On Nov 12, 10:37 pm, " wrote:

...As Larry Tapper points out, its main value
was an experiment in forensic game analysis. It was because of
this article that the case has been re-examined extensively.

Right, but I put it in the form of a conditional:

"It seems to me that if Evans contributed anything of value to the
debate, it had to be his experiment with forensic game analysis."

And in this case I believe that the antecedent is false.

It seems to me that Evans' theory of forensic analysis was basically a
non-starter because of his criteria for fishiness. Evans made the
reasonable conjecture that a top GM looking to throw a game would be
motivated to avert immediate suspicion and would therefore tend to
make subtle errors rather than blatantly obvious blunders. So far so
good. But the problem is that the outcomes of decisive GM games are
quite _typically_ determined by errors in this general category. Are
half of all GM victories therefore under a cloud of suspicion?

As I recall, Exhibit A in Evans' analysis was a rook endgame position
in which Keres unnecessarily placed his rook passively. A player of
Keres' caliber would never make a move like that, the argument went.
OK, but I have recent endgame books by Belyavsky and Dvoretsky that
feature dozens of examples of strong GMs making horrible mistakes in
fairly simple rook endgames. It is hard to say what a given GM would
never do --- remarkably bad things can happen to anyone who is tired
or nervous or short of time.

Actually if I set myself the task of throwing a game in a way that
would be hard to detect, my first inclination would be to get myself
into severe time trouble. In that situation, any blunder could
plausibly be explained away.

Be that as it may, I think even Larry Parr must admit that if
"scholars" now resoundingly agree that the games were thrown, as he
claims, it can't possibly be because of Evans' game analysis. The best
we can say about that analysis is that GM opinion remains divided. As
I recall Nunn and Seirawan were among those who were publicly
skeptical from the beginning. I asked a couple of American GMs myself,
and they didn't think much of Evans' analysis either. On the other
hand, I've noticed that Hans Ree is one recent convert to the fixed-
games theory.

(Note that Ree's article on the subject was published in Chess Cafe,
which Parr et al think of as a hotbed of anti-Evans bias. TK knows his
way around the Chess Cafe archives better than I do, maybe he could
find the relevant Ree piece.)

Larry T.




Evans concluded that to the extent the games could be relied
upon, they indicated the fix was in. However, He qualified this
conclusion, noting that there could not be certainty.

Indeed, even today, after a great deal more evidence has
appeared (including Botvinnik's admission that orders had been
received from Stalin and relevelations from Taimanov and Bronstein
that these kinds of orders were part of Soviet praxis) we still do not
have cosmic certainty.

Evans' offered a bit of semi-pioneering work on the subject that
NMnot Taylor Kingston -- the man who won't answer whether he used
false names here IN ORDER TO PRAISE HIS OWN ARGUMENTS initally priased
to the high heavens.

Later on, our NMnot reversed himself, though finally and sheepishly
adopting Evans' initial conclusions. Our NMnot says that Evans proved
correct for the wrong reasons. The truth is that NMnot Kingston dare
not cross Edward
Winter by praising Evans' early insights.

Now, then, many of you have read my evisceration of Edward
Winter's attack on GM Larry Evans in which I found an incidence of
error -- shoddy reproduction of
quotations from GM Evans, in the main part -- HIGHER than that claimed
by Eddie Winter for GM Evans. Winter's mistakes were surprising
because he was not
writing under a necessary deadline as GM Evans does.

Readers have noted the Winter technique. The game between
Borochow and Fine was a fine example. Evans made a single error that
Winter tried to
compound into several errors. His technique was to quote from an
article in Chess Beat -- a collection of earlier Evans newspaper
pieces -- as though the article had been written much later than it
was.

NMnot Kingston, as a somewhat frightened acolyte, will not
acknoweldge the Winterian method. What else does our NMnot fails to
acknowledge?

For Pete's sake, this Winter gelding is a beaut', as they say in
Australian racing circles.

