On Jan 15, 4:38 pm, " wrote:

But at one point in the book Kasparov attempts to quote Capablanca:
'I see only one move ahead, but it is always the correct one.' And
Winter comments: 'No source is given, of course, because none is
known...The quote should have been expunged!? I think that is a bit
drastic. -- offramp


No evidence Capa didn't say it either. Contrary to the dynamic duo of
Winter and Kingston, it IS drastic to suggest it be expunged from
Kasparov's book.

GM Larry Evans usually puts it this way: "When asked how far he saw
ahead, the mightly Capablanca reputedly said: 'Only one move. The best
one.'"

Precisely. It is just plain silly to maintain that
Jose Capablanca "never said" anything like this
(unless of course it is the ghost of JC making
such a claim). No one could possibly know
everything ever said (or not said) by someone
else, unless they are connected at the hip and
always awake at the same time; it is also
essential that the Siamese twin be a *superb
listener*.

What Larry Evans treated as an anecdote,
Gary Kasparov rendered as a quotation, and
that is where Edward Winter jumped in with a
correction. What is learned here is that the
standards of GK are rather low; he feels that
whatever he may render off-the-cuff is worthy
of attribution to others, since of course he is
an infallible genius, sent here to save the world.

In sharp contrast, Edward Winter follows the
conventional thinking that "quotations" ought
to have real sources, that they ought to be
rendered identically as in the source, and
what's more, that the source be specified so
it can be checked and verified by mere mortals.

These kinds of problems often arise when the
gods try to converse with their vast inferiors. In
this case, a chess match between GK and EW
would settle the matter; we would soon learn
that EW has no "source" for some of his chess
moves; that they are erroneous and based on
a shallow approach which fails to account for
tricky tactics that only the chess gods can see.

Seriously though, it appears that Mr. Kasparov's
writing skills need sharpening; he is getting a bit
sloppy. There simply is no excuse for a former
world champion to make the sort of mistakes
which can be spotted easily by any random
chess historian. People who write a lot of chess
books would do well to learn from GK's
elementary blunder.


-- help bot