On Jan 16, 8:21 am, "Chess One" wrote:
The intent of the Vignette was plain enough - the player was the next best
scorer compared with the lead scorer, and he wan't 8 places behind, but
immediately behind. Maybe other Californians can say if 'right behind' only
means half a point behind in their system of speaking?

After first raising this point

[half-point? grin]

and carping on it, and as seems necessary for him these days, declaring his
correspondent dishonest [presumably not as dishonest as Mussolini], stating
that his attention span is exhausted by dealing with mortals, etc, as usual
our precision-merchant has run off, declaring himself victorious - somewhat
negating his other writing to the subject, as if, that too, might be subject
to one and only one perspective.

Notice how Innes and Mitchell quibble only about the one semantic
point in my critique, but say little or nothing about the factual
errors it reports. Checking "Chess Vignettes" today, it looks like none
of the errors have been corrected. I reprise my comments, in the hope
that they may act as responsible custodians of chess history rather
than newsgroup nitwits:

A few things in the Frank Marshall article strike me as odd:

1) Marshalll is described as "conqueror of Lasker, Capablanca,
Rubinstein." While he did win some games against these three, overall
he had a decidedly losing record against them, especially the first
two: +2 -12 =11 vs. Lasker, +2 -22 =28 vs. Capablanca, and +9 -11
=16 vs. Rubinstein. These are hardly the stats of a conqueror. It would

have been more accurate to say something like "At various times
Marshall won games against Lasker, Capablanca, Rubinstein and other
greats of his day."

2) "In 1904 [Marshall] won the Cambridge Springs event by 1.5
points over Lasker; it was Lasker's first tournament defeat in ten
years!" If by "tournament defeat" you mean that Lasker failed to
take first place, the span of time involved was not ten years, but well

less than nine. The Hastings tournament, where Lasker placed 3rd,
finished on 2 September 1895, while Cambridge Springs ended 19 May
1904, making the time span 8 years, 8 months, and 17 days.

3) "Frank Marshall's fighting style and sense of fair play made
his games exciting to watch." While a sense of fair play can make one
an honorable person, it has no bearing on whether one's games are
exciting to watch. Any move allowed by the rules is fair.

A few comments on the Kashdan article:

1) It says: "In 1932 [Kashdan] ... tied 2nd with Flohr at
Hastings." Incorrect. At Hastings 1931-32, Flohr was clear first,
Kashdan clear second. Neither of them tied with anyone else.

2) "He was 2nd, right behind Capablanca in New York, 1931." The
phrase "right behind" implies that Kashdan was only ½-point
behind, but in fact he was 1½ points behind, 8½-2½ to Capa's 10-1.

3) "In 1932 he tied 2nd behind Alekhine in Pasadena ..." Again,
incorrect. At Pasadena 1932, Alekhine was clear first, Kashdan clear
second. Neither of them tied with anyone else. I suspect the Polish
writer here has some problems with English, though elsewhere he uses
the word "tied" correctly.

4) "[Kashdan] was US Open Champion in 1938 (jointly) and 1947 but
never won the Open Championship outright." False. He won clear 1st in
the 1947 US Open. I suppose what was meant is that he never won the
Closed Championship.

5) "He tied with Samuel Reshevsky in 1942 US Open ..." False.
That was the 1942 US Championship, not the US Open. The writer does not

seem to understand the difference between the US Open, a Swiss System
event open to all comers, and the US Championship, which in Kashdan's
time was a round-robin tournament by invitation only.

6) "After World War II, Kashdan ... was also the co-founder of
Chess Review." Chess Review was begun in 1933, not after WW II.

7) Of Kashdan's Olympic record, the article says "He won two
gold, one silver, one bronze, individual medals and one fourth place
overall finish." This is wording is a bit awkward and creates some
confusion as to whether individual or team medals are being discussed.
Either way, it has factual inaccuracies.
As an individual, Kashdan had the following Olympic results:

1928: Best board one score (individual gold medal) and best overall
(86.7%).
1930: 4th-best board one score (82.4%, behind Alekhine, Rubinstein,
and Flohr). However, it was not a "fourth place overall finish" as
claimed in the article: Kashdan's score was also exceeded by
Havasi's 85.7% (+10 =4) at 5th board for Hungary.
1931: 3rd-best board one score (70.6%, behind Alekhine and
Bogolyubov, individual bronze medal).
1933: 2nd-best board one score (71.4%, behind Alekhine, individual
silver medal).
1937: Best board three score (87.5%, individual gold medal). This
appears to be the best overall score as well, though Foldeak's
"Chess Olympiads" says that prize went to Andre Steiner, despite
the crosstable showing him with a score of 80.6%.

