On Oct 25, 11:44 am, "
wrote:
I wonder if the seller is not
offering anything original, but has merely repackaged old Fred. If so,
and these books have not yet passed into the public domain, copyright
violation may have occurred.

That's exactly what it is, a Reinfeld ripoff. It is all now public
domain so unfortunately this joker can't be sent to jail or fined. (I
obtained a copy and notified Mr. Reinfeld's heir, but apparently
nothing can be done.)

Ah, thanks for confirming my suspicions, and for notifying Reinfeld's
heir. (His son, I presume, who lives in Rochester NY, if I recall
correctly? I corresponded with him about 8 or 10 years ago.)
This sort of blatant plagiarism is unfortunately not uncommon in
chess. If no legal action can be taken in this case, at least readers
of rec.games.chess have been warned, and should avoid this sales pitch
like the plague.

As I told members of my chess club, this is probably all very basic
material. Your rating has to be pretty low to improve by "500%". 200 to
1000?

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


On Oct 25, 11:44 am, "
wrote:
I wonder if the seller is not
offering anything original, but has merely repackaged old Fred. If so,
and these books have not yet passed into the public domain, copyright
violation may have occurred.

That's exactly what it is, a Reinfeld ripoff. It is all now public
domain so unfortunately this joker can't be sent to jail or fined. (I
obtained a copy and notified Mr. Reinfeld's heir, but apparently
nothing can be done.)

Ah, thanks for confirming my suspicions, and for notifying Reinfeld's
heir. (His son, I presume, who lives in Rochester NY, if I recall
correctly? I corresponded with him about 8 or 10 years ago.)
This sort of blatant plagiarism is unfortunately not uncommon in
chess. If no legal action can be taken in this case, at least readers
of rec.games.chess have been warned, and should avoid this sales pitch
like the plague.

On Oct 25, 3:02 pm, "Ange1o DePa1ma"
wrote:
As I told members of my chess club, this is probably all very basic
material. Your rating has to be pretty low to improve by "500%". 200 to
1000?

If this is indeed just a plagiarization of Reinfeld's "Complete Chess
Course," it's designed to start with a complete beginner, i.e. someone
with an Elo rating of effectively zero. In that case, claims of "X
hundred %" improvement are meaningless. I came across the book as a
near-novice, probably Elo 600-800, and it helped me improve to maybe
1400-1500. However, it certainly takes more than the advertised 7 days,
even if one does nothing but study the book during that time. And it
certainly is not going to take, say, an 1800-player up to 3600.
In any event, if what the poster below says is true, your club
members have a much better reason to avoid this online offer: it's
plagiarism, pure and simple, public domain notwithstanding, unless the
seller is making Reinfeld's authorship completely clear -- which the
advertisement definitely does not.
Such dishonesty should not be rewarded.

"Taylor Kingston" wrote in ooglegroups.com...

On Oct 25, 11:44 am, "
wrote:
I wonder if the seller is not
offering anything original, but has merely repackaged old Fred. If so,
and these books have not yet passed into the public domain, copyright
violation may have occurred.

That's exactly what it is, a Reinfeld ripoff. It is all now public
domain so unfortunately this joker can't be sent to jail or fined. (I
obtained a copy and notified Mr. Reinfeld's heir, but apparently
nothing can be done.)

Ah, thanks for confirming my suspicions, and for notifying Reinfeld's
heir. (His son, I presume, who lives in Rochester NY, if I recall
correctly? I corresponded with him about 8 or 10 years ago.)
This sort of blatant plagiarism is unfortunately not uncommon in
chess. If no legal action can be taken in this case, at least readers
of rec.games.chess have been warned, and should avoid this sales pitch
like the plague.

Taylor Kingston wrote:
...
If this is indeed just a plagiarization of Reinfeld's "Complete Chess
Course," it's designed to start with a complete beginner, i.e. someone
with an Elo rating of effectively zero.

Complete beginners do not have Elo ratings of "effectively zero".
Different implementations of Elo-based rating systems make different
assumptions - but I would say that, on balance, it is fair to say that
an adult beginner (knows only how the pieces move) of average
intelligence can be said to have and Elo rating of approximately 1000.

This is very different from 0000.

In fact, 0000 is not a "special" number on the Elo scale. The only
number which is at all special is 2000 - the dividing line between
club players and "national class" players. Elo-based systems which
treat 0000 as "special" are arguably broken.

The USCF system currently has no such rating as 0000, and there is
no sense in which a beginner can be said to have a USCF rating of
0000.

Taylor Kingston wrote:

This sort of blatant plagiarism is unfortunately not uncommon in
chess. If no legal action can be taken in this case,

I'm no expert on US law, so I can't be certain, but copyright law
usually includes a number of inalienable rights which are not subject
to any time limitation. One of those is the right to be recognized
as the author of the work in question: anyone posing as the author
or suppressing the name of the original author can, in theory, be
prosecuted.

If it can be done in practice may be different question.

--
Anders Thulin ath*algonet.se http://www.algonet.se/~ath

In article .com,
"Taylor Kingston" wrote:

If this is indeed just a plagiarization of Reinfeld's "Complete Chess
Course," it's designed to start with a complete beginner, i.e. someone
with an Elo rating of effectively zero. In that case, claims of "X


A new player doesn't have a rating of zero; their rating is undefined.

--Harold Buck


"Hubris always wins in the end. The Greeks taught us that."

