ANTI-SOVIET HOLY WATER

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. -- Juergen

Juergen does not like unpleasants truths about the
late, unlamented Soviet Union. He has likely yet to
recover from the mass demonstrations throughout
Russia and Eastern Europe that finally ended communism
east of the Elbe.

We reported what Korchnoi said about chess
players in the Soviet Union learning widely about his
defection when Pravda, Izvestia and other Soviet
propaganda vehicles would be forced to report on
his candidates' matches.

Juergen's response was a lulu. Soviet players on the
scene in Biel, Switzerland heard the news. Hence the
news would spread throughout the USSR like wildfire.

Nonsense. Korchnoi was not talking about limited
chess circles; his reference was evidently to, say,
the 60 or so closed major Soviet cities of that period
to which travel was difficult, if not impossible, for
outsiders. Korchnoi was speaking of chess
players throughout the vast hinterland of the USSR.

We should not take pleasure in provoking a
creature such as our Juergen by tossing anti-soviet
holy water on the man and hearing the hissing as he
burns. Regrettably, we are not totally unamused by
the man's knee-jerk, very old-fashioned pro-Sovietism.

We thought his type had ceased to exist,
especially in the USSR but also throughout most of
Western Europe. Evidently there are still isolated examples.

Juergen est; ergo, Juergen est.

Yours, Larry Parr





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