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#41
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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. |
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#42
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On Nov 12, 7:55 pm, 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? "Kingston" was obviously a typo for "Winter"; these critics all have an exaggerated sense of self-importance, not seeing that the five-time U.S. champion is far more self-important than they. Hmph! -- Evans bot |
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#43
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EVERYONE IS LYING EXCEPT KINGSTON
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....Ah, yes, like when he "corrected" the date of the Steinitz-Zukertort WCh match, and still didn't even get the right decade. -- Taylor Kingston Where to begin? Since this farceur imagines it was anything but a typo (by GM Evans or the editor?) here is what GM Evans wrote in his classic NEW IDEAS IN CHESS (1958): "A noted critic once wrote that Steinitz's two match victories over Zukertort were attributable to the fact that 'Zukertort was not yet Zukertort' in 1872 '(the date of their first championship match), 'and was no longer Zukertort in 1886' (the date of their second match)." NMnot Taylor Kingston -- the man who raised his rating by 500 points through the device of lying about his length of his number -- now avera that he did not praise Edward Winter's attack on GM Larry Evans. He merely provided a link. Nonsense. NMnot has been a partisan of that attack from the beginning, and his act of reproducing a link to it once again tells us what he imagines to be its merits. The man remains a mincing, tap-dancing liar. Larry Evans wrote a scintillating article in Chess Life on the Keres-Botvinnik games in the 1948 world title tournament. He reviewed the history of the debate, and he offered a GM's look at the games themselves to find clues as to whether they were thrown to Botvinnik. As Larry Tapper points out, its main value was an an experiment in forensic game analysis. It was because of this article that the case has been re-examined extensively. 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. |
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#44
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THE FACTS ABOUT EDWARD WINTER
What follows is a portion of a longer essay on Edward Winter's understanding of historical analysis. I contrast it with the work done by Larry Evans. Readers will have a chance to judge whether a typo about a given country (a charge against GM Evans) or deliberate misreading of historical texts and the writing of others (the practice of Eddie Winter) is the more serious lapse. WHAT IS "HISTORICAL TRUTH"? Now there's a question for you! Dates? Ages of historical actors who strut the stage? Yes, that is part of history. But we are dealing with the rankest kind of philistinism to equate these numbers with truth in history. Wrote Mr. Winter in Kingpin (Spring 2000): "Plain facts seldom stand a chance. A small example of the Evans approach to historical truth [my italics] arises from his December 1999 column, which included the following: 'Wilhelm Steinitz was 50 when he defeated Johannes Zukertort (44) in 1892.' In the February 2000 Chess Life we pointed out that this seemed improbable, given that Zukertort had died in 1888. Mr. Evans responded tartly that the matter was unimportant because 'obviously 1892 was a typo instead of 1872.' Still not even the right decade." On the issue of truth - pure and simple, without a preceding adjective - Mr. Winter lied through his teeth when he deliberately misled an English audience that GM Evans wrote the sentence Mr. Winter quoted. A detailed analysis of the substance and syntax of this icy lie will come in a later article of this series. For the moment, the subject is what Mr. Winter calls "historical truth." Mr. Winter, the bean-counter, provides what he says is an "example" of how GM Evans approaches "historical truth." The example contains some incorrect dates and ages written by a third party - a reader of GM Evans' column in Chess Life. There are seventh-graders who would shrink from a bookkeeper's equation of dates and ages with an "approach" to "historical truth." "History, rejecting absolutes," writes Jacques Barzun in Clio and the Doctors, "gives no comfort to ... minds that crave finality and certitude." We know many dates and names with finality and certitude, but they have less to do with "historical truth" than applying common sense to raw data. Barzun, of course, is describing the process of writing history - not necessarily