_
"Larry, please tell us more about playwright
Richard Laurie. IT'S ALL NEW TO ME and
sounds like another juicy scandal. Why did
truth-seeker Kingston ask Laurie to keep their
correspondence secret? ..." - jr (2 Apr 2006
09:20:05 -0700) (Emphasis added.)
_
_
"And yet, earlier this year, we saw:
_
'I have read Richard Laurie's
exchanges with Kingston who
secretly tried to get him to
retract an item Laurie submitted
to Chess Life.' - jr (8 Jan 2006
12:21:20 -0800)"
- Louis Blair (2 Apr 2006 14:36:03 -0700)

wrote in message
oups.com...

Chess One wrote:
Next there will be a
stunning revelation that Pope John Paul was a chess problemist, another
Evans boner that the chess world knew to be false for several years

What is this about?


A chess discussion. You are unqualified to be a part of it.

You snipped my challenge pipsqueak - go brag with someone else - since its
you who know nOOOOOOOthing and gotta write so that others are reduced to
even less than your own level - its a well known psychological mechanism of
ego survival.

Have an ice day. Philip

Chess One wrote:
What is this about?


A chess discussion. You are unqualified to be a part of it.

You snipped my challenge pipsqueak - go brag with someone else - since its
you who know nOOOOOOOthing and gotta write so that others are reduced to
even less than your own level - its a well known psychological mechanism of
ego survival.

What challenge? Do you want to play me a match now? Or did we agree to
enter the ChessCafe Christmas contest finally?

I suggest you tuck your tail between your legs and come back when you
are ready to discuss chess at an adult level. When you can follow basic
facts about chess, probably after reading a few books, come back and
try to operate at a level above that of a 1200 rated glue-sniffer.

By the way Philsy, telling you that you are unqualified is not
bragging; it is stating facts about your own deficits.

jr wrote:
Can Mr. know-it-all tell us what Che Guevara and Larry
Evans talked about when they were together in Havana?

Can Mr. know-nothing jr. reconcile his various faux pas here; including
the Laurie confession?

A. An incredible ruling. Chess sets have one queen and it's universally
accepted, especially in speed games, that a pawn can be queened by
turning a rook upside down.

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative." Personally
though, I prefer consistency in application of rules to imagination.
Isn't this answer somewhat inconsistent with the view given in "since
he touched the queen first, even if it was off the board"? After all he
did touch a rook.

Maybe this use of the upside-down rook explains why the USCF rules wait
until the piece is released. Only upon the release of the rook, will
you be entirely sure whether it was a just a rook or was meant to
represent a queen.

And maybe the fact that FIDE only requires the piece to touch the
square (maybe that's why Kenneth Sloan originally thought that?) is
because they don't normally use the rook in that way?

- Tom Martinak

jr wrote:
Another Stupid FIDE Ruling.

http://wcn.tentonhammer.com/modules....icle&sid= 777

A ROOK IS A ROOK (NOT!)

James Schroeder
Vancouver, Washington

Q. The USCF rule book (page 17) states: "It is common practice to use
an upside down rook as a queen." But according to FIDE rules apparently
a rook is a rook, no matter which side is up, and not a queen.

In Chess Life (December 2005, page 21) Denis Strenzwilk reports on the
15th World Senior in Italy: "One case of culture clash occurred during
the blitz tournament on an off day. I wasn't playing, but I was
watching Leonid Balmazi's game. He pushed a pawn to the eighth rank. He
already had a queen on the board, so he grabbed a rook and turned it
upside down. The opponent was puzzled and called for an arbiter.
Different languages were spoken. The ruling was that he had touched a
rook and so had to promote the pawn to a rook, so turn it over and
continue to play. Balmazi was shocked, but he won anyway." Comment?

A. An incredible ruling. Chess sets have one queen and it's universally
accepted, especially in speed games, that a pawn can be queened by
turning a rook upside down.

In a Fischer-Petrosian game at the 1959 Candidates' Tournament,
Petrosian played 35...a1=Q and Fischer played 37 h8=Q.
Hence, both Bobby Fischer and Tigran Petrosian had two queens
until a queen exchange on move 43. The game was drawn.

Does anyone know whether or not Fischer and Petrosian
were using inverted rooks to act as their second queens?

--Nick

jr wrote:

I certainly didn't know about Che Guevara's interest
in chess, and I'm sure many other readers didn't
know it either. That's why someone asked the question.

Duh.

Can Mr. know-it-all tell us what Che Guevara and Larry
Evans talked about when they were together in Havana?


