SLEEP-INDUCING

It is very good indeed that NMnot Taylor Kingston
has nothing to say about the essays published
on Larry Evans and Edward Winter, a subject he
introduced by praising Winter's screed.

As for sleep-inducing, an opposite complaint
once came from Greg Kennedy. The first time he wrote,
he offered the same insult. A few days later, however,
forgetting his earlier putdown, he wrote that he had
stayed up all night reading the entire series on
Winter and Evans. Sleep-inducing, insomnia inducing
-- one gets opposite plaints from the ratpackers and
their associates.

Our NMnot still refuses to answer whether he has
posted here under fake names IN PRAISE OF HIMSELF.

Never has answered, never will.

Yours, Larry Parr


Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Nov 12, 1:28 am, " wrote:

EVANS ENVY

"Larry Evans: Stylist, Essayist, Searcher"

EVANS AS STYLIST

EVANS AS ESSAYIST

EVANS AS SEARCHER


This typical Parr orgasm of sycophancy brings to mind a hilarious
National Lampoon article from a few decades back, about "White
Rastafarians." Instead of ganja their sacramental substance was
mayonnaise, and instead of Ethiopia's Haile Selassie as their messiah,
they worshipped Prince Rainier of Monaco, bestowing on him such titles
as "Lion of God" and "Emperor of Rome."
It would not surprise me at all if our Larry is seriously
entertaining the idea of a similar Evans cult with himself as high
priest.

"Taylor Kingston" wrote in message
ups.com...
On Nov 12, 1:28 am, " wrote:

EVANS ENVY

"Larry Evans: Stylist, Essayist, Searcher"

EVANS AS STYLIST

EVANS AS ESSAYIST

EVANS AS SEARCHER


This typical Parr orgasm of sycophancy brings to mind a hilarious
National Lampoon article from a few decades back,

Its always interesting to see what things make Taylor Kingston remind to
himself. Typographic errors remind him of the death of Mussolini, though
sometimes, Stalingrad.

I thougth just a few days ago we were going to get 'facts' as he himself
suggested was his goal, and after an article length post, didn't mention any
at that time. I even doubted we would identify whatever the topic was.

What we see practiced by such netwits as Kingston and Brennan - an example
is this post, but almost any will do - is to completely eliminate the chess
content, and, presumably while sober, writing about mayonaisse.

You would almost think that a 5 year vehement e-mail campaign didn't exist.
But it certainly did. The last time Kingston showed up to rubbish others was
on the subjects of, guess who? It was Winter again! Then it was about USCF's
copyrights which Winter had claimed.

I sent a formal note to Chesscafe stating that if this was a real claim to
speak up - and Hanon said sweet nothing at all.

about "White
Rastafarians." Instead of ganja their sacramental substance was
mayonnaise, and instead of Ethiopia's Haile Selassie as their messiah,
they worshipped Prince Rainier of Monaco, bestowing on him such titles
as "Lion of God" and "Emperor of Rome."
It would not surprise me at all if our Larry is seriously
entertaining the idea of a similar Evans cult with himself as high
priest.

Very little surprises our Taylor, except as we see, actual scholarship. He
should keep reading where he does, above, since it suits his temperament.
The very idea of a collaborated scholarly approach, with a rational basis
[which is to say, some agreed proportions of what to what] is a subject so
far beyond his experience, it wouldn't matter if the Pope plus 7 heavy
Fide-affiliated Cardinals showed up to support Evans' opinion of perfidious
Soviets.

But I forgot! That is not his beef with Evans - it is so much simpler. Evans
wouldn't continue to support his letter writing in CL, and should Taylor
Kingston not understand why that is, he could post the article in question
here - then people can see how many facts as we know them are presented, or
indeed if Kingston should instead try his luck with Lampoon.

Phil Innes

On Nov 11, 1:21 pm, artichoke wrote:
I stumbled into this thread somehow thinking it was about the World
Chess Championship, something of interest to this chessplayer.

Now I see it's just about a critique of Larry Evans' writing style,
something I am not interested in spending time on.

Have a nice thread, I'm tuning out.


