Chess One wrote:
"help bot" wrote in message
oups.com...

My take on Jr's post was not that he was being a hypocrite, but
rather I simply don't comprehend the meaning of the phrase "phony
screen name". Sure, someone who impersonates, say, Sam Sloan, could be
accused of posting under a phony name. But apart from this, what can
he possibly mean by "phony" in conjunction with "screen name"? A
screen name is, by definition, not a person's real name. For example,
Larry Parr posts under the screen name "parrthenon"; Phil Innes posts
under the screen name "Chess One"; Taylor Kingston, under "Xylothist"
(Oops!).

Cut to it, Ace. Its lying about who you are that's the issue - especially if
you 'write to yourself'.

I agree, and I'll bet that Greg does as well.

Some people simply hide their identities because they have hidden interests
in the result of the conversation, or 'are acting for friends' who have.
These Joes are called 'proxies'.

I agree, and I'll bet that Greg does as well.

Is a "phony" screen name any screen name which is not the primary
screen name used by the poster in question? Who decides how many
different screen name are allowed, and by what authority? The very
concept falls flat on its face.

You still think you can soft-soap the issue?

People who can identify themselves seem more apt to own their own experience
and write without shame about it, rather than write endless diatribes
regretting the experience of others.

I tend to agree here as well, Phil, and I do appreciate that you sign
your name to posts -- as I do.

However, it's pretty well known around these parts that help bot is
Greg Kennedy, so I don't quite agree that his not posting his name at
the bottom makes the posts less valid and less "his." There are some
quite valid reasons for not posting one's name, for example to not have
a zillion Google searches under your name come up with nutty usenet
posts by others.

Randy Bauer

Its an experiential thing. If you don't know about it, will you continue to
speculate on it, like a maid?

Phil Innes


-- help bot

"Larry Tapper" wrote in message
oups.com...


By the way, Phil, I don't recall your answering my question about
whether you were indeed ducking our proposed grudge match, even though
the prize fund is generous and I've offered to play the match in your
home state. What have you got to lose?

Not sleep. I replied that its likely I'll be on tour this Summer, and would
look you up in NY city.

I must confess I'm beginning to suspect that when you wrote you were
"nearly an IM", you meant that you once stood close enough to an IM to
smell the vodka on his breath.

You talk too much for a good player. Maybe I'll try E60.

Phil

Larry T.

Chess One wrote:
"Larry Tapper" wrote in message
oups.com...


By the way, Phil, I don't recall your answering my question about
whether you were indeed ducking our proposed grudge match, even though
the prize fund is generous and I've offered to play the match in your
home state. What have you got to lose?

Not sleep. I replied that its likely I'll be on tour this Summer, and would
look you up in NY city.

I believe Mr. Tapper has mentioned that there would be no point to
that, since he lives in North Carolina.

"Larry Tapper" wrote in message
oups.com...
Phil,

So what is this, a "Yes" or a "No" or "Maybe some time when I can find
a break in my busy schedule posting to rgcp 37 times a day"?

yes. i get up at about 5 every day - this morning i interviewed bessel kok -
if you want to read what's in store for chess either way, you might take a
look at his responses this weekend

this afternoon i have to work on a tv series for chess. i owe several people
messages on a pedagogy for chess courses, and besides, am reading some
interesting cognitive psychology material which seems chess related - then
there is something to write on Sir Thomas Browne [1605-1682] an early
researcher into misconceptions [that is, on mis-perceptions], who published
in 1646, but who himself held odd views, like on the subject of
dendranthopology, citing the Religio Medici [pbl. 1635]. an early physician
who approached psychological subjects vis-a-vis perception, and more
anticipating Konrad Lorenz than Freud or Adler. - it is mostly supposed that
there is a greater understanding these days, but as Lorenz points out,
specualtion far exceeds observation, and much, very much speculation is
profoundly wrong

i haven't played serious chess for 25 years or more, but made it to master
as a kid with hardly a book! as black i'll play a pelikan or against d4,
e60. how's your nimzo? i hope you won't be wasting my time. as white i'll
wing it as usual

sorry not to be overly obliging, but bull****ting about chess instead of
playing it is for others and acromaniacs

phil

Larry T.

LT By the way, Phil, I don't recall your answering my question about
whether you were indeed ducking our proposed grudge match, even though
the prize fund is generous and I've offered to play the match in your
home state. What have you got to lose?

PI Not sleep. I replied that its likely I'll be on tour this Summer,
and would look you up in NY city.

LT I must confess I'm beginning to suspect that when you wrote you
were "nearly an IM", you meant that you once stood close enough to an
IM to smell the vodka on his breath.

PI You talk too much for a good player. Maybe I'll try E60.

PI Phil

By the way, Phil, I don't recall your answering my question about
whether you were indeed ducking our proposed grudge match, even though
the prize fund is generous and I've offered to play the match in your
home state. What have you got to lose?


Not sleep. I replied that its likely I'll be on tour this Summer, and would look you up in NY city.

