On May 22, 8:28 am, Mike Murray wrote:
On Thu, 22 May 2008 05:24:50 -0700 (PDT), The Historian

wrote:
That second sentence was a clunker. Substitute "However, GM Polgar
deserves criticism for working with flacks and flakes......."

Why revise it? Just deny you wrote the original.

Because you need to be "nearly an IM 2450" strength to do so.

On May 21, 11:26 pm, The Historian
wrote:

Pillsbury could have given you rook odds, Philsy. Go back to your 300
game match with Tennessee Tyro.

Three hundred games, you say? I'm currently playing
Mr. Mitchell a series of casual games at ChessWorld.net,
and I can state with certainty that the GetClub program
is a much tougher opponent (although both seem to move
at roughly the same pace-- about one move per day).

I sure would like to play Mr. Mitchell in an official grudge
match, but I expect that "one way or another, it will never
happen". As PI and TK appear to be afraid of Mr. Sloan,
there is little hope of such a match taking place at this
point. (Maybe a Rook-odds match between nearly-an-IM
Innes' Rybka program and Neil Brennen?)

The loony TK seems to have come up with yet another
absurd ploy: using "rankings" to compare relative chess
strength from different eras. Well, we all know that this
doesn't work, because *strength* is best measured by
ratings, not rankings. In fact, I have little doubt that if I
had a time machine, I could eventually find a pocket in
time in which I would have been among the top-ranked
chess players in the world, most contenders being
eliminated by, say, cholera, wars, starvation or
diphtheria. I shouldn't mind playing Victor Kortchnoi
during the seige of Leningrad, or any of Paul Morphy's
victims right after he gave them that horrible disease
he seemed to carry around with him, which made
everyone fall deathly ill.


-- help bot

On May 22, 8:20 am, The Historian wrote:
On May 22, 3:28 am, wrote:

Let's be fair here. The SPICE Cup looks to be an excellent tournament,
and Polgar and Truong deserve a lot of credit for organizing it. But
no one deserves credit for shoddy journalism or misleading press
releases.

I agree. However, Ms. Polgar can, should, and will be criticized for
working with flacks and flakes who provide "shoddy journalism and
misleading press releases." She has a history of such things; recall
the silly chess 'broadcast' press release a few years ago that claimed
she was the third strongest chess player in the world?

Last time I looked, the Susan Polgar Web site made
no mention of her dropping two notches... .


-- help bot

help bot wrote:
The loony TK seems to have come up with yet another
absurd ploy: using "rankings" to compare relative chess
strength from different eras. Well, we all know that this
doesn't work, because *strength* is best measured by
ratings, not rankings.

-- help bot


That would be a fine argument, except that there _were_ no ratings in
the 1920s. (Those back-chaining calculations are interesting but
unconvincing.) So, your choices are either a) deny the possibility of
a meaningful comparison (legitimate, but it makes your participation
in the discussion rather pointless), or b) use informed judgment and
commons sense. (Even though this means doing without your computer
crutch.) Is it really plausible to argue that any of the players in
the SPICE Cup are "stronger" (for any realistic definition of
"stronger") than Spassky, Fischer, Larsen and Petrosian in 1966, or
Capablanca, Alekhine and Nimzovich in 1927? I don't think so, but I
would be interested in seeing a well-reasoned argument to the
contrary. So far I haven't.

On May 22, 5:59*pm, wrote:
help bot wrote:
* The loony TK seems to have come up with yet another
absurd ploy: using "rankings" to compare relative chess
strength from different eras. *Well, we all know that this
doesn't work, because *strength* is best measured by
ratings, not rankings.
* -- help bot

That would be a fine argument, except that there _were_ no ratings in
the 1920s. (Those back-chaining calculations are interesting but
unconvincing.) So, your choices are either a) deny the possibility of
a meaningful comparison (legitimate, but it makes your participation
in the discussion rather pointless), or b) use informed judgment and
commons sense. (Even though this means doing without your computer
crutch.) Is it really plausible to argue that any of the players in
the SPICE Cup are "stronger" (for any realistic definition of
"stronger") than Spassky, Fischer, Larsen and Petrosian in 1966, or
Capablanca, Alekhine and Nimzovich in 1927? I don't think so, but I
would be interested in seeing a well-reasoned argument to the
contrary. So far I haven't.

