"help bot" wrote in message
...
On Dec 22, 11:21 am, "Chess One" wrote:

A once-a-year solution misses the fact that
tournament announcements are listed monthly;

I meant as well as monthly - but who, these days, doesn't have a
computer?

Old folks and kids who can't yet afford one?

I dunno what interest old folks have in TLA's but all kids have scholastic
access to computers, besides, their chess teachers do - so I don't think
this is a big factor.

-------

Yeah, I hear that as an excuse for the poor
quality; yet many articles are not of a timely
nature (rehashes of old fogy stuff), or else
the game notations are no better than instant
anno-Fritzations.

Therefore, as is, CL sucks as a 'keeper' print magazine.

, and net TLAs seem much more likely. Besides - there is a huge
advantage of putting it on the net - non-USCF members might actually go
to
an event if they could read about it!

I see; free content for everyone, and a but
more, hopefully *quality* content, for paying
members.

I'm not sure what sort of qualities are appropriate for TLAs - you got to
pay for them in the mag, but Chessville puts them on the web for free, eg.
There is no difference in the copy we/print.

[I am on such a roll this week!]

Zebediah-- is that you? The Easy level is
getting thumped! But I'm still ahead (for
once) on points, this month.

I am just about to score 2300, then I can resign 4 games and slink back to
2260. Haven't played Sanny's game in an age - I would if it actually played
a move regularly, but its slower than correspondance! Really - I can play 10
opponents in about the same time as Sanny's thing makes its 15th move. I
think it win by out-boring opponents.

Since otherwise they can't - and ICC for example have bigger membership
than
USCF, and they are more active players... food for thought, but who's
hungry?

Look, I told you how it is: Bill Goichbrg /owns/
the USCF, so if you want to implement change,
you gotta talk to the big guy, see?

I don't think there is much negotiable there. Last time someone else made an
independent commitment, it was over-ruled, and Bill took him to the
woodshed.

Every week I look around about a dozen chess sites, plus 3 or 4
event-oriented sites, and the standard of article seems to me /at least/
equivalent to the print product in CL. The point of a print magazine
these
days seems to be as respository for something more, not less considered
than
web-output.

You appear to be describing a magazine from
a different planet; maybe Inside Chess or New
in Chess? Chess Lies is filled with second-rate
stuff.

I look at mostly online materials - they compare well with CL.

Before Tim Hanke attained his previous emminence at USCF we actually
talked
a lot about what might be possible there [with another regular here who
knew
the rope] - and Tim was gung-ho for getting rid of the mag entirely and
going all on-line. After election I think he was told to drop it!

The Boss don't like other people coming up with
ideas; it makes him look dumb in comparison. In
fact, he /is/ dumb in comparison, but dumb in a
powerful, dictator-ruler sort of way.

You don't need to be smart if you're dumb - is a well known aphorism, and
'b' students rule the world. This is why the proposed USCF support for
Kasparov's democracy would be a joke! And, methinks, as unwelcome an
association as Fischer said it was.

I just wish it would govern, and not be several businesses running under the
cover of a governing non-profit - which is so obviously the FIDE model we
all love.

But I didn't agree with him completely - I though some things should be
on-line, and only on-line, but the more considered journal of chess
should
become a quarterly

Ah, New in Chess (again).

Which at least works as a stand alone commercial magazine, rather than CL
which is as much propaganda device, and as generally interested as PR
hand-outs to the press. zzzzzz

I even think they would sell outside the membership - I'd pay for one if
there was something in it worth paying for and keeping, and not as
disposable as the daily newspaper.

- with just as many pages as 3 individual editions, but
sufficiently indexed and worked up to become a real 'keeper'. This would
also provide an opportunity to take the best of the web contributions and
increment those too.

It still seems like a viable means to proceed - but depends what USCF
actually want.

Um, power, money, power, fame, money, power... .

so sad we should agree so much - wanna stop now?

---------

You evidently never read Gulko's MSS?

That depends. What is "MSS", decoded from
the original Andean, through Latin and on down
the line into modern English?

good guess - manuscriptus [manuscripts] - an old word is MANUAL, from [L.],
the mass-book

it does not mean published in Massachusetts.

I simply read the article in Chess Lies magazine,
and it failed to match up with the tall tales spun by
the spin-meisters here. Taking GM Bronstein at
his word, he put the blame on his own fears, which
in turn came about as the direct result of his father's
indiscretions. DB implied that his father had come
to watch him play voluntarily, and that he got away
with falsifying his passport to do so. DB also
seemed fearful of the dramatic changes which
which winning the title (he says) would have brought
in his life, and of scrutiny of his personal life. All
this, of course, is after-the-fact bolt-on psychology,
which allows a person to /justify/ failure (not that
tying for the world championship is actually a
failure, by any measure).

Now, they are /not/ that, but may be supposed to be that, with more or less
validity. And this indeed is a reason to interview chess players before they
become completely gaa-gaa!

But nothing emerging from the SU is as simple as ABC, comrade! And I think
we should take pity on all who write from experience of being in it, any
real information being like true-gold, and free conversation with other
informed persons also at a massive premium.

Since 1920 that state used family members to inform on one another, forced,
as policy, the division of children from their parents and insisted on
informers everywhere - so in your house or on your block someone would
report on /you!/ once per week, just as the default and background.

I compare it to GM Botvinnik's own psychology,
his holier-than-thou claptrap wherein he proclaims
to be of far superior character than everybody else
(with the /possible/ exception of Mother Teresa).
Interesting stuff.

You cannot compare anything Soviet to anything else unless you too lived
under such repression.

But Botvinnik was not the only straight-shooter [at least apparently so - in
this respect Spassky was his heir. I do not suspect we know much more about
the lives and times of chess players in the Soviet Union than those who were
in it. At least, from several thousand messages with Russians on this
subject, I sometimes learn new things - but mostly they learn things from me
about themselves.

This is complicated subject, and ... Whoops - gotta go!

Phil Innes