US teams with Kashdan had the following results:

1928: 2nd place (silver medal)
1930: 6th place
1931: 1st place (gold medal)
1933: 1st place (gold medal)
1937: 1st place (gold medal)

8) "He defeated Lajos Steiner (+5, =2, -3) ..." The Oxford
Companion says the score was +5 -1, but checking other sources (e.g.
Feenstra Kuiper's "Hundert Jahre Schachzweikämpfe"), I believe
+5 -2 =3 is correct. If not, ChessBase has four spurious
Kashdan-Steiner games on its MegaDatabase 2005. It's nice that the
article gets at least this right.

9) "Few have contributed more to the development of the chess life
in USA than GM Isaac Kashdan." That is very true.

Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Jan 16, 8:21 am, "Chess One" wrote:
The intent of the Vignette was plain enough - the player was the next best
scorer compared with the lead scorer, and he wan't 8 places behind, but
immediately behind. Maybe other Californians can say if 'right behind' only
means half a point behind in their system of speaking?

After first raising this point

[half-point? grin]

and carping on it, and as seems necessary for him these days, declaring his
correspondent dishonest [presumably not as dishonest as Mussolini], stating
that his attention span is exhausted by dealing with mortals, etc, as usual
our precision-merchant has run off, declaring himself victorious - somewhat
negating his other writing to the subject, as if, that too, might be subject
to one and only one perspective.

Notice how Innes and Mitchell quibble only about the one semantic
point in my critique, but say little or nothing about the factual
errors it reports. Checking "Chess Vignettes" today, it looks like none
of the errors have been corrected. I reprise my comments, in the hope
that they may act as responsible custodians of chess history rather
than newsgroup nitwits:

Taylor,
If you disagree with something in the New York Times it would be
pointless and ignorant to complain about it in the Monteray News.
Posting corrections here means nothing. Send your corrections or
complaints to the editor/publisher/author of the article. This is not a
forum to correct anything.

conqueror, vanquisher: someone who is victorious by force of arms, by
force of intellect,by force of will

I do not disagree but niether do I agree with you. I can simply state
that if I ever beat you at a game I would tell everyone I defeated,
bested or conquered you over the board... at least once.

Again, if you care enough to point out errors then at least be prudent
enough to pursue corrections in the appropriate forum.

Rob

On Jan 16, 9:41 am, "Rob" wrote:
Taylor,
If you disagree with something in the New York Times it would be
pointless and ignorant to complain about it in the Monteray News.
Posting corrections here means nothing. Send your corrections or
complaints to the editor/publisher/author of the article. This is not a
forum to correct anything.

Indeed? Then neither is it a forum to advertise anything. If you post
an announcement about something here, you must accept feedback about it
here.

"Taylor Kingston" wrote in message
ups.com...


On Jan 16, 8:21 am, "Chess One" wrote:
The intent of the Vignette was plain enough - the player was the next best
scorer compared with the lead scorer, and he wan't 8 places behind, but
immediately behind. Maybe other Californians can say if 'right behind'
only
means half a point behind in their system of speaking?

After first raising this point

[half-point? grin]

and carping on it, and as seems necessary for him these days, declaring
his
correspondent dishonest [presumably not as dishonest as Mussolini],
stating
that his attention span is exhausted by dealing with mortals, etc, as
usual
our precision-merchant has run off, declaring himself victorious -
somewhat
negating his other writing to the subject, as if, that too, might be
subject
to one and only one perspective.

Notice how Innes and Mitchell quibble only about the one semantic
point in my critique, but say little or nothing about the factual
errors it reports.

--Notice how he who raised the issue, announced he would depart it, now
paraphrases a direct quotation inaccurately, since I did in fact write of
his 'other writing'. Having found himself at fault, Kingston immediately
blames other people - and yet the point of finding discussing this fault is
whether right or wrong, for Mr. Kingston there is only one point of view,
and discussion is discouraged.