arguing that history is ultimately elative. One "does" history by reading - and reading and reading. And thinking and thinking. And winnowing. Oh, yes, winnowing. Ninety- nine-plus percent of all the names, dates and production statistics get dropped. What remains is history, which is, by Barzun's reckoning, the historian's understanding of how it really was back then or, in Leopold von Ranke's phrase, wie es eigentlich gewesen. What remains in this understanding is not necessarily the meaningless subjectivity of a single person but the possibility for truthful understanding. For, as Aleksandr Solzhenitysn wrote in his Nobel Lecture, truth carries its own conviction. As an example, men understood that in spite of Nazi propaganda, Theresienstadt was not a model for a noble Nazi system of labor correction. "Arbeit Macht Frei" never resonated. And when the first testimonies appeared about the Holocaust, the Nazi historical enterprise collapsed. Even more telling is how Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago completely leveled the mountains of Soviet and Western apologias for Stalin's system. One book versus thousands of books. One work of truth versus a library of lies. Yet the single book prevailed. Truth in history can only be found through the mind of the historian, though few historians measure up to writing works that evoke consensus. Names and dates can be important, though are by no means always so. But the capacity to understand what the raw facts mean is always crucial. On this score, GM Evans is Mr. Winter's distinct superior. We turn in Part II of this series to Edward Winter's farce of "Richard the Fifth." MR. WINTER ATTACKS HIS BETTER - II By Larry Parr WINTER'S TALE ABOUT RICHARD THE FIFTH "If the record in the Spence book is to be believed, there is no justification for the nickname ["Richard the Fifth" for Richard Teichmann] ... " - Edward Winter, Chess Notes (No. 929) and Chess Explorations (p. 122) "If the record in the Spence book is to be believed, my judgment is that there is OVERWHELMING justification for the nickname, Richard the Fifth." - GM Larry Evans in an e-mail message of June 30, 2001 Shakespeare had his tragedy of Richard III. Rowan Atkinson had his comedy of Richard the Fourth. Edward Winter has his farce of "Richard the Fifth." Mr. Winter's work is true to the pedant's paradox: the deeper you dig, the shallower it becomes. Take, as an example, his "Richard the Fifth," which was No. 929 in Chess Notes and which appears on page 122 of Chess Explorations: Richard the Fifth It is frequently stated that Teichmann was called 'Richard the Fifth' on account of the number of times he finished number five in a tournament. If the record in the [Jack] Spence book is to be believed, there is no justification for the nickname; Teichmann is shown as finishing fifth or equal fifth only nine times out of fifty tournaments. He was first or equal first in eighteen. Unmitigated, unhistorical swill. A veritable Reign of Error. Even the weasel-conditional - "If the record in the Spence book is to be believed" - doesn't help. Where to begin? The above is not chance nonsense from Mr. Winter. Not only did he consider the thoughts worthy of Chess Notes, he reprised the effort for a book. We are dealing, then, with what Mr. Winter himself regards as mulled cogitation worthy of being republished. Where to begin? A key rule in historical analysis is that not all "likes" are alike. That's common sense. Not all battle victories in a war are equal (the final victory frequently being more important than preceding ones); not all victories in tennis tournaments are equal (winning Wimbledon counts more than winning the Cannibal Open in Ouagadougou); and not all chess tournaments are equal (winning or, yes, finishing fifth at Linares counts more for a great player's reputation than winning the Kennesaw Monthly Sunday Swiss - reached, in the words of a Chess Life TLA, "from Wade Green exit 118, west cross RR tracks, through alley to City Hall"). Where to begin? A key rule in historical analysis is that there is no mechanistic formulation for analyzing what is important in a life. That's common sense. The most important moments may come at the beginning of a life or at the end or, most often, during the middle years. Bean-counters may try to average out events in a life. Historians do not. Reputations are rightly made by how one handles important moments or challenges in a life. No historian, when writing about Bobby Fischer's IQ, would average out his score on a Stanford-Binet during his high school years with his scores on the same test at age one week and, if Mr. Fischer remains with us, at age 101. Mr. Winter's weasel-conditional that there is "no