On Mar 9, 9:31 pm, " wrote:
Chess Lies magazine-- trash, churned out

I was looking at the latest issue at breakfast and a tiny bit of
grease from my bagel fell on the page. I tried to wipe it off, and
the ink immediately ran and smeared becoming instantly illegible.

Not only poor writing, poor articles, but poor production.... and yet
we can't opt out in our membership, we have to pay for the thing
whether we want it or not.

It's barely changed since I first read it in the 1960s --- bad then,
bad now. It even just about looks the same.

I have noticed a few changes:

1) The old Cold War garbage is gone. At one
time, the editorial slant was so severe, it is a
wonder that the type itself did not slide off the
pages.

2) Now, there is a lot of computer-assisted
analysis. Trouble is, when the annotators
decide the computer knows more than they
do, there is a strong temptation to stop
thinking and just let the machine do every-
thing; time being limited, the result can be
a shallow anno-Fritzation, easily refuted by
a somewhat deeper analysis, or even a
Fritz-look at positions the annotator may
have just skipped over to save time.

One example was an article on GM Boris
Gulko, where the writers chose a theme of
"watch his perfect technique", so to speak.
Problem was that later in the game GM
Gulko essentially threw away two-thirds of
his accumulated advantage by a careless
blunder; this was "handled" by pretending
it never happened, which is why I am not
impressed with the quality of these puff-
pieces.

It reminded me of another, very similar
puff-piece from the old days in which GM
Pal Benko, who wrote about the endgame,
penned a piece about "why all Rook and
pawn endings are drawn". His choice of
game could not have been worse, for as
he was expounding on how simple it was
for an endgame genius like him to draw
the position, I did a little research. It so
happened that I found the exact same
position in an endgame reference by two
Russian GMs: Smyslov and Levenfish,
and it was a "book win"! And a very
instructive one at that. You know the
worst part of this example? The fact
that I "knew" to look it up, whereas GM
Benko thought he knew everything, that
he understood such endings perfectly.
You see, after playing over "Alekhine's
Best Games of Chess", I could just
/feel/ that there was a possibility of
more than a draw; that a /real/ chess
player could not so easily be held to
a draw.

Now, it's Rybka; the blasted program
basically /cheats/ in the endgame, often
winning positions that nobody ought to
have any right to win. It does so invisibly,
imperceptibly, almost magically. I want
to point a finger at the other programs'
contempt factors, as there must be
/some reason/ they play so stupidly!


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