Checking "Chess Vignettes" today, it looks like none
of the errors have been corrected. I reprise my comments, in the hope
that they may act as responsible custodians of chess history rather
than newsgroup nitwits:

--They is who? Neither Rob Mitchell nor I wrote the piece. I suppose if
Kingston wanted to make corrections to the Vignette he would write to its
editor and state his opinions, perhaps suggesting language he would prefer,
making clear any substantive matters of fact. I can't think that changing
text to "At various times....and other greats of his day." is so very
precise, since who would think Marshall did it all at one time? Anyway,
since Mr. Kingston does not like the slightest other point of view, there is
hardly any reason to suggest other improvement to his own writing and
perspectives offered below.

Phil Innes



A few things in the Frank Marshall article strike me as odd:

1) Marshalll is described as "conqueror of Lasker, Capablanca,
Rubinstein." While he did win some games against these three, overall
he had a decidedly losing record against them, especially the first
two: +2 -12 =11 vs. Lasker, +2 -22 =28 vs. Capablanca, and +9 -11
=16 vs. Rubinstein. These are hardly the stats of a conqueror. It would

have been more accurate to say something like "At various times
Marshall won games against Lasker, Capablanca, Rubinstein and other
greats of his day."

2) "In 1904 [Marshall] won the Cambridge Springs event by 1.5
points over Lasker; it was Lasker's first tournament defeat in ten
years!" If by "tournament defeat" you mean that Lasker failed to
take first place, the span of time involved was not ten years, but well

less than nine. The Hastings tournament, where Lasker placed 3rd,
finished on 2 September 1895, while Cambridge Springs ended 19 May
1904, making the time span 8 years, 8 months, and 17 days.

3) "Frank Marshall's fighting style and sense of fair play made
his games exciting to watch." While a sense of fair play can make one
an honorable person, it has no bearing on whether one's games are
exciting to watch. Any move allowed by the rules is fair.

A few comments on the Kashdan article:

1) It says: "In 1932 [Kashdan] ... tied 2nd with Flohr at
Hastings." Incorrect. At Hastings 1931-32, Flohr was clear first,
Kashdan clear second. Neither of them tied with anyone else.

2) "He was 2nd, right behind Capablanca in New York, 1931." The
phrase "right behind" implies that Kashdan was only ½-point
behind, but in fact he was 1½ points behind, 8½-2½ to Capa's 10-1.

3) "In 1932 he tied 2nd behind Alekhine in Pasadena ..." Again,
incorrect. At Pasadena 1932, Alekhine was clear first, Kashdan clear
second. Neither of them tied with anyone else. I suspect the Polish
writer here has some problems with English, though elsewhere he uses
the word "tied" correctly.

4) "[Kashdan] was US Open Champion in 1938 (jointly) and 1947 but
never won the Open Championship outright." False. He won clear 1st in
the 1947 US Open. I suppose what was meant is that he never won the
Closed Championship.

5) "He tied with Samuel Reshevsky in 1942 US Open ..." False.
That was the 1942 US Championship, not the US Open. The writer does not

seem to understand the difference between the US Open, a Swiss System
event open to all comers, and the US Championship, which in Kashdan's
time was a round-robin tournament by invitation only.

6) "After World War II, Kashdan ... was also the co-founder of
Chess Review." Chess Review was begun in 1933, not after WW II.

7) Of Kashdan's Olympic record, the article says "He won two
gold, one silver, one bronze, individual medals and one fourth place
overall finish." This is wording is a bit awkward and creates some
confusion as to whether individual or team medals are being discussed.
Either way, it has factual inaccuracies.
As an individual, Kashdan had the following Olympic results:

1928: Best board one score (individual gold medal) and best overall
(86.7%).
1930: 4th-best board one score (82.4%, behind Alekhine, Rubinstein,
and Flohr). However, it was not a "fourth place overall finish" as
claimed in the article: Kashdan's score was also exceeded by
Havasi's 85.7% (+10 =4) at 5th board for Hungary.
1931: 3rd-best board one score (70.6%, behind Alekhine and
Bogolyubov, individual bronze medal).
1933: 2nd-best board one score (71.4%, behind Alekhine, individual
silver medal).
1937: Best board three score (87.5%, individual gold medal). This
appears to be the best overall score as well, though Foldeak's
"Chess Olympiads" says that prize went to Andre Steiner, despite
the crosstable showing him with a score of 80.6%.

US teams with Kashdan had the following results:

1928: 2nd place (silver medal)
1930: 6th place
1931: 1st place (gold medal)
1933: 1st place (gold medal)
1937: 1st place (gold medal)

8) "He defeated Lajos Steiner (+5, =2, -3) ..." The Oxford
Companion says the score was +5 -1, but checking other sources (e.g.
Feenstra Kuiper's "Hundert Jahre Schachzweikämpfe"), I believe
+5 -2 =3 is correct. If not, ChessBase has four spurious
Kashdan-Steiner games on its MegaDatabase 2005. It's nice that the
article gets at least this right.