This guy is *very* confused, or perhaps braindead.

The only criticisms of /writing style/ I've yet seen here are
those of the imbecile Larry Parr, who says he doesn't like
the style of Edward Winter, calling it "Victorianese", and if
memory serves, "turgid".

Nobody responded on that issue, since it was far afield of
the current discussion, an obvious attempt at diversion. For
the record, I think LP may be correct, but I would like to see
a side-by-side comparison of classic, turgid Victorianese
with random samples of Edward Winter's work. At any rate,
it is disappointing, to say the least, that LP was apparently
unable to unearth any factual gaffes or even spelling errors
with which to attack EW. I mean, going after his /style/ is
just a tad lame, in this context. LOL


-- help bot

On Nov 12, 1:28 am, " wrote:


The ploy was to recycle about two dozen old errors, pad
them with hundreds of words of invective to suggest
heft, and treat them as representative of GM Evans' oeuvre.

This /appears/ to be a clear patent infringement
(assuming that is, that LP had the wherewithal to
file for a patent on his technique). Lest anyone
give EW unwarranted credit, he merely *stole* the
idea, this already-perfected technique, from Larry
Parr, it's true inventor. Mr. Parr has written fairly
extensively on the subject -- especially on his
technique of padding to lend the illusion of heft.

No doubt if this were to go to court, countless
examples could be found in rgc which predate the
more recent discovery by Edward Winter, so IMO,
it's a slam-dunk win for LP.


-- help bot

HOW EDWARD WINTER FABRICATED "ERRORS"

NMnot Taylor Kingston regurgitated a ChessCafe
piece in which Edward Winter attacked Larry Evans'
writing. He accused Evans' of making numerous errors.
To prove his point, he offered about 25 mistakes in
an oeuvre of some 10 million words. Several of those
mistakes already had been acknowledged and corrected
by GM Evans himself..

In the following essay, which was part of a
larger work, I examined how Edward Winter actually
fabricated an error that GM Evans never made. The
fabrication was clever, and its point was to permit
Winter to heap abuse beyond making a simple
correction. The error concerns a game played between
Harry Borochow and Reuben Fine, and the fabrication
involved Winter quoting from an Evans newspaper column
without telling the readers when said column appeared.
As you will see the chronology was very important.

Interestingly enough, Mr. Winter wrote his
column attacking GM Evans under no time constraint
whatsoever. He had no necessary deadline to meet --
as do those in the hard copy branch of journalism.
Yet as the reader will discover, I found an incidence
of error in Winter's article that was higher than that
alleged by Winter against GM Evans! True, the errors
were minor and piddling and unimportant -- just as
most of the errors alleged against GM Evans also were.
But they were errors nonetheless. And even when
writing at leisure, Mr. Winter committed a higher
incidence of errors than he alleged against GM Evans,
who was writing, in most instances, under deadline.



FAST EDDIE, PART II


By Larry Parr


"'Larry Evans' column in Chess Life continues to be
unspeakable,' writes Winter on another occasion.
About the unspeakable one should not speak, but in
fact this is not true at all, the column is
interesting and informative, and it must be quite
popular among readers, otherwise the USCF, with which
Evans has been on bad terms most of the time, would
have stopped it long ago."-GM Hans Ree, New in Chess
(No. 3, 1999)


"Mr. Evans' latest attack on me is similar to
countless previous ones, i.e. grossly
deceitful."-Edward Winter, ChessCafe bulletin board
(May 31, 2001)


Has Larry Evans launched "countless" attacks on
Edward Winter's person ("on me")? Is this claim
literally true? Or is this claim an example of
permissible hyperbole? Or is it an example of
mendacious hyperbole?

Mr. Winter suggests his own answer in the first
paragraph of his "The Facts About Larry Evans" that
appeared at the ChessCafe on June 6. Writes Mr.
Winter in a short paragraph in which he manages to
misquote GM Evans twice:


Over the years, I have become quite
accustomed to Larry Evans' base and baseless attacks
on me, which have featured such choice abuse as (in
alphabetical order) 'absurd', 'bilious fibber',
'cranky and boring' [an example of Mr. Winter's
slatternly inattention to detail, given that the gent
later quotes GM Evans in "The Facts" as writing
"boring and cranky" -hey, it's amusing to play Mr.
Winter's preposterous proofreading games], 'crude',
'false', 'sly' [more sloppy failure to quote GM Evans
accurately: "slyly," is correct], 'unscrupulous' and
'vile.'