justification" for calling Richard Teichmann "Richard the Fifth" if the Spence tally is "to be believed" (meaning, in plain English, largely accurate) is fulfilled. Searching through Jeremy Gaige's Chess Tournament Crosstables, I found nine fifth or shared fifth prizes and 13 first or shared firsts out of 42 tables in which Teichmann appears. That leaves eight other tables - if Mr. Winter's count of 50 is "to be believed" - missing from the Gaige work. Moreover, five of those missing eight are probably among the 18 first prizes that Mr. Winter mentions in the book by Jack Spence. (My copy is packed away in New York.) First, a disclaimer: I counted 42 Teichmann tables after sifting through Gaige's pages twice. Could there be 43 or 44? Possibly, but the overall picture will not change much. Counting the relevant tables could help to pass the time for Mr. Winter or his ratpackers. If I have erred, we shall hear about it, for sure. If not, they will likely keep their traps shut. The defining tournaments of the old Europe of Barbara Tuchman's Proud Tower, which is to say essentially the decade and lustrum before World War I, were the great casino and resort competitions. Whether Mr. Winter was aware of this common understanding, he certainly had before him on Jack Spence's list the names of such places as Monte Carlo, Ostend and Carlsbad. These tournaments and a few ohers were the key competitions of early 20th century chess. Here is a list of Richard Teichmann's results in the Wimbledons and French Opens of his time: Monte Carlo 1902 4th (of 20) Monte Carlo 1903 5th (of 14) Vienna 1903 5th= (of 10) Cambridge Springs 1904 10th-11th (of 16) Ostend 1905 5th= (of 14) Ostend 1905 4th (of 4) Ostend 1906 5th= (of 36) Carlsbad 1907 7th= (of 21) Ostend 1907 6th (of 29) Prague 1908 5th (of 20) Vienna 1908 5th (of 20) Munich 1909 1st (of 4 -- a small but fairly strong quad) St. Petersburg 1909 6th (of 19) Hamburg 1910 5th= (of 17) Carlsbad 1911 1st (of 26) San Sebastian 1911 10th (of 15) Breslau 1912 3rd (of 18) Budapest 1912 5th= (of 6) Pistyan 1912 5th= (of 18) San Sebastian 1912 8th-9th (of 11) The above list contains the strongest tournaments in which Teichmann competed during his prime years, though Breslau 1912 (a third-place finish),Ostend 1905 (a fourth-place finish and a quad),and Munich 1909 (a first prize and another quad) may not belong on a list that contains such massive events as Ostend 1906 and 1907 with 36 and 29 players, respectively. Still, even including these tournaments, one has enough to judge the adequacy of Winter's judgment that "there is no justification for the nickname" of Richard the Fifth. Notice the arrant, errant phrase, "no justification." Mr. Winter's judgment is slop - the mental math of a bookkeeping antiquarian rather than the reasoned reflection of a historian. He utterly fractures the first rule that not all likes are alike -- or, in the context of this discussion, not all chess tournaments are equal. Here is what Larry Evans, a grandmaster and scintillating writer has to say on the same subject: "Teichmann's monicker, 'Richard the Fifth,' came from his performances in the great tournaments of his prime years. These were massive events held in spas and casinos, and they defined tournament chess at the beginning of the 20th century. Teichmann's results in these tournaments informed his career. That's historical common sense. Just read Lasker, for crying out loud." The reference is to Edward, not Emanuel, Lasker and his lovely memoir, Chess Secrets I Learned from the Masters, where Teichmann's propensity for finishing fifth is mentioned. "It was said of him," wrote Lasker the Lesser, "that he had a season ticket for fifth place." Now, then, GM Evans is a historically literate chess writer - not a chess historian. He is a jack of all chess trades and master of a few. He entertains with lively writing which at its best, as Mr. Winter once noted, "is very good." His rehearsal of why Teichmann was called Richard the Fifth is not that of a Clio-accountant; it is a logical appraisal of the major moments in Teichmann's career by someone whom Mr. Winter once described as "normally one of the sanest and acutest of commentators." Now, back to those numbers. Of the 20 tournaments listed (we will soon be discussing what is not listed) Teichmann finished fifth or equal fifth nne times, fourth twice, sixth twice, and 7th= once. In 14 of 20 tournaments, he was either fifth or hovering very nearby. No one, except a party-line Winterian ratpacker, would defend Mr. Winter's idiot-savant, number-crunching judgment that there is "no justification" for the monicker of Richard the Fifth. Indeed, GM Evans is clearly correct to say that there is "OVERWHELMING justification" for