Or stronger than Capablanca, Lasker, Alekhine, Marshall, Bogolyubov,
Réti, Maroczy and Tartakower in 1924? Or than Keres, Petrosian,
Najdorf, Reshevsky and Gligoric in 1963? Everyone of these players is
in the top 100 of *_all time_*, yet Spice Cup so far has only one
player even in *_today's_* top 100.

On May 22, 5:59 pm, wrote:

The loony TK seems to have come up with yet another
absurd ploy: using "rankings" to compare relative chess
strength from different eras. Well, we all know that this
doesn't work, because *strength* is best measured by
ratings, not rankings.

That would be a fine argument, except that there _were_ no ratings in
the 1920s.

What everyone except the loony TK realizes is that
one can retroactively rate historical events, and just so
long as you do not attempt to dishonestly "tweak" what
is included or excluded, the results are very much akin
to modern ratings. Ratings are, of course, the most
objective way to compare relative strengths.


(Those back-chaining calculations are interesting but
unconvincing.)

Nobody cares what "convinces" the loonies who
flip-flop about like fish out of water.


So, your choices are either a) deny the possibility of
a meaningful comparison (legitimate, but it makes your participation
in the discussion rather pointless), or b) use informed judgment and
commons sense.

The best "informed judgments" I've yet seen are
those which exclude all personal bias (i.e. objective
ratings spat out of a cold, calculating machine.

The silly ploy of looking at /rankings/ is obviously
flawed. That top-down approach attempts to hide
the fact that the ratings pool has grown dramatically
over time, whereas a ratings comparison is fair and
balanced (like the Faux News channel).


-- help bot

help bot wrote:
On May 22, 5:59 pm, wrote:

The loony TK seems to have come up with yet another
absurd ploy: using "rankings" to compare relative chess
strength from different eras. Well, we all know that this
doesn't work, because *strength* is best measured by
ratings, not rankings.

That would be a fine argument, except that there _were_ no ratings in
the 1920s.

What everyone except the loony TK realizes is that
one can retroactively rate historical events, and just so
long as you do not attempt to dishonestly "tweak" what
is included or excluded, the results are very much akin
to modern ratings. Ratings are, of course, the most
objective way to compare relative strengths.


(Those back-chaining calculations are interesting but
unconvincing.)

Nobody cares what "convinces" the loonies who
flip-flop about like fish out of water.


So, your choices are either a) deny the possibility of
a meaningful comparison (legitimate, but it makes your participation
in the discussion rather pointless), or b) use informed judgment and
commons sense.

The best "informed judgments" I've yet seen are
those which exclude all personal bias (i.e. objective
ratings spat out of a cold, calculating machine.

The silly ploy of looking at /rankings/ is obviously
flawed. That top-down approach attempts to hide
the fact that the ratings pool has grown dramatically
over time, whereas a ratings comparison is fair and
balanced (like the Faux News channel).


-- help bot


Greg, your computer-worship is getting tiresome. Those back-chained
rating calculations are of very limited value because they are based
on a number of untestable assumptions, and the further back you go the
less reliable they become. There is no alternative to subjective human
judgment. If you do not consider yourself capable of making such a
judgment -- of examining the games and results and reaching a
conclusion on the basis of your own understanding of chess -- then you
should keep your mouth shut and go back to playing with your computer.
You have simply ruled yourself out as someone capable of contributing
to the discussion.

On May 22, 11:37 pm, wrote:

The loony TK seems to have come up with yet another
absurd ploy: using "rankings" to compare relative chess
strength from different eras. Well, we all know that this
doesn't work, because *strength* is best measured by
ratings, not rankings.

That would be a fine argument, except that there _were_ no ratings in
the 1920s.