For the record, "boring and cranky" is what GM
Evans actually wrote. But what about Mr. Winter's
charge of "base and baseless attacks" on his person?
Sounds damning, doesn't it? If one were to believe
Mr. Winter, then GM Larry Evans has engaged in
"countless" attacks employing puerile abuse.

Unfortunately for Mr. Winter, there is far more
hysteria than history in his account of GM Evans'
dealings with him. Let us begin with Mr. Winter's BIG
LIE that there have been "countless" attacks.

Given Mr. Winter's claims, one would never guess
that GM Evans has had virtually no contact with the
man over the years, though Mr. Winter has written
often about GM Evans' work and, less often, about his
person.

GM Evans wrote once to Chess Notes (item No.
1457) back in 1987 in response to justified criticism
in item No. 1385 re the Quesada game at Havana 1952;
he replied to criticism from Mr. Winter in the March
31, 1997 Inside Chess in an exchange of letters; he
answered readers' questions about Mr. Winter in the
May 2000 and July 2001 issues of Chess Life and
responded to an attack by Mr. Winter in a
letter-to-the-editor in the February 2000 Chess Life.
After Mr. Winter wrote his ChessCafe article, GM Evans
answered a question about Mr. Winter in the August
2001 Chess Life. And he REPLIED to yet another attack
on him by Mr. Winter in the September 2001 Chess Life.

So far, we have seven instances over nearly 15
years of contact in which GM Evans has written about
Mr. Winter's work - of which four were in the nature
of answering Mr. Winter's criticisms or addressing the
criticisms of others that appeared in the man's
published materials.

There were other instances, but these were
neutral exchanges in Chess Life involving Mr. Winter's
materials in Chess Notes. To the extent that they
involved short plugs for Mr. Winter's vanity
publication, they could be construed as favorable to
the man. For example, in the May 1995 CL, GM Evans
quoted from Chess Notes, giving due credit and citing
items No. 1025 and 1474. On another occasion, GM
Evans and this writer mentioned Mr. Winter in our
award-winning CL article, "Everything You Always
Wanted to Know About Alekhine - But Didn't Know Enough
to Ask," of May 1993. "Here is a little-known list,"
we wrote, "of the Alekhine oeuvre compiled by Edward
Winter in Chess Notes." The list followed.

Mr. Winter claims that GM Evans and he had
exchanges over the old Leisure Linc forum. One would
enjoy reading them again, though my recollection,
which could be mistaken, is that Mr. Winter and I had
those exchanges.

By my count, the number of times in which GM
Evans has addressed Mr. Winter substantively is less
than 10. "[C]ountless," indeed!

But, but, but: perhaps in each of those half
dozen or so instances, GM Evans heaped numerous
attacks, as Mr. Winter put the matter, "on me." Let
us take the list of personal attacks that Mr. Winter
provides above in the extract from his "The Facts."
Four of the phrases listed come from GM Evans' answer
to a reader's question in the July 2001 Chess Life.
As the reader can see, none of the words ("bilious
fibber," "crude," "sly" [sic - as noted above],
"vile") referred to Mr. Winter's person:


Alas, Mr. Winter undermines his own
credibility with this CRUDE [my emphasis] effort to
mislead readers of Kingpin. If he doesn't clean up
his act, his strikingly original legacy will be that
of a BILIOUS FIBBER [my emphasis] who adored only the
"historical truth" of raw dates. ... Needless to say,
Mr. Winter did not quarrel with any part of my answer
or address himself to the nub of the question - only
to a trivial error in the question itself that he ever
so SLYLY [my emphasis] misdirected to me. How
amusing, how VILE [my emphasis].