Teichmann's nickname. I asked one statistician over here in Malaysia about the odds against so many fourth, fifth and sixth places in tournaments with large numbers of competitors. His response was NOT what I wished to hear: the odds could be many guh-zillions to one IF Teichmann were not fifth-place rating material or they could be considerably lower if he were. I asked him to work out the odds, and he wanted dollars in return. Perhaps some statistician could venture a ballpark figure for the odds against so many fifth places in tournaments with, respectively, 14, 10, 14, 36, 20, 20, 17, 6 and 18 players. One ought also to mention that several of Teichmann's non-fifth finishes were very close to the target. His 7th= at Carlsbad 1907 was a point shy of fifth; his 6th at Ostend 1907 was a half-point short; his 6th at St. Petersburg 1909 was a half-point below; his 10th at San Sebastian 1911 was one-point below fifth; and his 3rd at Breslau was a half-point above fifth- equal. Another issue to consider is how Teichmann achieved these fifth- ish results. Was he creating a dynamic stir with wins wildly alternating with losses, forcibly suggesting other possible nicknames? Or was he often playing somnolent, though powerful chess, drawing against the strong and preying a la Darwin on the weak, thereby ensconcing himself comfortably in the upper half of most tournament tables? Did his game results suggest a strong also-ran or a win-loss mad dog? I think the game results suggest a strong also-ran, especially during his maturity, though there are exceptions such as Vienna 1903, a gambit tournament. At Prague 1908 he was +1 =8 against the top half; at Vienna 1908 he was =8 against the top eight and +4 against the bottom four. At St. Petersburg 1909, he did NOT draw a lot against the top half because he lost a lot. But at San Sebastian 1911, a 10th-place finish, he was +1 -2 =4 against the top half but failed to assassinate the lower half that time around. The reader will notice that I consider fourth-place and sixth- place finishes to have some bearing on calling Teichmann "Richard the Fifth." There were four such instances (two fourths, two sixths), and one can readily understand how these placings, when interspersed among nine fifths or equal fifths, would contribute to the picture of Teichmann as Richard the Fifth because that is where or NEAR where he always seemed to be finishing. That is common sense, though it is evidently not Winter sense. Notice how this collector of trivia and bean-counter mechanically refers only to fifth or equal fifth finishes and first or equal first finishes. Notice how he fails to differentiate between great tournaments and lesser vehicles. Another rule of thumb in historical analysis, as mentioned earlier, is that the ultimate judgment on a given individual seldom involves averaging out the person's life. What he does as a child (pace Mill and Mozart) or as an octogenarian (pace Colonel Sanders and George Burns) is seldom as significant as what he does in middle age. Mr. Winter, of course, made no attempt to differentiate not only among results in major versus minor tournaments, but he also lumped together first prizes obtained in minor tournaments in Teichmann's early and late years. Here is Teichmann's early record in tournaments through 1900: Berlin 1890-91 1st (of 11 -- only players of some note, Caro and Walbrodt) Berlin 1891-92 10th (of 11 -- Caro, Walbrodt, Bardeleben, B. Lasker - not a landmark event) Leipzig 1894 3rd (of 18 -- an important but not a great tournament of the 1890s) Hastings 1895 7th-8th (of 22 --THE famous Hastings event) London 1896 1st (of 12) Nuremberg 1896 19th (of 19 --one of the great events of the 1890s) Berlin 1897 16th (of 20 -- one of the nearly great events of the 1890s) London 1899 15th (of 15 -- one of the great events of the 1890s) London 1900 1st (of 13 -- a club event London 1900 1st (of 5 -- at Simpson's Divan vs. Lee, Muller, van Vliet, Mortimer - kinda speaks for itself) The historian would not look at this period of Teichmann's career as defining. His awful results at Nuremberg 1896, Berlin 1897 and London 1899 more than offset the respectable finish at Hastings 1895. The four first prizes in weak or relatively weak tournaments rightly created little notice. During Teichmann's defining years, I did not include the following tournaments in the initial list given above: London 1904 2st (of 17 -- Napier, Blackburne, Gunsberg, Leonhardt and a nearly dead Mason - once again, not a tournament to list along those included) London 1904 1st (of 9 -- a Rice Gambit tournament with Leonhardt, Napier, Gunsberg and Mortimer, Dickinson, MacBean - kinda speaks for itself) Berlin 1907 1st (of 12 -- the