9) "Few have contributed more to the development of the chess life
in USA than GM Isaac Kashdan." That is very true.

Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Jan 16, 9:41 am, "Rob" wrote:
Taylor,
If you disagree with something in the New York Times it would be
pointless and ignorant to complain about it in the Monteray News.
Posting corrections here means nothing. Send your corrections or
complaints to the editor/publisher/author of the article. This is not a
forum to correct anything.

Indeed? Then neither is it a forum to advertise anything. If you post
an announcement about something here, you must accept feedback about it
here.

Hey buddy, All I said was it was a neat new section. I guess you might
consider that an advertisement in the most liberal defination but I
don't. Feed back is fine. But to whine about corrections not being made
when you refuse to write to the publication is asinine. sp? let me to
that phonetically... ass- a-nine. :-) saves you the extra smart aleck
step of stying babelfish didnt have it.


Now.. why didn't you comment about the synonym of the word "victor"?

On Jan 16, 10:32 am, "Rob" wrote:
Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Jan 16, 9:41 am, "Rob" wrote:
Taylor,
If you disagree with something in the New York Times it would be
pointless and ignorant to complain about it in the Monteray News.
Posting corrections here means nothing. Send your corrections or
complaints to the editor/publisher/author of the article. This is not a
forum to correct anything.

Indeed? Then neither is it a forum to advertise anything. If you post
an announcement about something here, you must accept feedback about it
here.

Hey buddy, All I said was it was a neat new section.

It's not -- it's a sloppy new section.

I guess you might
consider that an advertisement in the most liberal defination but I
don't. Feed back is fine. But to whine about corrections not being made
when you refuse to write to the publication is asinine.

Chessville is Phil Innes' baby, not mine -- at least, last I heard,
he still called himself their business manager. If he prefers to let
the site mislead readers, leaving known errors there as a monument to
his own ignorance, indolence and stubbornness, who am I to say him nay?

Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Jan 16, 10:32 am, "Rob" wrote:
Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Jan 16, 9:41 am, "Rob" wrote:
Taylor,
If you disagree with something in the New York Times it would be
pointless and ignorant to complain about it in the Monteray News.
Posting corrections here means nothing. Send your corrections or
complaints to the editor/publisher/author of the article. This is not a
forum to correct anything.

Indeed? Then neither is it a forum to advertise anything. If you post
an announcement about something here, you must accept feedback about it
here.

Hey buddy, All I said was it was a neat new section.


It's not -- it's a sloppy new section.

All I said was it was a neat new section. If you have a different
opinion you are entitled to it but it makes it no more valuable than
any others.

I guess you might
consider that an advertisement in the most liberal defination but I
don't. Feed back is fine. But to whine about corrections not being made
when you refuse to write to the publication is asinine.


Chessville is Phil Innes' baby, not mine -- at least, last I heard,
he still called himself their business manager.

Being a business manager is not the same as being an editor. Now if
you have some insight into the publishing business that I don't, please
enlighten me.

If he prefers to let
the site mislead readers, leaving known errors there as a monument to
his own ignorance, indolence and stubbornness, who am I to say him nay?

Now, I demand that you prove what you have just stated.Do it within the
context of what you know to be true and proveable not simply conjecture
and assumptions. Do it based upon your knowledge of this thread and
this thread only. If you can't, I want to to either publically
appologize or simply never comment about anything that I post about
ever again.

Your above statement has nothing to do with the previous comment. If
you simply want to rant and rave and attack Phil Innes or me, then just
be direct about it and change the thread title to something like " My
name is Taylor and I hate Phil and Rob and want to demonstrate that I
am brilliant and they are not because I have an arrogant over inflated
sense of self worth" I realize that is a long title for a thread but I
am sure you can figure a way to shorten it..

Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Jan 15, 6:31 am, "Rob" wrote:
Chessville has a new section that those interested in chess history may

enjoy.

http://www.chessville.com/misc/Histo...ttes/index.htm

Check it out. It is unique in that it is reader driven.