In, ah, "alphabetical order": "bilious fibber" was a
conditional description of Mr. Winter's future
reputation if, if, if, etc.; "crude" was an adjective
modifying "effort"; "slyly" was an adverb telling how
Mr. Winter "misdirected" a "trivial error"; and "vile"
was an adjective modifying the understood subject of
Mr. Winter's tactics in Kingpin.

Okay, two phrases are left on Mr. Winter's list
that he so clearly relished giving in "alphabetical
order." They are "cranky and boring," which actually
appeared as "boring and cranky" in the February 2000
CL, a phrase that Mr. Winter himself described as "a
wholesale condemnation of my chess writing"; and
"unscrupulous," which appeared in Chess Notes item No.
1457. Wrote GM Evans about what he mistakenly
perceived to be Mr. Winter's views, "But you are
unscrupulous to deduce that I am defaming the
character of Capa, Alekhine and Euwe merely because I
made the perfectly banal observation that dragging out
hopeless positions does 'not endear a master to his
colleagues.'" The predicate adjective,
"unscrupulous," though technically modifying "you,"
clearly refers to Mr. Winter's supposed act of
deduction.

The truth is that GM Evans has not issued
countless "attacks" on Mr. Winter. Indeed, he has
seldom ever written about the man and his doings. The
truth is that Mr. Winter's "alphabetical" list of
supposed "attacks on me" contained attacks on Mr.
Winter's work. The truth is that Mr. Winter fobbed
off a rhetorical lie when speaking of "countless"
attacks and compounded it with a substantive lie when
alleging that his "alphabetical" list contained
attacks on his person. Indeed, he himself refers to
one of the attacks as being on his writing.

Let us compare GM Evans' scrupulous regard, as
shown above, for keeping a discussion at a
professional rather than a personal level with Mr.
Winter's failure to separate the polemical from the
personal. Mr. Winter mentioned the word "crude,"
which we have seen that GM Evans employed to describe
a particular "effort" made by Mr. Winter in Kingpin.
Mr. Winter, too, has employed a noun form of the word
"crude" in his Chess Notes (item No. 1457).

GM Evans wrote with obvious initial friendliness
in No. 1457, "Meanwhile I hope you [Mr. Winter] keep
your curmudgeonly watch on the chess world. C.N. is
unique and lively. Incidentally, one of the reasons
Seattle lost out to Seville is that a lot of prize
money was structured as 'best game prizes' so Campo
could not get his greedy hands on it." Responded Mr.
Winter, "His 'Incidentally ...' sentence in the
penultimate paragraph is not relevant to anything that
has appeared in C.N. though it serves as a further
example of his crudity."

"His crudity." The reference is NOT to the
"sentence in the penultimate paragraph" but to how the
sentence testifies to GM Evans' quality of condition,
which is one of "crudity." That, in truth, is a
personal attack.

In his ChessCafe piece, Mr. Winter went still
further, evidently losing control for a moment:


And if, after somebody else pointed out such an
error, I published a huffy "correction" which also
turned out to be wrong, I would feel deeply ashamed.
Evans, in contrast, shows by his own words that he is
shameless.


"[H]e is shameless." Mr. Winter is not claiming that
GM Evans conducted himself shamelessly when writing as
he did but rather that what he wrote indicated that
"he is shameless." That, too, is a personal attack.

Am I arguing that Mr. Winter has launched
"countless" attacks on GM Evans' person? Not at all.
One need not flaunt prevaricating, mendacious
hyperbole a la Mr. Winter. My point is merely that
Mr. Winter has attacked GM Evans personally, whereas
the American grandmaster in the instances cited by Mr.
Winter confined his attacks to the latter's written
doings.

Mr. Winter claims in "The Facts" that GM Evans
"never subscribed" to Chess Notes, though "often
criticizing the magazine." He fails to mention that
GM Evans purchased a complete run of the magazine or
to adduce the asserted numerous criticisms of Chess
Notes. The truth, once again, is that GM Evans
virtually never talked about Chess Notes. The word
"often" is a substantive lie. If Mr. Winter would
care to trot out all of these criticisms of his
magazine, then I am prepared to retract my charge.
But such criticisms were actually quite rare. Yet
another puddle of dishonest slop deposited by Mr.
Winter.