only other undisputed GM was Spielmann; maybe Leonhardt) Berlin 1909 1st= (of 4 -- a six-round cafe event with Cohn, Spielmann, Bardeleben) Berlin 1909 1st= (of 10 -- an undistinguished BLITZ tournament) Berlin 1910 1st (of 5 -- an eight-round cafe tournament with no other grandmaster) Some of the ratpackers will probably stoop low enough to suggest that the above six tournaments should be listed alongside the great events of Teichmann's prime. Even if they were, the picture would not change much. Nine fifths, two fourths and two sixths, would still stand out in any reckoning of 26 (instead of 20) tournaments. After 1914, I found mention of five tournaments in Gaige, the two most important being Teplitz-Schoenau 1922 (7th of 14) and Carlsbad 1923 (9th of 18), though Berlin 1924 (3rd of 4), a double- round quad with Paul Johner, Rubinstein and Mieses, was a worthy little event. Berlin 1924 and Leipzig 1925, two 1st= finishes, were much lesser vehicles. An historian looking at the above data would conclude that Richard Teichmann WAS Richard the Fifth, especially given the helpful coincidence of the first names. His fifth places and his near-fifths occurred in the greatest tournaments of his era. His famous first - the great exception that proves the rule - at 25-round Carlsbad 1911 was matched by no other comparable result. His first at Munich 1909? This double-round quad included Alapin, Spielmann and Przepiorka. Six- rounds. The "Historian" may do some ratpacking duty, but few others will. Conclusion: Edward Winter wrote slop, though it was evidently his considered and republished judgment, when he claimed that there is "no justification" for the nickname Richard the Fifth. None of the above is meant to cast aspersions on Teichmann's strength. Capablanca once ranked him among the first five in the world, listing "Lasker, Rubinstein, Schlechter, Teichmann and the present writer." The order in this list could be taken as alphabetical or, given that Capa coyly lists himself last, in order of strength. Who, then, would have been fifth strongest in the world? You got it. Good old "Richard the Fifth" himself! MR. WINTER'S CONTUMELY Was Mr. Winter really unaware that Teichmann was a human 1/5-fraction at the great events of his prime years? I don't think so. He knows his dates and name-spellings well enough. But he could not restrain his disdain for conventional wisdom, even when that wisdom is evidently sound. He HAD to heap scorn on what others have long thought. Such is Mr. Winter's contumely. How does Mr. Winter's contumacious misrepresentation of Teichmann's career compare with Larry Evans permitting or not having the chance to proof the typo "Austalia" in his column or with having the name "Book" appear in his column without umlauts because of a CL style convention or with writing "of" instead of "to" in the title of a book or with misremembering when one Quesada died or with misdentifying the winner of a game between Fine and Borochow, etc.? The few errors that appear in the millions of words written by GM Evans were mistakes made in good faith. They were not major misjudgments motivated by scorn for the understanding and work of others. wrote: EVERYONE IS LYING EXCEPT KINGSTON 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....Ah, yes, like when he "corrected" the date of the Steinitz-Zukertort WCh match, and still didn't even get the right decade. -- Taylor Kingston Where to begin? Since this farceur imagines it was anything but a typo (by GM Evans or the editor?) here is what GM Evans wrote in his classic NEW IDEAS IN CHESS (1958): "A noted critic once wrote that Steinitz's two match victories over Zukertort were attributable to the fact that 'Zukertort was not yet Zukertort' in 1872 '(the date of their first championship match), 'and was no longer Zukertort in 1886' (the date of their second match)." NMnot Taylor Kingston -- the man who raised his rating by 500 points through the device of lying about his length of his number -- now avera that he did not praise Edward Winter's attack on GM Larry Evans. He merely provided a link. Nonsense. NMnot has been a partisan of that attack from the beginning, and his act of reproducing a link to it once again tells us what he imagines to be its merits. The man remains a mincing, tap-dancing liar. Larry Evans wrote a scintillating article in Chess Life on the Keres-Botvinnik games in the 1948 world title tournament. He reviewed the history of the debate, and he offered a GM's look at the games themselves to find clues as to whether they were thrown to Botvinnik. As Larry Tapper points out, its main value was an an experiment in forensic game analysis. It was because of this article that the case has been re-examined extensively. 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. |