Larry -- please supply to the rec.games.chess readers the quote
which supposedly shows me professing ignorance of the existence of a
dispute between Evans and Winter, or between Evans and myself. You

must do this, Larry, or die a chicken. -- Taylor Kingston's new challenge

RICHARD LAURIE AUTHORIZED ME TO RELEASE HIS LETTER TO TAYLOR KINGSTON
OVER A YEAR AGO

Playwright Richard Laurie is a chess fans with no axe to grind. ONCE
AGAIN here his exact words. Mr. Laurie doesn't want to be involved in
this debate ("Don't these people have lives?" he asked incredulously)
but will confirm his words if anyone asks me for his email.

************************************************** *************************************************

"Mr. Kingston's memory is extremely faulty. He contacted me on the
Net,
then wanted to send me materials to try and win me over to his side
of
the argument -- that Evans was wrong. After that he said HE WOULD
LIKE
TO KEEP OUR CORRESPONDENCE QUIET [emphasis mine] just between us. It
sounded a little shaky, but so far I saw nothing wrong.

"Then he said he contacted the editor and asked if it would be okay
for him to say I had changed my mind.. That's when I jumped on him in
my last letter, that I had not changed my mind and agreed to look at
his materials only to see what he had to offer.. I found nothing
substantial there and I told him that as far as secrecy went, he
already violated that by jumping the gun and contacting the editor.

"Mr. Kingston e-mailed me about half a dozen times. While I never
showed Evans any of his material, I told him I did feel perfectly free
to show Evans my own responses. All anyone has to do is read
Kingston's article in Chess Life to see that he denigrated Evans'
ability to analyze by saying Nunn was the better player.

"Kingston wanted me to retract my printed view of the situation as it
appeared in Evans On Chess. He wanted me to say that I was wrong and.
therefore, Evans was wrong ..I even wrote the editor saying I had not
changed my mind, and that ended the matter.

"Finally, I am troubled by your bald assertion that you are not aware
of the battle between Evans and Winter. I am troubled because I have
known for months that Larry Evans contacted you in preparing his
rebuttal to Mr.Winter's remarks as printed in Chess Life, October
2001.

"Further, it is my understanding and has been for months, that you
told Evans you sided with Winter on the whole. Please clear up this
seeming contradiction." -- Richard Laurie

************************************************** ***************************

REPENT NOW!

"It said false things about me and Winter. It put Mr. Laurie in a bad
light. I did indeed have hopes of getting him to retract his
falsehoods, but unfortunately, he turned out to have the same aversion
to facts as you do, Larry....

"As I have pointed out in an earlier post in another thread, this and
Mr. Laurie's other allegations, by which you set such great store, are
false. It is interesting to see one liar believe another. Larry, if
you fabricate something people can use: food, clothing, housing, etc.,
you perform a service. If you fabricate quotations, you
may damn your own soul. Repent now." -- Taylor Kingston

CAPTAIN QUEEG STRIKES AGAIN

In "The Caine Mutiny" the good captain also claims that his crew is
disloyal and spread falsehoods about him as he rubs ball bearings
while on the witness stand. Yes, yes, everyone is lying except Taylor
Kingston. Even someone who has absolutely no axe to grind with him.
Yes, yes, everyone else is lying.

Yours, Larry Parr



Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Nov 12, 6:43 pm, " wrote:
THE KINGSTON GAMBIT

Not only does this farceur ignore his lie to Richard Laurie that he
wasn't aware of the dispute between Evans and Kingston, [SIC]

Now that would *indeed* be farcical, for me to be unaware of a
dispute involving myself. Is our Larry in his cups? One supposes he
meant "between Evans and Winter." However, as I have already noted in
this thread, I never made any such statement to Richard Laurie, nor to
anyone else. This is sheer fabrication, something Parr does quite
frequently.
Larry -- please supply to the rec.games.chess readers the quote
which supposedly shows me professing ignorance of the existence of a
dispute between Evans and Winter, or between Evans and myself. You
must do this, Larry, or die a chicken.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

On Nov 13, 1:05 pm, Larry Tapper wrote:
On Nov 12, 10:37 pm, " wrote:

...As Larry Tapper points out, its main value
was an experiment in forensic game analysis. It was because of
this article that the case has been re-examined extensively.

Right, but I put it in the form of a conditional:

"It seems to me that if Evans contributed anything of value to the
debate, it had to be his experiment with forensic game analysis."

And in this case I believe that the antecedent is false.