When Mr. Winter wrote of "countless" attacks by
GM Evans on his person ("on me"), he lied
rhetorically. When Mr. Winter claimed that six
phrases, so absurdly paraded as being placed in
"alphabetical order," were attacks on his person ("on
me"), he lied substantively.


CONTRADICTORY PRAISE AND CONDEMNATION

In "The Facts," Mr. Winter childishly states that GM
Evans both praised and criticized his work. We all
understand that points of view change over the years,
and we all understand that such changes are related to
the condition of personal relations or simply passing
mood. In adult polemics of the real world, not a lot
is made of such contradictions. Instead, issues are
debated.

Mr. Winter quotes from GM Evans' CL
letter-to-the-editor of February 2000 - a response to
a criticism from Mr. Winter . Wrote GM Evans, "In his
pedantic eagerness to find flaws, he makes a false
charge by claiming I 'lifted' the Borochow and Junge
items from his work (which I find boring and cranky
[earlier in "The Facts," Mr. Winter quotes this phrase
as "cranky and boring"] on the rare occasions when I
glance at it)." In "Fast Eddie, Part I," I dealt with
the episode of GM Evans answering a letter from a
reader in the Philippines, who quoted from "our local
magazine Chess Asia," without mentioning that the
material came from Mr. Winter's column, which was
appearing in that little-known publication. GM Evans
answered the reader accurately, and Mr. Winter then
accused him of "[l]ifting" the material, which
mendaciously connotes a conscious intent to filch
without giving due credit. That, too, was an obvious
lie in rhetoric. But the point raised by Mr. Winter
is that GM Evans later praised him in Chess Life:


In passing, that remark ["boring and cranky"
or "cranky and boring," depending on which page one
reads of Mr. Winter's rant] may be contrasted with
Evans' words in the July 2001 Chess Life: "Mr. Winter
is a prolific writer on chess history who fully
deserves the very highest praise for keeping chess
authors on their toes by pointing out their boners."
The idea that any mortal being could keep Evans on his
toes is pie in the sky, but I quote that passage
merely to highlight yet another inconsistency in his
remarks about me. Of course, given his track-record
of inaccuracy, guile and self-contradiction, his
praise is as worthless as his censure.


Fair or unfair enough. This typically arch
Winterian putdown directed at a bit of praise may be
viewed as tartly just or as mean-spirited. But one
must also note Mr. Winter's own contradictions when
evaluating GM Evans' work.

In Chess Notes (item No. 323), Mr. Winter
reviewed GM Evans' The Chess Beat, which he described
as "a reproduction of 300 newspaper columns." The
fact that Mr. Winter understood that this volume was a
photographic "reproduction" is important when we nail
yet another of his sly lies a bit later. But, for the
moment, the subject is Mr. Winter's judgments in this
review that "[i]n some ways Larry Evans' journalism is
of a superior quality" and that his "best is very
good," though he stipulates that Evans is "not very
often at it," Elsewhere, he opines that "the contents
are mostly of some interest" and that Evans "is at
his best when recounting contemporary events, whether
it be a World Championship match or one more instance
of USCF mismanagement."

Later in CN item No. 1143, Mr. Winter prefaces a
criticism of GM Evans' views on Anatoly Karpov with
the sentence, "One would, however, have expected
better of Larry Evans, normally one of the sanest and
acutest of commentators."

Then, in a ChessCafe bulletin board entry of June
20, 2001, Mr. Winter wrote:


335-22 Mr. Evans' Skittles Room "article" quotes me as
calling him "normally one of the sanest and acutest of
commentators". The passage in question comes from
C.N. 1143 (Chess Notes, May-June 1986, page 51), and
in a separate Bulletin Board item I shall cite my full
comments about him on that occasion. They began, "One
would, however, have expected better of Larry Evans,
normally one of the sanest and acutest of
commentators", after which I gave chapter and verse on
how he had bungled matters relating to Fischer and
Karpov.
I had also criticized his inaccuracy and
slovenliness well before then, but I was certainly too
slow in recognizing the extent of the Evans problem
(which, in any case, has clearly worsened since then).
Other writers may have been slower still, but, yes,
my praise of him was unjustified.