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Larry Parr wrote (Sun, 11 Nov 2007 22:28:09 -0800):
7 ... 7 ... What follows is an essay that I penned ... 7 ... 7 ... GM Evans was and is hungry, indeed ravenous, for such 7 corrections ... 7 ... _ Larry Parr wrote (Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:08:29 -08): 7 ... 7 ... Edward Winter ... accused Evans' of making numerous errors. 7 To prove his point, he offered about 25 mistakes in an oeuvre of 7 some 10 million words. Several of those mistakes already had 7 been acknowledged and corrected by GM Evans himself.. 7 ... _ Taylor Kingston wrote (Mon, 12 Nov 2007 13:40:40 -0800): 7 ... 7 Ah, yes, like when he "corrected" the date of the Steinitz-Zukertort 7 WCh match, and still didn't even get the right decade. A marvelous 7 example of scholarship. But we must give Evans some credit for trying, 7 however ineptly. 7 ... _ I wrote (Tue, 13 Nov 2007 00:39:16 -0000): 7 "In the December 1999 Chess Life column, GM 7 Evans presented a letter from a reader that 7 contained these words: 'Wilhelm Steinitz was 7 50 when he defeated Johannes Zukertort (44) in 7 1892.' 7 7 Later, GM Evans wrote: 'obviously 1892 7 was a typo instead of 1872'. 7 7 Did GM Evans ever make it clear to his 7 readers that the year should have been 7 1886?" - Louis Blair (25 Mar 2006 17:22:26 -0800) _ _ Larry Parr wrote (Mon, 12 Nov 2007 19:37:54 -0800): 7 ... 7 ... Since [Taylor Kingston] imagines it was anything but a 7 typo (by GM Evans or the editor?) here is ... 7 ... _ _ "I am not sure what Larry Parr is trying to say. Does he mean that the reader had meant to write 1886 and accidentally typed 1892 instead, or does he mean that the reader had written 1886 and Evans, while transcribing the letter, had accidentally turned the year into 1892? Is 'a typographical error' being offered as the explanation for why Evans brought the year 1872 into the discussion? _ And, again: Did GM Evans ever make it clear to his readers that the year should have been 1886?" - Louis Blair (20 May 2005 09:38:30 -0700) _ _ Larry Parr wrote (Mon, 12 Nov 2007 19:37:54 -0800): 7 ... 7 ... Kingston -- the man who won't answer whether he used false names 7 here IN ORDER TO PRAISE HIS OWN ARGUMENTS initally priased 7 to the high heavens. ... 7 ... _ _ Has Larry Parr identified the "others" who supposedly agreed with him on the "highlighted" and "singled out" controversy? _ "... Duras-Teichman (Ostend, 1906) is a famous game, and NM Kingston highlighted the best-known position in this famous game. Whereupon, he failed to tell the reader the most interesting thing about the best-known position in the famous game. _ Someone with a normal ego would write as follows: '... For purely illustrative purposes, I obviously ought to have chosen another position if I were not up to the mark of pointing out the most important point in the position I singled out.'" - Larry Parr (26 Apr 2006 19:05:22 -0700) _ _ "In reality, Taylor Kingston did not even mention the position. He simply selected a sentence from the introduction to the game as an example of the failure of GM Soltis to provide such information as the round in which the game was played" - Louis Blair (2 Jun 2006 01:03:30 -0700) _ _ "This writer and others have argued that if one references Duras-Teichmann, as NM Kingston did in his review of the Soltis volume, then one is perforce highlighting ..." - Larry Parr (5 Jun 2006 20:29:53 -0700) _ _ "Who are these others?" - Louis Blair (5 Jun 2006 22:44:43 -0700) |
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"Larry Tapper" wrote in message ups.com... On Nov 12, 4:40 pm, Taylor Kingston wrote: After following these various arguments for some time, I'm still one of the doubting Thomases who think that it is simply not known whether Keres deliberately threw any of the Botvinnik games. That is, there isn't enough evidence to distinguish between the two scenarios: (1) Keres was rattled by the political pressure; and (2) Keres consciously gave in to the political pressure. (Of course there are other possibilities, e.g. Keres was simply in poor form or Botvinnik had his number.) or (3) he was exhausted? Contextually though any lapsus on the part of Keres can be argued by exclusion; that is, what set Keres/Botvinnik apart from all other Russian championships so that there would be no pressure? Contexts can attain more or less weight in any individual case - yet the context of coercian here was the norm, no? I trust that the _existence_ of the political pressure has never really been in dispute, except maybe among some hard-core defenders of the Soviet system. What we learned from the new Whyld