A few things in the Frank Marshall article strike me as odd:

1) Marhalll is described as "conqueror of Lasker, Capablanca,
Rubinstein." While he did win some games against these three, overall
he had a decidedly losing record against them, especially the first
two: +2 -12 =11 vs. Lasker, +2 -22 =28 vs. Capablanca, and +9 -11
=16 vs. Rubinstein. These are hardly the stats of a conqueror. It would
have been more accurate to say something like "At various times
Marshall won games against Lasker, Capablanca, Rubinstein and other
greats of his day."

It is not incorrect. I am sure there is even an improvement over your
suggestion as well if one were trying to be completely precise..

2) "In 1904 [Marshall] won the Cambridge Springs event by 1.5
points over Lasker; it was Lasker's first tournament defeat in ten
years!" If by "tournament defeat" you mean that Lasker failed to
take first place, the span of time involved was not ten years, but well
less than nine. The Hastings tournament, where Lasker placed 3rd,
finished on 2 September 1895, while Cambridge Springs ended 19 May
1904, making the time span 8 years, 8 months, and 17 days.

Again, it is not incorrect. 8 is nearly 10 given it's proximity to 10
and it's distance from 1.
It could be said more precisely but to do so would in no way alter or
improve what was written. I think it would render it more clinical and
less interesting to read.

3) "Frank Marshall's fighting style and sense of fair play made
his games exciting to watch." While a sense of fair play can make one
an honorable person, it has no bearing on whether one's games are
exciting to watch. Any move allowed by the rules is fair.

You ignored the word "and". It is obvious to me that waht the author
was saying was that Marshall was interesting to watch and to read about
because of his exciting play and his sense of fairness.(I think the
example was his acting as an advocate for Capablanca.)

"Taylor Kingston" wrote in message
ps.com...


On Jan 16, 10:32 am, "Rob" wrote:
Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Jan 16, 9:41 am, "Rob" wrote:
Taylor,
If you disagree with something in the New York Times it would be
pointless and ignorant to complain about it in the Monteray News.
Posting corrections here means nothing. Send your corrections or
complaints to the editor/publisher/author of the article. This is not
a
forum to correct anything.

Indeed? Then neither is it a forum to advertise anything. If you post
an announcement about something here, you must accept feedback about it
here.

Hey buddy, All I said was it was a neat new section.

It's not -- it's a sloppy new section.

I guess you might
consider that an advertisement in the most liberal defination but I
don't. Feed back is fine. But to whine about corrections not being made
when you refuse to write to the publication is asinine.

Chessville is Phil Innes' baby, not mine -- at least, last I heard,
he still called himself their business manager. If he prefers to let
the site mislead readers, leaving known errors there as a monument to
his own ignorance, indolence and stubbornness, who am I to say him nay?

A compulsive abusive, sour loud-mouth out-of-work chess hack?

It is interesting to watch Kingston 'discuss' things with other people on
the "be in my club basis or I'll hit you with it".

MEANWHILE; BACK IN THE TRENCHES

All I see here is the difficulty of resolving 500-700 words of player
biograph to everyone's satisfaction at the first throw, which may not even
be possible - but at least there is a will to evolve it. I don't see any
resistance to making sensible amendments, but Kingston's are not sensible,
and if the original is diffident to sense, the rubuke is equally so!

One reason to create these /reader-supplied/ bios was the malicious
destruction of other work at Wikipedia for similar reasons. As readers can
see, personal preferences to wording are quite distinct from amending
established matters of fact - but the same negativity applies by taking some
very slight instance, or quibble, and trashing the whole thing.

If Kingston is such a paragon of correctness he might try his own submission
to the editor of the column, and instead of beggar the subject, demonstrate
the right way!

Vignettes is a good format for either brief life biographies, or anecdotes
about a player or an event. And there is much unrecorded material on
American players worthy of attention. What is unworthy of anyone's time is
to bitch over what are no more than personal foibles.

Certainly the hit-rate for such material is very good, players seem
genuinely interested in chess history, and I recommend anyone here having a
go at writing a bio or a few anecdotes about their favorite player. Several
thousand unique hits /per day/ are recorded and more people will read your
effort than ever read Chess Life, and your name will be appended [if you
wish] to your submission, plus links to more substantial reading should you
think it warranted.

I do not edit this column, but suggested it as a regular feature as well as
recruiting its editor, who will by these means recruit writing from the
chess public.

Mr. Kingston protests too much about what is good, and what can be better,
which is not to deny him his views, nor necessarily disagree with him. But
it is something like Winter's suggested chess writing; while we would agree
with his list, Winter himself is not about to do it. This fact recommends a
less acerbic stance from Winter, and from others deploying a similar
/modus/.

Phil Innes