The above simply will not do. Mr. Winter tells
us that he earlier read through hundreds of chess
columns by GM Evans and much of his magazine
commentary. Otherwise, the word "normally," which is
an adverb suggesting a regnant condition observed over
a period of years in this case, makes no sense. Mr.
Winter was not writing that GM Evans had his lucid
moments; he was claiming in CN item No. 1143 that this
future bete noire had met his requirements for being
"one of the sanest and acutest of commentators."

What changed?

GM Evans began to speak out against FIDE
outrages and started writing about the saurian
slithering of Anatoly Karpov while enthusing about
Garry Kasparov. That's what changed. Or, as Mr.
Winter put the matter in a telling Chess Explorations
footnote, "Larry Evans' subsequent handling of topical
issues matched his treatment of history."

So Mr. Winter's judgment of GM Evans' work and
person transmogrified. Yet in "The Facts" Mr. Winter
would chide GM Evans for publishing inconsistent views
of the former's work and person. A flip-flop that Mr.
Winter performed, he would deny to GM Evans.


BEAT GENERATION

In "The Facts" Mr. Winter spends more than a page on
GM Evans' treatment of the Borochow-Fine game, which
was an 11-move win for White and which Irving Chernev
once published as a seven-mover with the winner being
unclear in his book, The 1000 Best Short Games of
Chess (1955). Writes Mr. Winter, "The famous
miniature between Borochow and Fine at Pasadena, 1932
is yet another example of how facts in Evans' hands
stand no chance." But the truth is that Mr. Winter's
exposition is yet another example how the truth in his
hands stands no chance.

In Chess Life &Review (October 1977), GM Evans
wrote that Reuben Fine as Black won the game. He was
corrected in the August 1978 issue by G. S. G.
Patterson, the president of the Pasadena congress, who
provided the 11-move game ending with Black's
resignation.

Now, here comes Mr. Winter's authentically low
and scabrous zinger: "Even so, in a book published
several years later - The Chess Beat - Mr. Evans
repeated, in large bold letters, his claim that 'Black
won' (after 7. f4 e6), adding 'But Chernev says Black
resigned!' (page 24)."

What is missing from the above? What piece of
information would any honest broker of fact provide?
Why did Mr. Winter use the phrase, "in a book
published several years later"?

Mr. Winter "forgot" - if that is quite the word
- to mention that The Chess Beat was a photocopied
collection of GM Evans' newspaper columns in a large
eight by twelve format. One may argue that such
compilations of articles should be annotated with
footnotes and corrections, but purchasers know what
they are getting: reproductions of articles that have
already appeared. The column in question "Five Easy
Pieces," was published in 1976 (!!), though it
appeared in a book published in 1982. It was NOT
fresh work by GM Evans in which he contradicted his
recognition of Patterson's point made in 1978.

Did Mr. Winter know that the column was
published in 1976? Probably not, because the columns
are undated. As GM Evans wrote in the preface, "These
300 essays first appeared in my syndicated newspaper
column from 1973 - 1981." However, one thing is
certain: Mr. Winter was far too lazy to do the
elementary research to find out when the column was
written.

Please note: Mr. Winter accused GM Evans of
"lifting" copy from Chess Notes because the
grandmaster did not realize that a reader of a local
Filipino chess magazine had incorporated CN material
appearing there in a letter sent to GM Evans'Chess
Life column. The idea was that GM Evans was expected
to have on hand every chess publication in the world
or to have divined that Mr. Winter's material was used
by the Filipino correspondent even though there was no
reason to believe that anything was amiss. HOWEVER:
Mr. Winter did not research the date when "Five Easy
Pieces" appeared, though virtually any major library
would have on microfilm such important American
newspapers as the Chicago Tribune or Denver Post in
which the column in question appeared. Moreover, Mr.
Winter understood perfectly well that the date when
"Five Easy Pieces" appeared was absolutely crucial in
sustaining or subverting his contention that GM Evans
later contradicted a correction that he published in
1978.