It seems to me that Evans' theory of forensic analysis was basically a
non-starter because of his criteria for fishiness. Evans made the
reasonable conjecture that a top GM looking to throw a game would be
motivated to avert immediate suspicion and would therefore tend to
make subtle errors rather than blatantly obvious blunders. So far so
good. But the problem is that the outcomes of decisive GM games are
quite _typically_ determined by errors in this general category. Are
half of all GM victories therefore under a cloud of suspicion?

As I recall, Exhibit A in Evans' analysis was a rook endgame position
in which Keres unnecessarily placed his rook passively. A player of
Keres' caliber would never make a move like that, the argument went.
OK, but I have recent endgame books by Belyavsky and Dvoretsky that
feature dozens of examples of strong GMs making horrible mistakes in
fairly simple rook endgames. It is hard to say what a given GM would
never do --- remarkably bad things can happen to anyone who is tired
or nervous or short of time.

Actually if I set myself the task of throwing a game in a way that
would be hard to detect, my first inclination would be to get myself
into severe time trouble. In that situation, any blunder could
plausibly be explained away.

Be that as it may, I think even Larry Parr must admit that if
"scholars" now resoundingly agree that the games were thrown, as he
claims, it can't possibly be because of Evans' game analysis. The best
we can say about that analysis is that GM opinion remains divided. As
I recall Nunn and Seirawan were among those who were publicly
skeptical from the beginning. I asked a couple of American GMs myself,
and they didn't think much of Evans' analysis either. On the other
hand, I've noticed that Hans Ree is one recent convert to the fixed-
games theory.

I don't think it was all that recent, Larry. As long as I've known
Hans, his opinion has remained unchanged.

(Note that Ree's article on the subject was published in Chess Cafe,
which Parr et al think of as a hotbed of anti-Evans bias. TK knows his
way around the Chess Cafe archives better than I do, maybe he could
find the relevant Ree piece.)

You are probably thinking of this article, Larry:

http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hans69.pdf

Ree mentions the same rook endgame you referred to, and draws a
different conclusion.
Hans and I have exchanged several e-mails on this whole subject over
the years, discussing (quite cordially, in pleasant contrast to Parr/
Evans) the opinions of Watson, Evans, Nunn, IM Kim Commons and others
who have weighed in on K-B and other allegations of Soviet tampering.
In general, Ree gives more weight to moves on the board than I do in
such situations. He cites the 1979 Karpov-Smyslov game as one where he
believes the moves themselves indicate collusion and chicanery, while
I consider actions away from the board more significant, for example
the fact that Karpov left the game for about 45 minutes.
Surprisingly, however, while Ree sees that Keres endgame as evidence
of coercion, he is rather dismissive of the idea of coercion at the
1953 Candidates Tournament, where we have direct testimony that
pressure was indeed applied. For example, he discounts Bronstein's
claim that the Soviet political troika (Postnikov, Moshintsev, and
Bondarevsky) pressured Keres not to beat Smyslov at one point in the
tournament. Ree feels Keres just shrugged off this pressure and tried
to win anyway, while in my opinion it could not have failed to affect
him negatively.

On Nov 13, 1:58 pm, Taylor Kingston wrote:

(Note that Ree's article on the subject was published in Chess Cafe,
which Parr et al think of as a hotbed of anti-Evans bias. TK knows his
way around the Chess Cafe archives better than I do, maybe he could
find the relevant Ree piece.)

You are probably thinking of this article, Larry:

http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hans69.pdf

In that article, Mr. Ree seems reluctant to draw rather
obvious conclusions, such as when someone's story
in inconsistent, self-contradicting, or incoherent.

But it does draw to light the fact that not only is the
picture painted by L. Parr/Evans grossly distorted, but
these outside influences can work both ways, and the
complainers, when given the right conditions, make
excuses for *their own* cheating.

Far from only "Westerners" being subjected to
this sort of thing, we see in these articles that the
targets were often /Russians/. At one point, it was
reluctantly admitted that Western team captains
are no different from these supposedly evil Russians,
that they too, make arrangements, and this fits the
facts as I have observed them /personally/.

Where Mr. Ree seems to part company with the
rabid anti-Soviets is in his assessment of Sammy
Reshevsky's strength; he seems to believe no huge
conspiracy was really necessary to ensure that one
of the Soviet players finished first -- at least not
until about the year 1972... .