-Homer J. Simpson

I thought I had escaped this sort of nitpicking by deleting
rec.games.chess.politics from my newsgroup list.

I can't speak for the 0000 rating because I don't know how USCF treats a
0/18 result. I believe they give 400 points below the average opponents'
ratings but I'm not sure. Mathematically, someone who loses all their games
should have a rating of zero, but there may be sound reasons for awarding
some other rating.

How can you say that a player who knows only how the pieces moves is of 1000
strength? When I was rated 969 back in the late sixties I knew far more than
how to move the pieces. Over the years I've played dozens of opponents,
adults and children, in the 900-1300 range. I assure you they are much more
savvy than you say they are.


"Kenneth Sloan" wrote in message
...
Taylor Kingston wrote:
...
If this is indeed just a plagiarization of Reinfeld's "Complete Chess
Course," it's designed to start with a complete beginner, i.e. someone
with an Elo rating of effectively zero.

Complete beginners do not have Elo ratings of "effectively zero".
Different implementations of Elo-based rating systems make different
assumptions - but I would say that, on balance, it is fair to say that
an adult beginner (knows only how the pieces move) of average
intelligence can be said to have and Elo rating of approximately 1000.

This is very different from 0000.

In fact, 0000 is not a "special" number on the Elo scale. The only
number which is at all special is 2000 - the dividing line between
club players and "national class" players. Elo-based systems which treat
0000 as "special" are arguably broken.

The USCF system currently has no such rating as 0000, and there is
no sense in which a beginner can be said to have a USCF rating of
0000.

FIDE's lowest rating is currently a moving target - but it's not
0000 (to the best of my knowledge), and 0000 has no special meaning.

You certainly can't say "this player is a beginner, so his rating is
'effectively zero', and therefore we can compute his expected
score against a 1000 player by considering them to be 1000 points
different". If you want to do such a calculation (which is the
only truly appropriate computation to perform on Elo ratings, then
1000 is a far better estimate than 0000.



--
Kenneth Sloan
Computer and Information Sciences +1-205-932-2213
University of Alabama at Birmingham FAX +1-205-934-5473
Birmingham, AL 35294-1170 http://www.cis.uab.edu/sloan/

On Thu, 26 Oct 2006 17:28:38 -0400, "Ange1o DePa1ma"
wrote:


How can you say that a player who knows only how the pieces moves is of 1000
strength? When I was rated 969 back in the late sixties I knew far more than
how to move the pieces. Over the years I've played dozens of opponents,
adults and children, in the 900-1300 range. I assure you they are much more
savvy than you say they are.

Gotta agree with Angelo on this. For example, in the Montana Open
this year, one player rated 839 scored 2-3, beating players rated
1477 and 1540).

Going to the USCF web site and searching for tournaments "under 1000"
brings up a few hits. People don't usually enter tournaments as soon
as they learn how the pieces move.

It seems to me that ratings of roughly 1000 and below are unstable and
relatively untrustworthy because it doesn't take that much study and
practice to improve enough to gain hundreds of rating points. Think
about going from 1000 to 1400 versus going from 1900 to 2300.

Ange1o DePa1ma wrote:
I thought I had escaped this sort of nitpicking by deleting
rec.games.chess.politics from my newsgroup list.

I can't speak for the 0000 rating because I don't know how USCF treats a
0/18 result. I believe they give 400 points below the average opponents'
ratings but I'm not sure.

No, they don't.

Mathematically, someone who loses all their games
should have a rating of zero, but there may be sound reasons for awarding
some other rating.

False. Mathematically, someone who loses all their games should have a
rating of -infinity. Do the math.

Once again: 0000 is not special. There is zero significance to zero.
The only number on the Elo scale which has any absolute reference is
2000. Elo specifically describes what a 2000 player is, and says that
he choose that number to represent that class of player partly so that
there was enough "ballast" to prevent ratings from becoming negative.

It turns out he was wrong about the second part - he didn't anticipate
the scholastic chess movement. But, until roughly 1970 he was largely
correct. USCF has historically had several "magic numbers" and strange
start-up or racheting procedures that involved ratings in the 0900-1200
range. (but not anymore).


How can you say that a player who knows only how the pieces moves is of 1000
strength?

From long years of observation. You know - facts?

And, if you are going to question my claims, please have the courtesy to
quote me correctly. I included a caveat about being an adult, of normal
intelligence. The 1000 number does not apply to children, or dummies.

Take a look at the distribution of INITIAL ratings for adult USCF
players sometime. There's a very nice, and fairly sharp, peak around 1100.

When I was rated 969 back in the late sixties I knew far more than
how to move the pieces.

But, were you an adult of normal intelligence?

--
Kenneth Sloan
Computer and Information Sciences +1-205-932-2213
University of Alabama at Birmingham FAX +1-205-934-5473
Birmingham, AL 35294-1170 http://www.cis.uab.edu/sloan/

On Thu, 26 Oct 2006 17:28:38 -0400, "Ange1o DePa1ma"
wrote:

Mathematically, someone who loses all their games
should have a rating of zero, but there may be sound reasons for awarding
some other rating.

No, they should have a rating that predicts such a performance, which
will depend on the rating of their opponents. Losing every game against
a bunch of 2400 players does not imply a rating of zero even if you lose
a thousand in a row. Losing every game against a buch with average
ratings of zero should result in a rating a long way below zero.