On Dec 5, 10:32 am, " wrote:

"Kasparov did not take his hand off the knight, so he had a perfect
right to change his move," said the chief arbiter. "My conscience is
clear. I have the feeling my hand was still on it," added Kasparov.

Other accounts claimed the arbiter did not see
the cheating because he was purportedly standing
directly behind GK, his view of the board obstructed.

In my experience, no virtually TD has the guts
required to intervene in this kind of situation,
enforcing the rules *evenhandedly*.


Yet we all know the naked eye can be fooled. A camera crew was filming
the game and a replay revealed that Kasparov removed his hand for
exactly 1/4 of a second! Deliberate foul or did he try to change his
grip in order to reverse direction? Who can say for sure?

For an old geezer who has no skill at blitz chess
a quarter of a second might not seem like much,
but to a skilled player like GK, it's plenty of time to
know whether or not one has deliberately released
a man. That's what makes such players great:
their amazing quickness, relative to the rank and
file. I expect that strong bullet-chess players
like Skip Repa do this sort of thing routinely.


His enemies promptly called it cheating.

It makes no difference who is friend or enemy,
as the rules of chess decide the matter.

According to the laws of chess, releasing his
hand obligated GK to leave the man where he
originally put it. The cheat move is not the
important aspect here, as his original move was
not a loser as it appeared at first blush; what is
important is that GK first lied, and then later, upon
being told of the video, /changed his lie/ to fit the
new (to him) situation. This ready adaptation to
circumvent the evidence is a smoking gun, if the
videotape proof were not enough in itself.

As many writers have pointed out, these
inconsistencies are a hallmark of GK. An
article by Edward Winter, supposedly a book
review, was devoted almost entirely to listing
the multitudinous inconsistencies and have-
it-both ways ploys which plague GK's works!

Unfortunately, GK's close association with
hack writer Ray Keene made it neigh well
impossible for EW to take a more even-
handed approach, telling readers the good
points, along with the bad ones. If I recall
correctly, that particular book was titled
Child of Change, and it's still being sold at
my local chess club. Perhaps a much better
work was GK's original "Fighting Chess" --
written before the man's ego became quite
so bloated, before he started his long career
as liar and cheat extraordinaire.


-- help bot