Certainly. They discussed a Seven Days in May scenario,
where an army of chessplayers -- led by GM Evans, would
storm the castle at Washington, D.C. and overthrow the
capitalist, imperialist regime in power at the time. The
bold plan was discarded when it was discovered that
in the game Portisch/Evans, White might have held
a draw in the difficult endgame had he only tried...

Long story short, the two men got distracted from
their revolutionary plan, and instead focused upon
post-mortem analysis of an insignificant chess
game. This is why we now must suffer fools
like George W. Bush, & Co., who blatantly
violate the very laws they were sworn to
protect. BTW, Che Guevara frequently
has appeared in articles in various
magazines devoted to motor-
cyles and motorcycling, such
as Cycle, Cycle World, and
so forth. It seems he once
was an avid rider, who
circumnavigated much
of South America on
a two-wheeler of
some sort. Got
to go now. It's
getting awfully
cramped in
here. Bye.

-help bot

jr wrote:

I certainly didn't know about Che Guevara's interest
in chess, and I'm sure many other readers didn't
know it either. That's why someone asked the question.

Duh.

Can Mr. know-it-all tell us what Che Guevara and Larry
Evans talked about when they were together in Havana?


Certainly. They discussed a Seven Days in May scenario,
where an army of chessplayers -- led by GM Evans, would
storm the castle at Washington, D.C. and overthrow the
capitalist, imperialist regime in power at the time. The
bold plan was discarded when it was discovered that
in the game Portisch/Evans, White might have held
a draw in the difficult endgame had he only tried...

Long story short, the two men got distracted from
their revolutionary plan, and instead focused upon
post-mortem analysis of an insignificant chess
game. This is why we now must suffer fools
like George W. Bush, & Co., who blatantly
violate the very laws they were sworn to
protect. BTW, Che Guevara frequently
has appeared in articles in various
magazines devoted to motor-
cyles and motorcycling, such
as Cycle, Cycle World, and
so forth. It seems he once
was an avid rider, who
circumnavigated much
of South America on
a two-wheeler of
some sort. Got
to go now. It's
getting awfully
cramped in
here. Bye.

-help bot

Tom Martinak wrote:

A. An incredible ruling. Chess sets have one queen and it's universally
accepted, especially in speed games, that a pawn can be queened by
turning a rook upside down.

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative." Personally
though, I prefer consistency in application of rules to imagination.
Isn't this answer somewhat inconsistent with the view given in "since
he touched the queen first, even if it was off the board"? After all he
did touch a rook.

Maybe this use of the upside-down rook explains why the USCF rules wait
until the piece is released. Only upon the release of the rook, will
you be entirely sure whether it was a just a rook or was meant to
represent a queen.

And maybe the fact that FIDE only requires the piece to touch the
square (maybe that's why Kenneth Sloan originally thought that?) is
because they don't normally use the rook in that way?

- Tom Martinak


You could be right. In fact, some rules relating to blitz
seem to interpret things quite differently from the official
FIDE rules. Stuffy FIDE arbiters look down upon turning
a Rook upside-down, yet in casual blitz, here in the USA,
it is common practice.


My interpretation of Evans' latest bungle is that he was
simply unaware of the odd way in which the official rules
handle a pawn promotion, and he wrote his answer to a
reader's question "off-the-cuff", with zero research (which
is quite normal for him). IMO, such technical questions
as these need to be answered by those better qualified,
by real experts. In addition, the exact phrasing of answers
to questions concerning the rules of chess are a particularly
delicate matter, better suited to someone less sloppy
than GM Evans. It is most unfortunate that in his one area
of expertise, that of chess analysis, Evans has long been
superceded by computers -- at least in the analysis of
specific moves or positions. Grandmasters still hold the
edge when it comes to explaining ideas and strategies.


-- help bot

Chess One wrote:

Next there will be a
stunning revelation that Pope John Paul was a chess problemist, another
Evans boner that the chess world knew to be false for several years

What is this about?

http://www.astercity.net/~vistula/vatican.htm

"My interest in the subject was caused by the GM Larry Evans' column
from The Washington Post (3rd December 1994)."

From Chess Notes, by Edward Winter:

C.N. 3118 referred to the old claims regarding Pope John Paul II and
chess, pointing out that they had frequently been exposed as a hoax. An
early case of exposure was on pages 192-193 of the May 1984 BCM, and
two decades later even Larry Evans caught on. From page 6 of the Winter
2004 Chess Life:

'Although widely quoted in many other sources, apparently the
problem and game attributed to Pope John Paul II in my column last
January is [sic] a hoax.'