-- help bot

KINGSTON CALLS LAURIE A LIAR AGAIN

Richard Laurie is, alas, a thorough gentleman as
well as a produced dramatist. I would hope that he
will permit us to post some more of the stuff that he
got from Kingston (under the clock of secrecy)

.. We shall see.

In any contest of veracity, between Laurie and
NMnot Taylor Kingston -- well, to believe Kingston
would be to believe Campomanes when he told the world
that he did not know what decision he would make about
cancelling KKI, even as Tass had announced the
decision some 10 minutes earlier!

Ah yes, NMnot Kingston: the man who wrote under
false names on this forum in PRAISE OF HIMSELF, for
Pete's sake.

By now, NMnot's deafening silence on the lies
and shoddy historical analysis of Edward Winter is as
evident as his failure to answer whether and why he
posted as Xylothist, Paulie Graf and other monickers.

We are a relatively tiny family here, and I
think it fair to conclude that NMnot's silence is
assent to the dirty stuff produced by Winter.


In return, NMnot may talk about a typo such as
"Austalia" instead of Australia or the absence of diacritical
diareses over the o's in "Book" because such were not in the
Chess Life stylebook and hence missing from an article written
by GM Evans. As for Winter misleading readers about the
Borochow-Fine game, not a peep from our NMnot in defense
of his mentor.
..
No matter what intellectual outrage Winter may
commit (short of his supporting Evans in the Keres
debate) NMnot will never cross Fast Eddie. He is
scared scheisselos.

Finally, Greg Kennedy got something right. My
reference to Kingston in a debate was indeed an
obvious, evident typo.

Yours, Larry Parr

P.S. My next post will describe in detail the item in Chess Life that
Taylor Kingston wanted playwright Richard Laurie to retract
(confidentially of course)!


help bot wrote:
SHOOTING IN THE DARK


Taylor Kingston regurgitated a ChessCafe piece in which Edward Winter
attacked Larry Evans' writing. No, Larry, I posted a link to
it.....With friends like you, Evans hardly needs enemies....


If only Larry Parr had half a brain, he might have realized that
hidden somewhere amidst his long-winded jabberings, was the
very "defense" of Larry Evans' article he so desperately seeks:

Larry Evans wrote a[n] article in Chess Life...
... It was because of this article that the case has been
re-examined extensively.


There you have it. There is no /need/ to construct fancy
ad hominem attacks on Taylor Kingston or Edward Winter.

There is no /need/ to prattle on about whose writing style
is superior, or who is imagined to be envious of their "vast
superiors". There simply is no /need/.

Rehashing all the sordid details merely drags the good
name of Larry Evans through the muck; it brings up what
EW referred to as his "innumerable" mistakes, and this is
the sort of thing which other posters have complained
about here.


Now, then, many of you have read my evisceration of Edward
Winter's attack on GM Larry Evans in which I found an incidence of
error

Two-wrongs-make-right idiocies like the above drags the
good name of Larry Evans down, into the muck. Why, oh
why does he not /fire/ Mr. Parr and find a better PR man?


Winter's mistakes were surprising because he was not
writing under a necessary deadline as GM Evans does.

Alas, many of LE's spelling errors and wrong dates
have more to do with carelessness than any fight with
some imagined deadlines or other windmills. In fact, I
note that it is precisely because Mr. Parr is no longer
editing Chess Lies that so many of GM Evans' recent
errors have managed to "creep in". With no proofing
and no editing, an aging writer is prone to more and
more such errors, deadlines or no deadlines. Let's
cut the man some slack here -- he is what? seventy
five years old? Is it any wonder that criticisms of LE
tend to focus mainly on his more recent work?


"Mr. Kingston's memory is extremely faulty.

It's deja vue all over again! How many times have I
had some dispute with the likes of TK or IM Innes,
only to have one of them deny what they themselves
have written or done?


"Mr. Kingston e-mailed me about half a dozen times. While I never
showed Evans any of his material, I told him I did feel perfectly free
to show Evans my own responses. All anyone has to do is read
Kingston's article in Chess Life to see that he denigrated Evans'
ability to analyze by saying Nunn was the better player.

So much for the credibility of Richard Laurie.