evidence was that the subject of Comrade Stalin preferring a Botvinnik victory was explicitly discussed. He gained his understanding from the Linders [father and son] when they met in Berlin. Pity Ken didn't consult a certain GM in the Crimea, or in fact, use second sourcing since he would corroborate the issue more fully. The argument, Larry, is if there was coercian, there are also those who would hide it, diminish it. Those who would are openly discussed in Russian chess circles. In this instance we have to understand the weight of Stalin's 'preference' as an instruction to one of the 3 cultural shows put on by the Soviets. But even had this not happened, Keres was smart enough to understand what he was up against. So the so-called new revelations do not really strike me as revelations at all. This is where Taylor Kingston and I part ways --- I thought his apparent recantation ("The Commies did it") was no more justified by the new evidence at hand than it already had been long before that. It seems to me that if Evans contributed anything of value to the debate, it had to be his experiment with forensic game analysis ("emanations from the games", as Larry Parr put it). We didn't need Evans to inform us that as a politically suspect Estonian challenger in 1948, Keres must have been feeling the heat. Look Larry, its not 'heat'. Its Siberia! His Estonian background would have weighed against him somewhat, but hob-nobbing around Germany during the war weighed more, eh? The Soviets hardly engaged outside the Bloc until 1953 since they feared foreign agents polluting their scene [and sometimes by reporting it!] I think a second point is that whatever Evans can relate to us about his opinion, and however well, we have to remember that he is not referring to any abstraction, as if to say, by comparitive evaluations by Fritz of the suspect games. The psychological and social pressure on these games is a very strong factor, and indeed, they can be invisible to most of us since we never experienced it in our own play. But GMs do, and some have written supporting this otherwise invisible factor. Its not like the annoyance of a rainy day at Manhattan Beach. The context is Josef Stalin's 'preferrences'. On the whole, he seems to have got his way even if it meant shifting a million people or so. It was much later in the Soviet era until any semi-open dissent appeared - after the Age of the Dictators was in decline, and perhaps first emerged with 'bad boy' Boris Spassky. So if you were engaged with that subject in an earlier time, you knew there were no exceptions tolerated without great risk being attached, even lethal risk, and then the conversation turns to the /extent/ of 'pressure' on various individuals, not the existence of it. Phil Innes Larry T. |
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"Louis Blair" wrote in message oups.com... "... Duras-Teichman (Ostend, 1906) is a famous game, and NM Kingston highlighted the best-known position in this famous game. Whereupon, he failed to tell the reader the most interesting thing about the best-known position in the famous game. Look! Its Louis, ex of the Forum Tribunal thingee )Welcome back! But, immediately to the point - we are talking about a series of games Keres/Botvinnik, and the state of the conversation is that Taylor Kingston has asserted in previous posts, albeit they are self-contradictory statements, that he does not dissagree with the Evans conclusion, but also, "Even when my research into the Keres-Botvinnik case led me to change my mind about the value of his 1996 article, ..." Now - what this research is, remains unclear, even as much as the statement of diminished 'value' of raising the subject is vague. Instead of any 'research' presented in discussion, instead we have a spat by Kingston, the letter writer, with Evans the journalist. No other issue has been mentioned by Kingston. Someone with a normal ego would write as follows: '... For purely illustrative purposes, I obviously ought to have chosen another position if I were not up to the mark of pointing out the most important point in the position I singled out.'" - Larry Parr (26 Apr 2006 19:05:22 -0700) I think if you review a book of 100 best games but don't actually play through the games, then whatever is reviewed is other than the games, no? The Duras-Teichman (Ostend, 1906) reporting episode is an exact parallel to Keres/Botvinnik, which is to say, that it is not any analysis of the chess. Should Taylor Kingston have a more specific contributionto make on the issue of Keres Botvinnik, either contextually which would mean showing that there was no coercian in the games - a fact which would be //unusual//, or some commentary on the play of the