game would be
motivated to avert immediate suspicion and would therefore tend to
make subtle errors rather than blatantly obvious blunders. So far so
good. But the problem is that the outcomes of decisive GM games are
quite _typically_ determined by errors in this general category. Are
half of all GM victories therefore under a cloud of suspicion?
As I recall, Exhibit A in Evans' analysis was a rook endgame position
in which Keres unnecessarily placed his rook passively. A player of
Keres' caliber would never make a move like that, the argument went.
OK, but I have recent endgame books by Belyavsky and Dvoretsky that
feature dozens of examples of strong GMs making horrible mistakes in
fairly simple rook endgames. It is hard to say what a given GM would
never do --- remarkably bad things can happen to anyone who is tired
or nervous or short of time.
Actually if I set myself the task of throwing a game in a way that
would be hard to detect, my first inclination would be to get myself
into severe time trouble. In that situation, any blunder could
plausibly be explained away.
Be that as it may, I think even Larry Parr must admit that if
"scholars" now resoundingly agree that the games were thrown, as he
claims, it can't possibly be because of Evans' game analysis. The best
we can say about that analysis is that GM opinion remains divided. As
I recall Nunn and Seirawan were among those who were publicly
skeptical from the beginning. I asked a couple of American GMs myself,
and they didn't think much of Evans' analysis either. On the other
hand, I've noticed that Hans Ree is one recent convert to the fixed-
games theory.
I don't think it was all that recent, Larry. As long as I've known
Hans, his opinion has remained unchanged.
(Note that Ree's article on the subject was published in Chess Cafe,
which Parr et al think of as a hotbed of anti-Evans bias. TK knows his
way around the Chess Cafe archives better than I do, maybe he could
find the relevant Ree piece.)
You are probably thinking of this article, Larry:
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hans69.pdf
Ree mentions the same rook endgame you referred to, and draws a
different conclusion.
Hans and I have exchanged several e-mails on this whole subject over
the years, discussing (quite cordially, in pleasant contrast to Parr/
Evans) the opinions of Watson, Evans, Nunn, IM Kim Commons and others
who have weighed in on K-B and other allegations of Soviet tampering.
In general, Ree gives more weight to moves on the board than I do in
such situations. He cites the 1979 Karpov-Smyslov game as one where he
believes the moves themselves indicate collusion and chicanery, while
I consider actions away from the board more significant, for example
the fact that Karpov left the game for about 45 minutes.
Surprisingly, however, while Ree sees that Keres endgame as evidence
of coercion, he is rather dismissive of the idea of coercion at the
1953 Candidates Tournament, where we have direct testimony that
pressure was indeed applied. For example, he discounts Bronstein's
claim that the Soviet political troika (Postnikov, Moshintsev, and
Bondarevsky) pressured Keres not to beat Smyslov at one point in the
tournament. Ree feels Keres just shrugged off this pressure and tried
to win anyway, while in my opinion it could not have failed to affect
him negatively.