What everyone except the loony TK realizes is that
one can retroactively rate historical events, and just so
long as you do not attempt to dishonestly "tweak" what
is included or excluded, the results are very much akin
to modern ratings. Ratings are, of course, the most
objective way to compare relative strengths.

(Those back-chaining calculations are interesting but
unconvincing.)

Nobody cares what "convinces" the loonies who
flip-flop about like fish out of water.

So, your choices are either a) deny the possibility of
a meaningful comparison (legitimate, but it makes your participation
in the discussion rather pointless), or b) use informed judgment and
commons sense.

The best "informed judgments" I've yet seen are
those which exclude all personal bias (i.e. objective
ratings spat out of a cold, calculating machine.

The silly ploy of looking at /rankings/ is obviously
flawed. That top-down approach attempts to hide
the fact that the ratings pool has grown dramatically
over time, whereas a ratings comparison is fair and
balanced (like the Faux News channel).

Greg, your computer-worship is getting tiresome. Those back-chained
rating calculations are of very limited value because they are based
on a number of untestable assumptions

Sounds interesting, but the way I see it, the only
assumption here is that someone has input a
sufficient quantity of objective data, while not
doing any "Kingstonization" (tweaking to suit an
agenda). It is also assumed that there were no
horrific data-entry errors.


and the further back you go the less reliable they become.

I agree. For one thing, the further back we go,
the less reliable information we have, and the
more clouded certain issues, like say, which
games were skittles versus serious games.


There is no alternative to subjective human
judgment.

Wrong. Human judgment is fraught with
personal bias, while computers -- if utilized
properly -- are capable of answering many
questions without injecting this sort of thing.
The trick is in defining everything precisely
as we humans understand them, then not
attempting to interfere with the objective
results of the machines' icy calculations.


If you do not consider yourself capable of making such a
judgment

I note the ducking of the issue that I raised, in
favor of ad hominization. As readers will recall,
Mr. Kingston argued that since there were no
official ratings at the time (say, New York 1927),
my use of the term was invalid. Obviously, this
was nothing more than a dishonest ploy, since
we all know that math works on /results/, even
after the fact or in hypothetical cases which
have yet to occur.

If I were on the nominations committee, that
would certainly earn my vote for induction to
the notorious Evans ratpack for this peculiar
tendency (but I'm not). Suffice it to say that it
appears there is no /rational/ response to my
pointing out TK's ploy.


-- help bot

Great, You win the game against Advance Level which rhinks 18 depth
deep.

Bye
Sanny

Play Chess at: http://www.GetClub.com/Chess.html

On May 23, 2:09 am, Sanny wrote:

Great, You win the game against Advance Level which rhinks 18 depth
deep.

My point was that *done properly*, computers are
capable of amazing feats of calculation. It is true
that if not done properly, humans may prevail, as in
that game. :D

----------------------------------------------------------------------

The epitome of what I'm talking about is of course
the endgame table-bases which have debunked
human "thinking" in many areas-- mainly by not
making unwarranted assumptions (which are then
parroted endlessly by other dumb creatures). One
example is the idea of an impenetrable fortress,
where no /direct/ assault can crack the defense
(but a waiting move or maneuver can).

In the area of chess strength, the injection of
"illness" or other /special circumstances/ has long
been utilized by writers to explain away failures,
while disregarding such things when considering
the importance of successes. In thinking about
my own performances, I consider what I know to
be very real circumstances, but when looking at
the results of the greats, there is one sure way
to eradicate all the personal biases: math.

Another helpful item is logic; as when the lunatic
fringers pontificate about the alleged throwing of
games, they are unable to account for westerners
who lost right alongside the others-- westerners
who could not have been "forced to throw" their
games, but who lost just the same.

Such holes reveal a lot about the depth of, um,
"thinking", that went into the creation of such
conspiracy theories. If they are not consistent
and rational but leave gaping holes in their wake,
we need to look more closely at the lunatics
behind the speculative theories, at their agendas,
to find the root cause of these black holes, which
seem to suck /reason/ and send it through a
wormhole to some far distant galaxy... .


-- help bot