On Mar 8, 3:50 pm, EZoto wrote:

I remember those days. He also was a chain smoker and could beat you
with those odds smoking a cigarette at the same time. A lot of people
don't realize how good Dzindzi really was in those days. After he got
married and had a daughter he literally became a different man and
even played first board for the olympiad and thrashed Beliavsky in
there encounter.


In the old days, every time a Russian grandmaster
emigrated to the USA he would soon appear on the
cover of Chess Lies magazine, having won a big
tourney or two. Lev Alburt, Boris Gulko, Roman
Dzindzichashvili, and so on down the line. Finally,
there were so many "Russian" GMs here that new
ones could no longer expect such instant success.
Today, it seems that the big-money events have
grown larger, and often end in multi-way ties.


But I wish they could afford to pit the current top
players against Rybka, at *slower* time controls.
Some people don't like the idea of material odds,
probably because they live and breathe a detailed
knowledge (read: memory) of the chess openings.
This doesn't bother me, but a part of the odds
package could be time odds, for instance. I have
grown accustomed to post-game analysis, where
the computer is given oodles of time to think over
each position before rendering a judgment; so
when I see these fast games -- what was once
considered "action chess" -- I cringe at the crude
time-pressure-induced mistakes.

Even Rybka, at this fast time control, is hardly
immune from error. One Rook ending ought to
have been drawn rather than lost, and in the
game where GM Dzindzi lost the exchage,
Rybka's "defense" reminded me of GetClub.


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