On May 21, 5:35*pm, "Chess One" wrote:
wrote in message

...
On May 21, 7:49 am, David Richerby
wrote:





Chess One wrote:
I made the simple statement that this was the highest category US
tournament

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt! You wrote, `Strongest ever US Tournament'. It's
still there on the web at

http://www.chessville.com/Editorials...ive_2008Q2.htm

I quote it in its entirety (my emphasis):

Coming up later this Year -- **Strongest ever US Tournament**

September 19th to 28th sees a [so far] Category 15 tournament on US
soil in the 10 player SPICE CUP. Seven of the 10 invitees have
already signed up, and I understand average Elo is currently 2600.
Chessville's senior editor Kelly Atkins recently visited the SPICE
campus at Lubbock and will make an extended report on its current
and future activities.

* It would appear that Mr. Hillery had a valid point. To call this the
"strongest ever US tournament" seems a definite exaggeration, in terms
of the rankings (rather than the ratings) of the players.

**Mr Hillery argues some point about 'rankings' not ratings? Qhat then is
his 'point'?

*Here is the
list of prospective contestants Innes posted a day or two ago:

GM Onischuk, Alexander 2728 USCF / 2663 FIDE
GM Akobian, Varuzhan 2666 USCF / 2612 FIDE
GM Kaidanov, Gregory 2697 USCF / 2611 FIDE
GM Becerra, Julio 2644 USCF / 2601 FIDE
GM Kritz, Leonid 2667 USCF / 2600 FIDE
GM Miton, Kamil 2703 USCF / 2581 FIDE
GM Perelshteyn, Eugene 2623 USCF / 2549 FIDE

* Of these, only Onischuk is even in the FIDE top 100, at #56. In
contrast, New York 1924 had the world's #1, 2, and 3, and several of
the top 10 or 20. At New York 1927 all but one of the players were in
the top 10 or 12 of the time and it had the clear #1 and #2.

**These are US Rankings, not ratings, understood.

No, Phil, those are *_world_* rankings. How high each player ranks
in the whole world, not just one country. I thought you knew the
difference between FIDE and USCF.

But again, his point?

Well, _my_ point is that a tournament whose best player is only #56
in the world, and which has no one else even in the top 100, has no
business claiming it's "stronger" than tournaments that included the
likes of world's top three and many others from the top 10 or 20.