For the record, Dr. Nunn /is/ the stronger player,
and he /was/ stronger at the time GM Evans wrote
the article in question. Let's just dismiss any
comparison of the two players at their respective
peaks as irrelevant, since neither applies. (I think
GM Evans may have peaked, objectively, at the
ripe old age of twenty! Was Dr. Nunn even born
yet?)



In "The Caine Mutiny" the good captain also claims that his crew is
disloyal and spread falsehoods about him as he rubs ball bearings
while on the witness stand. Yes, yes, everyone is lying except Taylor
Kingston. Even someone who has absolutely no axe to grind with him.
Yes, yes, everyone else is lying.

As I recall, in the end the lawyer agreed. He stated that
he /had to/ "torpedo" the Captain, but that each of the men
/was guilty/ of disloyalty. (This is yet another example of
Larry Parr's problem: he can't seem to get the basic facts
right.)

What Larry Evans really needs is not a poor PR-man like
Larry Parr; what he needs is someone who can compensate
where he has weaknesses (spellings, date-checking, etc.).
He might be far better off to fire LP, and replace him with a
chess historian like say, Neil Brennen.


-- help bot

On Nov 13, 4:44 pm, " wrote:

KINGSTON CALLS LAURIE A LIAR AGAIN

Richard Laurie is, alas, a thorough gentleman as
well as a produced dramatist.

I would agree with the latter, Larry, but not the former. A
gentleman does not lie, distort, misquote and insult as Mr. Laurie
did. It seemed as if he had been coached by you.

I would hope that he
will permit us to post some more of the stuff that he
got from Kingston (under the clock of secrecy)

Is that clock of yours a digital clock, a pendulum clock, or a
cuckoo clock?

. We shall see.

But we have already, Larry. I've produced the quotes, you have not.
I still have my full correspondence with Mr. Laurie. I have the facts,
while you have your fevered, fetid imagination. You've already made a
fool of yourself and Evans; if you want to add Laurie, I can't stop
you.

We are a relatively tiny family here, and I
think it fair to conclude that NMnot's silence is
assent to the dirty stuff produced by Winter.

Larry, I am no more obliged to reply to every lie, fabrication,
distortion and insult you offer than I am obliged to clean up after
your dog. And if we're going to deal with unanswered questions, the
number you've avoided is beyond reckoning.

THE CLOCK OF SECRECY


Richard Laurie is, alas, a thorough gentleman as
well as a produced dramatist. I would hope that he
will permit us to post some more of the stuff that he
got from Kingston (under the clock of secrecy)

While ad hominizing Taylor Kingston may be better
than any more rehashing of GM Evans' gaffes, it hardly
serves to repair the damage already done.


Ah yes, NMnot Kingston: the man who wrote under
false names on this forum in PRAISE OF HIMSELF, for
Pete's sake.

How long before LE *finally* comes to his senses, and
fires LP? Time will tell. Just keep your eyes on the
clock... of secrecy.


Larry Evans wrote a[n] article in Chess Life...
... It was because of this article that the case has been
re-examined extensively.

There you have it. There is no /need/ to construct fancy
ad hominem attacks on Taylor Kingston or Edward Winter.


Maybe someone will simply volunteer, and then a
side-by-side comparison to LP's, um, work, will be
shown for what it really is. No matter how stylized
the language, no matter how clever the methods of
deception, you just can't put lipstick on a pig.


-- help bot

wrote in message
ups.com...
KINGSTON CALLS LAURIE A LIAR AGAIN

Richard Laurie is, alas, a thorough gentleman as
well as a produced dramatist. I would hope that he
will permit us to post some more of the stuff that he
got from Kingston (under the clock of secrecy)

I too have received information which carries that caveat - confidential! it
says, not for distribution. These are the infamous Kingston files.

. We shall see.

In any contest of veracity, between Laurie and
NMnot Taylor Kingston -- well, to believe Kingston
would be to believe Campomanes when he told the world
that he did not know what decision he would make about
cancelling KKI, even as Tass had announced the
decision some 10 minutes earlier!

Ah yes, NMnot Kingston: the man who wrote under
false names on this forum in PRAISE OF HIMSELF, for
Pete's sake.

