"help bot" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
On May 1, 6:26 pm, Jürgen R. wrote:

GM Yasser Seirawan, when asked if he ever saw any evidence of this in
his own experience, said: "His charge is absolutely true! I've seen it
happen. Soviet stars were expected to finish behind Karpov and I saw
Polugaevsky throw away an easy draw against him in this simple
endgame.

I went to chessgames.com and replayed this game.

It seemed to me that GM Polugaevsky gave GM
Karpov a very difficult time-- forcing him onto defense
for much of the game. However, at the very, very
finish, it is not clear how or why the "1-0" score was
achieved, since the position is drawn. Was there a
flag fall? Did some idiot *resign*, where even the
GetClub program might have held the draw?

The position is lost for Black after 53. -- Nxa5 but is
drawn after 53. -- Nd4.


That is an ordinary mistake. What I was looking
for was an "obvious", game-throwing blunder in an
"easily drawn" position.

I erred in thinking it was a draw at the very finish;
White wins by force, and this explains GM
Polugaevsky's resignation.

Back to 53. ... Nd4+ though: I've seen far worse
oversights by grandmasters; one fairly recent
example was then-world champion Kramnik
overlooking a mate-in-one which many weak
players might well have seen. It is ludicrous to
assert intentions where such things exist, as in
fact they do. It is simply arrogance to maintain
that grandmasters are error-free chess machines.
In the real world (not Evans ratpacker La-la land),
everyone makes such mistakes-- even the world
champions.


-- help bot

_________________________________________

Yes, of course: The mistake is most likely due to loss
of concentration, since the endgame is easily drawn and
the game finished.

All these conspiracy theories are absurd: Chess
players sometimes make mistakes, and occasionally
grand masters make mistakes that beginners would
avoid.

The idea that there wasn't enormous competition
among the Soviet players is just as silly as to believe that the
top players don't often agree to quick and easy
draws.

Idiots like Parr will randomly choose arguments that
suit their momentary purpose, e.g. one moment the Soviets
are discriminating against Jewish players, the next
moment they favor a Jewish player over an ethnic
Russian. Most likely the political potentates didn't
pay any more attention to the silly squabbles among
chess players in the USSR than they did in the USA
or elsewhere.

An extreme example of chess blindness is the game
Huebner-Petrosian in the Biel Interzonal 1976. I
actually watched this game live. Petrosian was
totally lost when he makes a completely unexpected
attacking move, after which H. has a simple mate
in 3 or 4. But instead H. defends and makes an
unbelievable sequence of blunders until he loses...