(Louis Blair) wrote in
message om...
Wlodzimierz Holsztynski wrote (2004-01-11 15:05:20 PST):
Fischer ... didn't make up 9:9. It was used in the preFIDE championship
matches. Alechine had it tougher. Capa-Al match would be drawn already
at the 5:5 score.

This is far from being a generally accepted historical fact.

Dear Mr Blair,

But Mr Wlodzimierz Holsztynski has written it! Who then could doubt it? :-)

Why is it that the only books that mention it seem to be ones from Soviet
or Russian authors? Where is there ANYONE who made this claim before 1959?

Perhaps Mr Holsztynski would care to explain his preferred methods of
'historical research' here?

The London rules (that contained no 5-5 tie rule) had been advocated by
Capablanca himself as well as a number of other noted players of the day.
If Capablanca had sought to depart from his own proposal by requiring someone
challenging him to finish two or more points ahead of Capablanca, one would
think that there would have been a lot of comment, particularly from Alekhine
who later wrote at length about the match. It does not seem likely that such
an event could have happened and only turn up in some Soviet and Russian
books decades later.

For whatever it's worth, as an example of Wlodzimierz Holsztynski's methods of
'historical research', in the thread, "Stalin in 1919-20" (which Mr Holsztynski
created), Wlodzimierz Holsztynski cited a Russian website--which, in response,
Simon Spivack ('chapman Billy') characterised as a 'hagiography' of Stalin and
accordingly unreliable as a historical reference--as his *only source* to
support his vehement assertions (which had been expressed to me previously
along with his characteristic ad hominem nonsense) that "Stalin had very
little to do with the 1919-1920 Polish-Soviet Russia War" (23 November 2003).

"I have never read a book where it was suggested that Stalin did
*not* have an important role in the Russo-Polish war of 1920."
--Simon ('chapman Billy', 25 November 2003, "Stalin in 1919-20")

William Winter, Harry Golombek, Bernard Cafferty, and William Hartston
have all written accounts of the Capablanca-Alekhine match that did not
include a word about any 5-5 condition.

But all of those writers were British. Perhaps they all might have been
part of a British conspiracy to confute Wlodzimierz Holsztynski? :-)

"I am not any historian, not even an amateur historian."
- Wlodzimierz Holsztynski (2002-10-01 04:40:37 PST)

As far as I can tell, Mr Wlodzimierz Holsztynski seems to lack any
academic training in the comparative analysis of historical sources.

Wlodzimierz Holsztynski wrote (2004-01-11 15:05:20 PST):
In a contrast to Karpov, Alechine didn't back up. Nor did he try to sway
FIDE or the public opinion that Capablanca's title should be declared void.
No, in a contrast to Karpov, Alechine didn't grab the title for nothing,
he won it over the board.

As mentioned above, it is far from being an established historical fact that
Alekhine agreed to a 5-5 condition. Also, even if he had agreed, it would
not have been comparable to Karpov's 1975 situation. In 1927, there was no
F. I. D. E. in control of the title. We have no way to know what Alekhine
would have done if there had been a Capablanca 5-5 demand and an F. I. D. E.
in a position to rule that such a demand would have been unreasonable.

Thanks for writing another of your well-researched posts on chess history.

--Nick