On Nov 20, 5:40 pm, samsloan wrote:
On Nov 20, 11:15 am, Taylor Kingston wrote:

In fact, I would say that most of the alleged "ratpackers" have
never had any contact with Winter, who lives in Switzerland. I have
exchanged e-mails and letters with him, but have had no contact at all
for several years.

Superman never met Clark Kent either.

Rev. Walker, you will recall that I described Sam Sloan as
delusional. He has promptly and conveniently provided a case in point
-- he believes me to be Edward Winter. He even went so far as to post
this on Wikipedia a few years ago. Personally, I'll believe it when I
start getting EW's royalty checks.

Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Nov 20, 5:40 pm, samsloan wrote:
On Nov 20, 11:15 am, Taylor Kingston wrote:

In fact, I would say that most of the alleged "ratpackers" have
never had any contact with Winter, who lives in Switzerland. I have
exchanged e-mails and letters with him, but have had no contact at all
for several years.
Superman never met Clark Kent either.

Rev. Walker, you will recall that I described Sam Sloan as
delusional. He has promptly and conveniently provided a case in point
-- he believes me to be Edward Winter. He even went so far as to post
this on Wikipedia a few years ago. Personally, I'll believe it when I
start getting EW's royalty checks.

Hmm, I read a lot of DC comics when I was young. I think Mr. Sloan's
statement about Superman may just be plain false. Devoted fans may
remember that Superman was able to fly so fast that he was capable of
traveling through time. If memory serves, there was at least one issue
where Superman DID meet Clark Kent. :^)
--

Cheers,
Rev. J.D. Walker, MsD, U.C.

On Nov 20, 5:59 pm, "J.D. Walker" wrote:
Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Nov 20, 5:40 pm, samsloan wrote:
On Nov 20, 11:15 am, Taylor Kingston wrote:

In fact, I would say that most of the alleged "ratpackers" have
never had any contact with Winter, who lives in Switzerland. I have
exchanged e-mails and letters with him, but have had no contact at all
for several years.
Superman never met Clark Kent either.

Rev. Walker, you will recall that I described Sam Sloan as
delusional. He has promptly and conveniently provided a case in point
-- he believes me to be Edward Winter. He even went so far as to post
this on Wikipedia a few years ago. Personally, I'll believe it when I
start getting EW's royalty checks.

Hmm, I read a lot of DC comics when I was young. I think Mr. Sloan's
statement about Superman may just be plain false. Devoted fans may
remember that Superman was able to fly so fast that he was capable of
traveling through time. If memory serves, there was at least one issue
where Superman DID meet Clark Kent. :^)

Ah, that must have been how I managed to meet Sloan in Parsippany NJ
in February 2001, while still writing my Chess Notes column from
Zurich.

Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Nov 20, 5:59 pm, "J.D. Walker" wrote:
Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Nov 20, 5:40 pm, samsloan wrote:
On Nov 20, 11:15 am, Taylor Kingston wrote:
In fact, I would say that most of the alleged "ratpackers" have
never had any contact with Winter, who lives in Switzerland. I have
exchanged e-mails and letters with him, but have had no contact at all
for several years.
Superman never met Clark Kent either.
Rev. Walker, you will recall that I described Sam Sloan as
delusional. He has promptly and conveniently provided a case in point
-- he believes me to be Edward Winter. He even went so far as to post
this on Wikipedia a few years ago. Personally, I'll believe it when I
start getting EW's royalty checks.
Hmm, I read a lot of DC comics when I was young. I think Mr. Sloan's
statement about Superman may just be plain false. Devoted fans may
remember that Superman was able to fly so fast that he was capable of
traveling through time. If memory serves, there was at least one issue
where Superman DID meet Clark Kent. :^)

Ah, that must have been how I managed to meet Sloan in Parsippany NJ
in February 2001, while still writing my Chess Notes column from
Zurich.

Ah! You appear to be a man of many talents Mr. Kingston. :^)

On Nov 20, 5:32 pm, "J.D. Walker" wrote:

I can admire you for being an excellent writer and
interviewer as evidenced by the articles you have pointed me to, and for
the sense of fairness I have felt in conversing with you -- even though
I think you focus too much on the disparagement of others in the present
context.