TK I believe Mr. Tapper has mentioned that there would be no point to
that, since he lives in North Carolina.

Yes I did mention that, but once Phil gets a notion in his head, mere
facts are of little consequence. I remember a few years ago he somehow
convinced himself that I was a right-wing ideologue who wrote articles
for the New Criterion.

Anyway, I've said repeatedly that I'd be willing to play a match in
Montpelier. I don't see how I could make it much easier.

Larry T.

Taylor Kingston wrote:
Perhaps now we have the reason Keene's books have so many mistakes --
he doesn't read! If GM Keene will be so kind as to look at the thread
with the mysterious title "Kingston replies to Keene," he will see that
it answers him point by point, and was posted on 1 May, 5:22 PM eastern
daylight time, i.e. over 5 hours BEFORE Keene posted the above claim to
be "still waiting."

Perhaps if Mr Kingston would follow the usual USENET convention of
posting followups as followups instead of new threads, this confusion
could have been avoided?


Dave.

--
David Richerby Mentholated Hi-Fi (TM): it's like a
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ music system but it's invigorating!

"Larry Tapper" wrote in message
oups.com...
By the way, Phil, I don't recall your answering my question about
whether you were indeed ducking our proposed grudge match, even though
the prize fund is generous and I've offered to play the match in your
home state. What have you got to lose?


Not sleep. I replied that its likely I'll be on tour this Summer, and
would look you up in NY city.

TK I believe Mr. Tapper has mentioned that there would be no point to
that, since he lives in North Carolina.

Yes I did mention that, but once Phil gets a notion in his head, mere
facts are of little consequence. I remember a few years ago he somehow
convinced himself that I was a right-wing ideologue who wrote articles
for the New Criterion.

really? it wasn't from me. somehow i bet your memory is better than your
research skills

what you 'missed' about my first message was a preference in my own tribe on
how to settle disputes - i merely thought you were being a 'net-mouth' about
it, [common, no?] and chose to 'not notice'

there is not the slightest chance of visiting the carolinas this summer, and
if you come here you might be civil or take your chances

Anyway, I've said repeatedly that I'd be willing to play a match in
Montpelier. I don't see how I could make it much easier.

i doubt you do

phil innes

Larry T.

David Richerby wrote:
Taylor Kingston wrote:
Perhaps now we have the reason Keene's books have so many mistakes --
he doesn't read! If GM Keene will be so kind as to look at the thread
with the mysterious title "Kingston replies to Keene," he will see that
it answers him point by point, and was posted on 1 May, 5:22 PM eastern
daylight time, i.e. over 5 hours BEFORE Keene posted the above claim to
be "still waiting."

Perhaps if Mr Kingston would follow the usual USENET convention of
posting followups as followups instead of new threads, this confusion
could have been avoided?

I made a new thread for the sake of clarity. This thread has already
drifted off into several irrelevant tangents and petty matters,
clouding the discussion. I hoped a new thread would stay on the topic
of my reply to Keene, at least for a while.
In any event, if Keene feels entitled to start a new thread titled
"Keene reviews Kingston," I do not see why I should be denied the right
to start a separate thread to reply. There is no evasion in this; the
title "Kingston replies to Keene" makes it *very* clear what it's
about.

What is truly amazing about this thread is GM Keene's hypocritical
behavior.

Keene is accused of numerous instances of sordid behavior, from writing
insta-books in a few days which are full of typos of mistakes to
writing a book about the 1983 semi-final and calling it "World
Championship" on the front cover. Keene has numerous explanations and
excuses for his sordid behavior, though they consist mostly of the con
man's eternal two excuses, that is, "everybody does it" and "it's
somebody else's fault" ("somebody else" ranging, according to recent
posts by Keene in this newsgroup alone, from Campomanes and Korchnoi to
Keene's lowly typsetters.)

But Keene demands that, just because he has such a sordid record, this
is no justification whatever for anybody to conclude that he is a
sordid human being. As his excuses make clear, all that bad stuff just
happened, and HE remains untouched, full of good intentions and
encyclopediadic knowledge of chess. Anybody who thinks otherwise is,
surely, part of the "Winter ratpack" to defame poor, innocent him.

Notice, now, the difference between what treatment Keene demands for
himself and how he treats others.

What did he prove Taylor Kingston did? Did Keene prove--as was proven
against him--that Taylor's work misled the readers, was plagiarized,
was copied carelessly from elsewhere, was full of typos and historical
blunders, or was written in a couple of days with no regard for
accuracy? No, of course not. He "proved" that Kingston didn't look at
the analysis in a game when commenting about the historical
introduction to it, and that Kingston "often" (twice in ten years)
reviewed Keene's book. These horrific crimes, which in reality of
course are no "crimes" at all, are for Keene "proof" that Taylor is a
most sordid, conspiratorial, incompetent, and jealous person, out to
get him.

Suddenly, Keene has *no problem whatever* guessing what Kingston's
state of mind and character are, based on this "evidence", despite the
fact that he claims total puzzlement as to how the fact that he
repeatedly wrote gaffe-filled insta-books that hit the market before
the last pawn was pushed in some chess event could POSSIBLY make
someone conclude that his state of mind is "let's make a quick buck".