By now, NMnot's deafening silence on the lies
and shoddy historical analysis of Edward Winter is as
evident as his failure to answer whether and why he
posted as Xylothist, Paulie Graf and other monickers.

We are a relatively tiny family here, and I
think it fair to conclude that NMnot's silence is
assent to the dirty stuff produced by Winter.

They will call you names for running to conclusions - yet the very evidence
of such stuff is denied by our Taylor. Show me my e-mails, he wrote me, and
I wil tell you which of them is true!

In return, NMnot may talk about a typo such as
"Austalia" instead of Australia or the absence of diacritical
diareses over the o's in "Book" because such were not in the
Chess Life stylebook and hence missing from an article written
by GM Evans. As for Winter misleading readers about the
Borochow-Fine game, not a peep from our NMnot in defense
of his mentor.
.
No matter what intellectual outrage Winter may
commit (short of his supporting Evans in the Keres
debate) NMnot will never cross Fast Eddie. He is
scared scheisselos.

Finally, Greg Kennedy got something right. My
reference to Kingston in a debate was indeed an
obvious, evident typo.

Yours, Larry Parr

P.S. My next post will describe in detail the item in Chess Life that
Taylor Kingston wanted playwright Richard Laurie to retract
(confidentially of course)!

Quite!@

But what is this all about? I keep asking Kingston if it is to do with
subject matter, or with a tiff with Larry Evans. Since the original issue
dated 1996 he has been unable to even notice this question.

Maybe Xylotwist should notice it for him, or the "I speak Chermen!" Paulie
Graf.

Cordially, Phil Innes


help bot wrote:
SHOOTING IN THE DARK


Taylor Kingston regurgitated a ChessCafe piece in which Edward Winter
attacked Larry Evans' writing. No, Larry, I posted a link to
it.....With friends like you, Evans hardly needs enemies....


If only Larry Parr had half a brain, he might have realized that
hidden somewhere amidst his long-winded jabberings, was the
very "defense" of Larry Evans' article he so desperately seeks:

Larry Evans wrote a[n] article in Chess Life...
... It was because of this article that the case has been
re-examined extensively.


There you have it. There is no /need/ to construct fancy
ad hominem attacks on Taylor Kingston or Edward Winter.

There is no /need/ to prattle on about whose writing style
is superior, or who is imagined to be envious of their "vast
superiors". There simply is no /need/.

Rehashing all the sordid details merely drags the good
name of Larry Evans through the muck; it brings up what
EW referred to as his "innumerable" mistakes, and this is
the sort of thing which other posters have complained
about here.


Now, then, many of you have read my evisceration of Edward
Winter's attack on GM Larry Evans in which I found an incidence of
error

Two-wrongs-make-right idiocies like the above drags the
good name of Larry Evans down, into the muck. Why, oh
why does he not /fire/ Mr. Parr and find a better PR man?


Winter's mistakes were surprising because he was not
writing under a necessary deadline as GM Evans does.

Alas, many of LE's spelling errors and wrong dates
have more to do with carelessness than any fight with
some imagined deadlines or other windmills. In fact, I
note that it is precisely because Mr. Parr is no longer
editing Chess Lies that so many of GM Evans' recent
errors have managed to "creep in". With no proofing
and no editing, an aging writer is prone to more and
more such errors, deadlines or no deadlines. Let's
cut the man some slack here -- he is what? seventy
five years old? Is it any wonder that criticisms of LE
tend to focus mainly on his more recent work?


"Mr. Kingston's memory is extremely faulty.

It's deja vue all over again! How many times have I
had some dispute with the likes of TK or IM Innes,
only to have one of them deny what they themselves
have written or done?


"Mr. Kingston e-mailed me about half a dozen times. While I never
showed Evans any of his material, I told him I did feel perfectly free
to show Evans my own responses. All anyone has to do is read
Kingston's article in Chess Life to see that he denigrated Evans'
ability to analyze by saying Nunn was the better player.

So much for the credibility of Richard Laurie.

For the record, Dr. Nunn /is/ the stronger player,
and he /was/ stronger at the time GM Evans wrote
the article in question. Let's just dismiss any
comparison of the two players at their respective
peaks as irrelevant, since neither applies. (I think
GM Evans may have peaked, objectively, at the
ripe old age of twenty! Was Dr. Nunn even born
yet?)