I thank you for your complimentary words, Rev. Walker. As for
"focusing too much on disparagement," your comment is at least partly
fair. The rgc atmosphere is in general quite adversarial, and one
cannot help but be affected to some extent. After a while a
caustically sardonic mode of expression can become habitual, and I may
slip into it too easily on occasion.
By way of explanation, I will say that I never have set out to speak
disparagingly of someone who did not first unfairly and falsely
disparage me or a friend of mine. My main goal in chess was just to
make some small mark as a writer about its history. I used to hold GM
Evans in very high respect. I used to know nothing of Larry Parr or
Sam Sloan. I even used to be friends with Phil Innes. For various
reasons, they each chose to make false accusations against friends and
associates of mine, or against myself.
I have never been one to back down easily in the face of falsehood.
So now and then I do what I can to counter them here. Probably
quixotic and futile, but as Cool Hand Luke said when asked why he
decided to eat 50 eggs, "It just seemed like something to do."

On Nov 20, 4:32 pm, "J.D. Walker" wrote:


Why does he enjoy this? There was a time that he was an award winning
orator and debater at the scholastic level. I know because I tried my
hand at it at an opposing school. I believe that this controversy is,
in large part, a sport to him.

Perhaps you can settle an old question here Rev. Some years back it
was debated that Larry was the way he was because he had (a) his ass
kicked too much in high school; (b). he didn't get his ass kicked
enough in high school.

Any thoughts?

SBD wrote:
On Nov 20, 4:32 pm, "J.D. Walker" wrote:


Why does he enjoy this? There was a time that he was an award winning
orator and debater at the scholastic level. I know because I tried my
hand at it at an opposing school. I believe that this controversy is,
in large part, a sport to him.

Perhaps you can settle an old question here Rev. Some years back it
was debated that Larry was the way he was because he had (a) his ass
kicked too much in high school; (b). he didn't get his ass kicked
enough in high school.

Larry went to school in a region of more prosperous folks than I. I
doubt that he had to contend with a lot of ass-kicking there.

I, on the other hand, was a bookish, slight fellow with poor eyesight
and a wiry frame. I made the stupid mistake of challenging a fellow who
was a star linebacker on the high school football team to a boxing
match! That was my sole experience with ass-kicking. I needed no more.

If ass-kicking was a more prominent part of Larry's educational
environment, he would have to say... Maybe his biographer will answer
that question in years to come.
--

Cheers,
Rev. J.D. Walker, MsD, U.C.

On Nov 20, 5:59 pm, "J.D. Walker" wrote:

Hmm, I read a lot of DC comics when I was young. I think Mr. Sloan's
statement about Superman may just be plain false. Devoted fans may
remember that Superman was able to fly so fast that he was capable of
traveling through time. If memory serves, there was at least one issue
where Superman DID meet Clark Kent. :^)


Whoever wrote that comic was delusional; there is
no such thing as "time travel", so clearly the real
Superman could never have met Clark Kent that way.

This warping of time is nothing more than evidence
that scientists don't have a clue how to explain things
sensibly, yet they are too proud to admit their own
/very real/ limitations.


-- help bot

MORAL COWARDICE

The Rev. Walker has asked for a definition of "ratpacker."

This writer coined the term in its current usage on
this forum, and it was predictably copied by Greg Kennedy
(masquerading as help bot). Many of the phrases now used by
Greg and the full ratpackers originated with yours truly. I would
feel flattered except that we are, after all, stranded on Tinytown.

My reference was to those who are too cowardly to buck
Edward Winter's claims (Louie Blair and Taylor Kingston plus
several who used to infest the censored ChessCafe bulletin board)
even when Winter's claims were refuted or, yes, shown to be
fabricated.

The Rev. Walker has recently seen how our NMnot
handles evidence that, say, Eddie Winter fabricated a
mistake that was not made by Larry Evans so as to
compound a minor error made by GM Evans re the
Borochow-Fine game from Pasadena, 1932. There is
no comment from Taylor Kingston.

Louie Blair's technique is to ask endless questions,
many of them weakminded. For the Rev. Walker to know,
my deal with Louie was that we would trade questions.
He would answer one of mine, I would answer one of
his. The old boy could not handle that arrangement,
and we have since been two ships passing in the night.
I write essays, he writes idle questions, some of which
make no sense or cannot be answered as asked.