What a hypocrite!

Ray Keene wrote, via :
My impression is reinforced by Taylor Kingstons review of my book on
the Kasparov vs. Kramnik world chess championship in London 2000.
Why, by the way, does he so often seem to review my books.

He doesn't. Hardly any of his reviews are of your books.


As for self congratulation, I raised millions for the London 2000
championship, organised it as match director, wrote daily reports
for the Times, explained the games during play, co-hosted the
webcast with GM Danny King and wrote notes to each game as it was
being played for the book -- sometimes dictating them by mobile
phone as I was explaining moves to the assembled guests

This is exactly the problem! How on earth can one expect any great
insight in a book written by a man rushed off his feet doing a million
and one other things? Do you mention anywhere in these books that
they are not given your full attention and, therefore, should be
expected to be of a lower quality than a book that you had spent more
and better time on?


I have news for him. The world moves on and events are swiftly
forgotten. Nothing better came along. My book on that match, graced
with an introduction by prime minister Tony Blair, is the best you
are going to get. By the way, it has been reprinted twice!

How is the authorship of the introduction relevant to anything? Blair
isn't exactly revered around the world as an expert on chess.


However, if a sentence appears under my name saying that Euwe's
match victory against Alekhine was in 1937 rather then 1935,Ii think
the reader might accept this as a typo and not a fundamentally wrong
assertion.

Quite. But do you not think that the rushed nature of the production
of some of your books makes such typos more likely?


2. I have been accused by TK of all sorts of historical blunders,
involving Alekhine vs. Capablanca, Alekhine vs. Euwe, Botvinnik vs.
Smyslov and so on. If one were to accept everything he alleges then
my books would presumably not be so successful.

Are you denying that you ever wrote these things? If we are to take
sales as the measure of accuracy, we will have to accept that _The
Sun_ is the most accurate newspaper in the UK and, somehow, I don't
believe that.


I visited Buenos Aires and actually handled the board and pieces
Alekhine and Capablanca played with in 1927.

I fail to see how this is relevant to anything. I have shaken the
hand that Kasparov used to move the pieces in all of his six World
Championship Matches but that doesn't qualify me to write books about
them.


b) TK further attacks me for something I wrote in a book a quarter
of a century ago where I excoriated Steinitz's tournament record
during a certain period. I described it as abysmal. Well it was
during this periodbecause he didn't play any tournaments at all. I
have used the same word, or one similar, to describe Bobby Fischer's
record as world champion because hd did not play at all. I fail to
see what's wrong with that.

It's technically correct but misleading. If you meant that it was
abysmal that he didn't play in any tournaments, you should have said
that. The reader is likely to infer from the statement that `Steinitz
tournament record was abysmal' that he did very badly in tournaments
during the relevant period, which is not the case.


f) TK says that I wrongly described Kasparov's match save in 1987 as
the first time in 75 years that a player had come from behind to
secure the title. I would appreciate a little more chapter, verse
and context here. [...] For example, had the sentence gone "the
first time a player had come from behind in 75 years to win the
title by winning the final game" then my assertion would be true!

I think we can assume that Kingston is not quoting you wildly out of
context here. After all, I'm sure you must have written dozens of
sentences of the form `X had never happened before, apart from at Y'
or `there are no other example of X, apart from Y' which would give
Kingston a rich seam of false criticisms were he minded to use them.


i) Next TK squeals that by quoting his review of my Nimzo book in
depth that his copyright was infringed. I would reply that in his
original review of my book he quoted far more than would until
recently have been the permissible norm in the UK, and he didn't ask
me first!

Firstly, US copyright law is markedly different from English law.
Secondly, the portions of your books quoted by Kingston are negligible
-- the odd sentence here and there from a 250-page book amounts to
surely less than half a page: less than 0.2%. This has always, to the
best of my knowledge, been permitted under English, let alone
American, law. You, on the other hand, quoted Kingston's review
verbatim, in its entirety. This is straightforward, unauthorized
reproduction of a copyrighted work and is not, and never has been,
permitted under English or US copyright law.


I should mention that the recent Da Vinci copyright case in London
appeared, however, to establish that copyright cannot be breached if
the author is supplying fact.

It didn't establish that at all. It is not `fact' that Jesus married
Mary Magdalene and they had children: there is no evidence that this
happened. The case failed because the judge did not agree that Brown
had substantially copied Leigh and Baigent's work.

You may mean that copyright does not subsist in an idea but, rather,
in the expression of the idea. Therefore, if I were to write a book
asserting that Nimzowitsch was not a chess-player but a piece of
cheese, you would be welcome to write a book on exactly the same
subject, as long as you expressed the idea in a significantly
different way.

See, for example,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4888954.stm


Dave.

--
David Richerby Electronic Flammable Beer (TM): it's
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ like a refreshing lager but it burns
really easily and it uses electricity!