In "The Caine Mutiny" the good captain also claims that his crew is
disloyal and spread falsehoods about him as he rubs ball bearings
while on the witness stand. Yes, yes, everyone is lying except Taylor
Kingston. Even someone who has absolutely no axe to grind with him.
Yes, yes, everyone else is lying.

As I recall, in the end the lawyer agreed. He stated that
he /had to/ "torpedo" the Captain, but that each of the men
/was guilty/ of disloyalty. (This is yet another example of
Larry Parr's problem: he can't seem to get the basic facts
right.)

What Larry Evans really needs is not a poor PR-man like
Larry Parr; what he needs is someone who can compensate
where he has weaknesses (spellings, date-checking, etc.).
He might be far better off to fire LP, and replace him with a
chess historian like say, Neil Brennen.


-- help bot

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM


P.S. My next post will describe in detail the item in Chess Life that
Taylor Kingston wanted playwright Richard Laurie to retract
(confidentially of course)!

Quite!@

But what is this all about? I keep asking Kingston if it is to do with
subject matter, or with a tiff with Larry Evans.


It looks to me like TK recklessly jumped in with some
praise of an article by LE; *then* he bothered to do his
due diligence work; next he (TK) corrected his earlier
comments; and finally, GM Evans made a careless boo
boo by quoting TK's original, wrong position in support of
him.

Soon afterward, LP jumped in -- and you know what
that means: total chaos!

What's amusing is the fact that apparently, Larry
Evans considered TK credible enough to mention in
support of his own, um, work, but ever since his boo
boo was discovered, LP has diligently worked to
/undermine/ TK's credibility, since he had *reversed*
his position. LOL! It is, quite honestly, hard to even
imagine a more effective undermining of LE than the
job Mr. Parr has done here in rgc over the years. :(

With "friends" like LP, GM Evans certainly has no
need of enemies. Yet the man's heart is in the right
place, as can be seen by LP's diligence in promoting
the recently-released book; it's more a question of
/incompetence/ than any lack of effort or desire on
LP's part.

Now for a brief but important message from our
sponsor: the bitterness of these petty disputes can
seem to disparage all parties concerned.

Take, for example, the "counterattack" launched
by Edward Winter, in which he in fact did precisely
what Larry Parr has charged him with doing: counting
a single error several times over, when subsequent
volumes were reprinted without any corrections
(although it must be said that that was in itself a
poor move). If it were me, I would edit and correct
such errors before going back to press, but then, it
wasn't me. I also would have resigned that game
GM Evans drew against Reshevsky, BTW... . :D


-- help bot

WHAT DID KINGSTON WANT LAURIE TO RETRACT?
(confidentially, of course!)

Playwright Richard Laurie is a chess fan with no axe to grind. Here is
the item in Chess Life from Evans On Chess that Kingston tried to
persuade Laurie to retract in a series of emails Kingston marked
CONFIDENTIAL. Why the need for this topic, of public interest, to
remain confidential?

KERES & BOTVINNIK

Richard Laurie
Eric, Pennsylvania

Q. Finally, I don't know who Taylor Kingston is and I don't recall
much about his Chess Life article (in May 1998) except he denigrated
your ability to analyze five Keres-Botvinnik games to show that Keres
was coerced. I am always appalled by those who meet a solid argument
with a personal attack -- like Edward Winter (who called you
"shameless") and Kingston (who called you "dishonest"). Either Keres
threw the games or he did not. Nothing else matters. The 1919 Black
Sox
Scandal in baseball was uncovered because experts like Christy
Mathewson circled suspicious plays. This is basically what you did in
"The Tragedy of Paul Keres" (October 1996) to reopen an old scandal.

LAURIE ANSWERS KINGSTON'S REQUEST TO RETRACT THIS ITEM

[Mr. Laurie authorized me to issue this statement on his behalf.]

"Mr. Kingston's memory is extremely faulty. He contacted me on the
Net, then wanted to send me materials to try and win me over to his
side of the argument -- that Evans was wrong. After that he said HE
WOULD LIKE TO KEEP OUR CORRESPONDENCE QUIET [emphasis mine] just
between us. It sounded a little shaky, but so far I saw nothing
wrong.