The battle over Keres that the Rev. Walker is
currently following really began with a review that I
wrote of the Oxford Companion to Chess. Ken Whyld,
one of the Companion's authors, told GM Larry Evans
that he had never been praised so highly (I wrote that
the Companion superseded all previous works of the
type -- which is the highest praise possible in this
kind of endeavour) and damned so heatedly (I noted a
politically scarlet thread running through the entries
on subjects Soviet) in a single review. Indeed,
several of th Soviet entries were evidently dishonest.

Taylor Kingston, among other ratpackers, attacked my
review. I offered to walk the gent through each such entry,
and we could then examine them line by line to discover
whether my charge was accurate.

One of the characteristics of ratpackers is moral cowardice.
They praise themselves under false names (other ratpackers and
semi-ratpackers have adopted false monickers) and they cannot
stand the intellectual heat in the kitchen. They beg off.

For the Rev. Walker's edification, help bot is a chappie
named Greg Kennedy, who works in some factory in Indiana.
He is angry most of the time about not being a grandmaster,
and there was a period on this forum when he argued that he
coulda been a contendah if he had not been marooned among
the cornstalks. He called Indiana a cultural wasteland, and blamed
everything and everyone except himself for his practice of reading
comic books back in the 1960s rather than studying, say, the Roman
comedies of Plautus in the original Latin. Greg left us for many
months to study a bit, and he has since returned as help bot.

He loathes GM Larry Evans for his excellence, detests Fischer,
Kasparov and Keene, and in general envies his intellectual betters.
For the record, he contacted me privately when the intellectual heat
began to scorch.

One of his most outrageous claims wsas that GM Evans "brainwashed"
the American public into supporting Fischer's conditions against
Karpov
in 1975 when, in point of fact, GM Evans was virtually the sole voice
in
Chess Life opposing Fischer's conditions.

Yours, Larry Parr


J.D. Walker wrote:
SBD wrote:
On Nov 20, 4:32 pm, "J.D. Walker" wrote:


Why does he enjoy this? There was a time that he was an award winning
orator and debater at the scholastic level. I know because I tried my
hand at it at an opposing school. I believe that this controversy is,
in large part, a sport to him.

Perhaps you can settle an old question here Rev. Some years back it
was debated that Larry was the way he was because he had (a) his ass
kicked too much in high school; (b). he didn't get his ass kicked
enough in high school.

Larry went to school in a region of more prosperous folks than I. I
doubt that he had to contend with a lot of ass-kicking there.

I, on the other hand, was a bookish, slight fellow with poor eyesight
and a wiry frame. I made the stupid mistake of challenging a fellow who
was a star linebacker on the high school football team to a boxing
match! That was my sole experience with ass-kicking. I needed no more.

If ass-kicking was a more prominent part of Larry's educational
environment, he would have to say... Maybe his biographer will answer
that question in years to come.
--

Cheers,
Rev. J.D. Walker, MsD, U.C.

"Taylor Kingston" wrote in message
...
On Nov 19, 10:47 pm, "J.D. Walker" wrote:
Chess friends,

I've seen the term ratpacker used frequently. I wondered what was meant

As far as I know, Rev, the term was introduced here on the rgc
groups by Larry Parr. In particular, he used the phrase "Winter
ratpackers" as a derisive way to designate anyone who tended to prefer
the work of the meticulous chess historian Edward Winter to the work
of GM Larry Evans. This group would probably include, say, Louis
Blair, Neil Brennen, Steven Dowd, myself and several others. Though we
actually post here quite independently,

** The usual weasel words of Winterites! The hereby 'Reverend' Kingston
forgets to mention the e-mail group of associates who were copied the Laurie
material. )) Phil Innes

Parr somehow imagined us to
be, or wished to portray us, as a sinister cabal acting on orders from
Winter, like minions of Professor Moriarty or mafia hit-men, the goal
being to destroy the good name of Parr's idol Evans.
In fact, I would say that most of the alleged "ratpackers" have
never had any contact with Winter, who lives in Switzerland. I have
exchanged e-mails and letters with him, but have had no contact at all
for several years.
More recently, some posters, mainly Help-bot (aka NoMoreChess),
turned the term around, and applied it to Parr and some of his
supporters, mainly Sam Sloan and Phil Innes. So the phrase has become
practically meaningless.