games - he might make himself clearer. Both those items would contribute to schoarly approach, whereas a publish-me spat by a commentator to a columnist does not. Those are the central issues here, and for you, Louis, to join the conversations here late to only discuss the spat, and not Keres Botvinnik, is your choice. But you might make yourself clear on what subject you write, at least so you are not deluding yourself that you write about anything other than a dissapointed letter-writer to CL. Phil Innes _ "In reality, Taylor Kingston did not even mention the position. He simply selected a sentence from the introduction to the game as an example of the failure of GM Soltis to provide such information as the round in which the game was played" - Louis Blair (2 Jun 2006 01:03:30 -0700) |
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"Taylor Kingston" wrote in message ups.com... 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. Although you may have stated other reasons to contact someone - such as wanting to speak with Laurie on Alekhine? 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. Was it Peter Kurzdorfer who refused your letter to CL? For example, did you write this to me on Saturday, February 16, 2002 12:22 PM In fact, I see the stem here to be "Chess Life, March 2002, continues the discussion by printing a letter by Richard Laurie of Pennsylvania citing Krylenko's influence on Stalin to bribe and cheat "as a matter of national policy." As someone wrote me, and then a double misrepresentation of the someone. I just can't figure out what your issue is - if you do not contest the issues raised by Evans by your own researches, then you [rightly or wrongly] seek redress for the discontinuation of your correspondence on the subject in CL. But your writing dances in between the 2 subjects, as if to validate one is to validate the other. Phil Innes |
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On Nov 12, 10:37 pm, " wrote:
LP: Taylor Kingston regurgitated a ChessCafe piece in which Edward Winter attacked Larry Evans' writing. TK: No, Larry, I posted a link to it. LP: Taylor Kingston ... now avera [sic] that he did not praise Edward Winter's attack on GM Larry Evans. Gee, when did I say that, Larry? I think your dyslexia is kicking up again. I did and do praise the Winter article. But I did not regurgitate it. "Praise" means to commend, to speak highly of. "Regurgitate" means to vomit. A dictionary can aid you in grasping these subtle distinctions. TK: 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 That's nice, Larry, but quite irrelevant. One does not prove Person A said X by quoting Person B, though of course such factual fundamentals are alien to you. Fortunately, I saved all my correspondence with Mr. Laurie, and thus am able to quote what I actually said. The relevant passages: Kingston to Laurie, 21 February 2002: "Two, you wrote 'I am always appalled by those who meet a solid argument with a personal attack, like Edward Winter' ... I am not aware of any personal attacks by Mr. Winter, though admittedly I do not have the full voluminous record of words that have passed between those two ..." *** Please explain to us, Larry, how I can profess to know of the existence of a "voluminous record of words that have passed between" Winter and Evans, and yet be simultaneously professing ignorance of their dispute? *** Kingston to Laurie, 6 March 2002: "[Y]our letter makes evident certain gaps in our understanding of each other. I can only assume that you wrote it before going through the material I sent you. I will now speak frankly. "To deal with your final point first, you said: 'I am troubled by your bald assertion that you are not aware of the battle between Evans and Winter.' "That is a complete misreading on your part. I made no such statement. If you will re-check my message of 2/12/2002, you will see that the relevant portion says: "'Also I am not aware of any personal attacks by Mr. Winter, though admittedly I do not have the full voluminous record of words that have passed between those two ...' "This cannot be interpreted as pretended ignorance of the Winter- Evans dispute. I am well aware of the public antipathy between them for perhaps two years or more." *** end excerpts from 2002 correspondence *** So you see, Larry, in claiming that I made a "bald assertion that you are not aware of the battle between Evans and Winter," Mr. Laurie committed a plain falsehood, one of several. Which you, of course, were only too eager to believe and spread. I must say, it's rather satisfying to see one liar deceived by another. |
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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 |