On Mar 16, 10:40 am, wrote:

I have beaten someone who has since become a FIDE Master, but that
was not the "officially titled USCF master" I had in mind. His USCF
rating was only 2114 at the time I won (now it's 2423), and I don't
think he had a FIDE rating yet, so it would not be accurate to say "I
beat an FM" based on that game.

Obviously, when Mr. Sloan used the term
"master", he must have been referring to
the title of /FIDE master/, commonly
abbreviated as "FM".

I was just trying to help poor Mr. Sloan out;
of course, he (or his clone) was silly to assert
that TK has "never" beaten even one master.
(I know Class C players who have done that.)


No, I took it to mean USCF master, i.e. someone rated 2200+ OTB, or
in postal chess, who had reached a rating of at least 1700 under the
Harkness system in effect when I played postal chess circa 1966-86. In
that system, Master was 1700-1899, Senior Master 1900+.

So then, your *peak* rating would likely have
been in or around 1986, while the rating for
Larry Evans corresponds to the date of writing
his article, and the rating for John Nunn would
correspond to the writing of his comment. In
short, about 2600 FIDE for John Nunn, and
perhaps 2400 USCF for Larry Evans, if we
generously grant him a floor. Not that it
really matters; I don't buy into this authority
garbage, but for the benefit of those who do,
it is useful to point out that LE was not even
close to being strong enough to make such
a claim. Now, a Gary Kasparov might find a
few followers... or a Bobby Fischer.


Good! Then surely Sam can afford to risk $10,000, eh? Why then is he
hiding like a terrified mouse?

His bookie told him to, after calculating the
odds!


I seem to recall that I did annotate a few Sloan games here a few
years back, when he was hyping his favorite Damiano "Defense" as a
forced win for Black

Well, when I came along he was saying
that he liked his chances against opponents
below a certain level, maybe Class A or lower.
People kept insisting that even their pet rock
could refute this line, but Mr. Sloan refuted
this by presenting actual games from recent
events in which he had been reasonably
successful.


As I said, been there, done that, and Sam's games don't interest me
much. I have better games to go through, for example those of Max
Judd, for the next installment of Jeremy Spinrad's column. appearing
in about two weeks.


God help us! The nearly-IMnes creature
will once again rave about how the Winter
ratpackers can only write about such
players as this Max Judd, about whom
nobody (internationally) much cares. Why
can't you guys who work for Edward
Winter write about somebody good-- say,
Bobby Fischer? Nobody ever writes about
him, and it is said he could give women
Knight odds, computers Rook odds, and
Anatoly Karpov, pawn and move; granted,
he is mainly of interest to local folks in
the greater New York area... never mind.


-- help bot