I wanted to answer some questions you asked in another thread; this
one seemed a more appopriate place:

On Nov 20, 7:58 am, "J.D. Walker" wrote:

Mr. Bot,

Okay, I read the article. I am impressed with the amount of work that
Taylor put into it. As for the topic covered, my conclusion was that
there was a lot of evidence to consider, and it appeared that there was
nothing definitely conclusive. However, for the most part it was
persuasive -- the dark forces of Stalin worked against Keres' interests.

What ever became of Averbakh's memoirs?

A good question. In an interview he gave me in July 2002, Averbakh
said he was working on them, and that they would be published in
Russian, probably under a name such as "Chess and the System." meaning
the Soviet political system. I don't know if that has happened yet,
much less if plans are afoot for an English version.
In any event, and contrary to what I was told by Emanuel Sztein in
March 1998, it appears that any Averbakh memoirs will not contain any
evidence supporting any anti-Keres conspiracy theory. Averbakh himself
is on record against that hypothesis, as you can read he

http://www.chesscafe.com/text/skittles181.pdf
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/skittles183.pdf

Sztein, a Russian, was a press attaché for GM Viktor Korchnoi, and
claimed to "know with certainty" that Keres had been coerced, and so I
thought him a source worth mentioning in my 1998 article. However, it
would appear that as far as Averbakh supporting the coercion thesis,
Mr. Sztein was mistaken. Further questioning of Sztein is not
possible, as he died several years ago. Averbakh, now 85, is still
going strong. If he does produce any memoirs, I'm sure they will be
interesting, but I'm not expecting much about a Keres-Botvinnik fix
from him.
BTW, Rev, watch for a knee-jerk reaction flame-post from Phil Innes.
He does this every time I mention Averbakh.

I see some disagreements with Evans are mentioned. I suppose these are
the seeds (at least in part) of the present controversy.

Yes, as I have explained, to Larry Parr, any disagreement with Evans
is a capital offense with no statute of limitations. The offender must
be utterly discredited and vilified, by fair means or foul (usually
the latter).

I was promised crystal clarity. I feel that that promise has not been
met.

About the Keres-Botvinnik case? I never promised that. I've done my
best with it, for what that's worth, but much remains unknown.

What remains very unclear to me: How can mature, intelligent
human beings keep a feud going for 7+ years on something like this?

A very good question, Rev. I would be quite happy to leave the whole
matter alone, but Larry Parr won't. As I said, to him, disagreement
with Evans is a capital offense with no statute of limitations. The
offender is to be discredited and vilified, by fair means or foul
(usually the latter). You've seen some of the foul means here on the
newsgroup; some others Parr and Evans employed some years ago are
described he

http://www.chesscafe.com/text/skittles165.pdf

Over the past several months, maybe year, I had pretty much
disengaged from the rgc newsgroups altogether (you can verify this
with functions under the "more options" link on Google). Neither had
Parr been saying much about me.
What prompted the latest outbreak of Parrorrhea was the fact that I
made a few posts critical of Sam Sloan, a convicted felon, lifelong
ne'er-do-well, shameless attention-seeker, delusional solipsist and
long-time running joke here on rgc, whom Parr, for reasons of his own,
keeps pushing as the savior of the USCF. Parr wants Sloan on the USCF
Executive Board, I think that's a bad idea.
Parr, having no way to counter my criticisms of Sloan, launched yet
again into full-scale smear-Kingston mode, recycling mud he's been
throwing here for years. I might have ignored him, but it's rather fun
rebutting him, especially when, as we've seen here recently, it leads
Larry into all sorts of patently false and ridiculous statements.

Hasn't anyone had the thought, "This is enough, I am putting it behind
me and moving on...?"

I'd be quite happy to, but Parr seems to relish mud-slinging. Much
of the time I ignore him, but sometimes, as recently, he serves up
such fat pitches that I can't resist whacking them now and then. It's
the same sort of pleasure one gets from beating Sanny's inept chess
program.

The apparent chemistry reminds me of a particular
type of bad marriage where the weaknesses of each mate act as incendiary
catalysts on the other leading to wild arguments and fights. Get a
divorce!

If you can persuade Larry to shut up, fine by me.