"Then he said he contacted the editor and asked if it would be okay
for him to say I had changed my mind.. That's when I jumped on him in
my last letter, that I had not changed my mind and agreed to look at
his materials only to see what he had to offer.. I found nothing
substantial there and I told him that as far as secrecy went, he
already violated that by jumping the gun and contacting the editor.

"Mr. Kingston e-mailed me about half a dozen times. While I never
showed Evans any of his material, I told him I did feel perfectly free
to show Evans my own responses. All anyone has to do is read
Kingston's article in Chess Life to see that he denigrated Evans'
ability to analyze by saying Nunn was the better player.

"Kingston wanted me to retract my printed view of the situation as it
appeared in Evans On Chess. He wanted me to say that I was wrong and,
therefore, Evans was wrong ..I even wrote the editor saying I had not
changed my mind, and that ended the matter.

"Finally, I am troubled by your bald assertion that you are not aware
of the battle between Evans and Winter. I am troubled because I have
known for months that Larry Evans contacted you in preparing his
rebuttal to Mr.Winter's remarks as printed in Chess Life, October
2001. Further, it is my understanding and has been for months, that
you told Evans you sided with Winter on the whole. Please clear up
this seeming contradiction." -- Richard Laurie

THIS LETTER FROM ONE LAWRENCE ZIMMERMAN WAS BANNED FROM CHESSCAFE IN
2001 AT THE HEIGHT OT THE EVANS-WINTER DISPUTE

Mr. Kingston's six-page review of the evidence for Chess Life in May
1998 added nothing new to the debate and cited several Russian experts
who backed GM Evans. Since then a mountain of evidence has surfaced.
Botvinnik, for example, finally admitted that Stalin personally
intervened; and Keres told friends he was ordered to finish behind
Botvinnik. Can anyone who is intellectually honest still entertain
serious doubts? Yet, predictably, Mr. Winter endorses the claim that
there "isn't even a shred of actual evidence." And this is the guy --
I kid you not! -- that Mr. Kingston has anointed "to clean up the
mess and put chess history on a sound basis." I could go on and on.
Why bother? Nobody needs me to see through the slime.

KINGSTON TOOK NOT ONE BUT TWO MOVES BACK

Needless to add, Mr. Kingston retracted TWO letters that he wrote to
the editor of Chess Life praising GM Evans' article "The Tragedy of
Paul Keres."

Then Mr. Kingston changed his mind.

Then Mr. Kingston changed his mind again.

Finally, Mr. Kingston in a Further Review of the Evidence arrived at
the same conclusion as GM Evans about the Soviet fix in 1948: the
Commies did it.

On Nov 13, 1:05 pm, Larry Tapper wrote:

It seems to me that Evans' theory of forensic analysis was basically a
non-starter because of his criteria for fishiness ...
I think even Larry Parr must admit that if
"scholars" now resoundingly agree that the games were thrown, as he
claims, it can't possibly be because of Evans' game analysis. The best
we can say about that analysis is that GM opinion remains divided.
As I recall, Exhibit A in Evans' analysis was a rook endgame position
in which Keres unnecessarily placed his rook passively. A player of
Keres' caliber would never make a move like that, the argument went.
OK, but I have recent endgame books by Belyavsky and Dvoretsky that
feature dozens of examples of strong GMs making horrible mistakes in
fairly simple rook endgames. It is hard to say what a given GM would
never do --- remarkably bad things can happen to anyone who is tired
or nervous or short of time.

All very good points, Larry T. In the same vein, one point I'd like
to add here is that "forensic analysis" a la Evans is obviously
worthless without certain assumptions derived from context. Just given
raw game scores, with nothing about who played whom, when, where etc,
no one could possibly say with the least certainty that "34...Rd6
proves coercion." If Keres made a bad move in, say, a British
tournament where he was the only Soviet player, no one would dream of
saying he was throwing a game to let a Brit win. If Joe Smith made the
same move in the same position in a weekend Swiss, the notion of
conspiracy would be laughed at. But put the same move in Hague-Moscow
1948, and people are all too eager to say "You see, the fix is in!"
with no more factual basis than they have in the other contexts.
My point is that it takes far more than mere analysis to prove any
sort of fix. Evidence from sources other than the board is required.