Hence, Mr. Winter's lying phrase: "in a book
published several years later." Yes: Mr. Winter's
"fact" is true. Yes: the book was published in 1982.
Yes: the book contained a column contradicting a
correction that GM Evans made in 1978 of an earlier
error that he made. But: the book contained
reproductions of earlier newspaper columns. But: the
newspaper article in question was published in 1976.
But: Mr. Winter understood full well that he could
not place the date of that article. But: Mr. Winter
decided to hide this point by declining to inform
ChessCafe readers that the article might easily have
appeared BEFORE 1978.

Why couldn't this man have simply confined
himself to noting that GM Evans incorrectly reported
on Borochow-Fine in a newspaper column of 1976 and in
Chess Life &Review in 1977, which he then corrected
with a letter that he published in 1978? Why couldn't
this man have used the opportunity to inveigh against
unannotated collections of newspaper columns in chess
and in other fields?

Two reasons. First, the whole brouhaha over
Borochow-Fine was fundamentally over a small matter -
a misunderstanding about an 11-move game. Secondly,
for this man to wax wickedly about GM Evans' error
(which was followed by a correction), he had to
mislead readers into believing that GM Evans later
rescinded his correction in The Chess Beat (1982),
even though he did not know when the newspaper column
was written and, given the period covered, had a fair
idea that in all probability, it appeared before 1978.

What would an honest broker of fact have written
about GM Evans' treatment of Borochow-Fine? Probably
very little, given that GM Evans made an error and
then corrected it. But assuming that an honest broker
did feel impelled to write something, it might read as
follows (in summary): "In a Chess Life &Review
column of 1977, Larry Evans erred when claiming that
Black won the Borochow-Fine miniature (Pasadena,
1932). But in 1978, he published a letter that
corrected this mistake. Still, one must mention that
the initial error appears again in GM Evans' The Chess
Beat (1982), a book containing photo reproductions of
300 undated newspaper columns. Without research, it
is impossible to tell whether the column in which the
error appears was written before or after GM Evans'
correction of 1978."

What can one make of Mr. Winter's refusal to
mention that The Chess Beat was a photocopied
collection of old newspaper columns? Did he not
realize this fact? As noted earlier, he himself
refers to the work as "a reproduction of 300 newspaper
columns" in a review of the volume. In T. S. Eliot's
words, "The ways deep and the weather sharp,/The very
dead of winter."

"The very dead of [W]inter," indeed. For there
is nothing living in the mannered writing of this
hideous liar.

Mr. Winter's deliberate omission of vital
information - a structural and substantive lie of the
most malicious sort - is unspeakable and, in the
phrase of Professor Henry Higgins, "so deliciously
low." How this man's soul must freeze with chancrous
envy of GM Evans' fame and success.


SMEAR BY NON-ACCUSATION

One of Mr. Winter's more interesting rhetorical tricks
in "The Facts" is to level a smear at GM Evans without
providing an explicit accusation. Neat.

Mr. Winter quotes from a reader's letter to GM
Evans that appeared in Chess Life (July 2001). Wrote
the reader, "He [Mr. Winter] calls this column a
'monthly dumping ground' for your 'fantasies' and
concluded: 'Plain facts seldom stand a chance'." Mr.
Winter then claims that what he wrote in Kingpin was
"rather more explicit" (meaning: more elaborated): "
.... Mr. Larry Evans, whose Chess Life column is a
monthly dumping ground for his obsessions, fantasies,
distortions and solecisms. Chess itself has been more
or less dropped, and plain facts seldom stand a
chance."

So far, nothing overtly dishonest. Now comes
the smear without an accusation:


It is naturally impossible for us to know why only
my word "fantasies" appeared in Evans' column, and not
"obsessions", "distortions" and "solecisms", i. e.
whether they were omitted by the correspondent or by
Evans himself. This further illustrates why it is
preferable, in the interests of both accuracy and
safety, to refer to all matters as having "appeared in
Evans' column", or a similar formulation, rather than,
at the risk of being mistaken, pointing an accusing
finger direct [sic] at Evans' correspondents. In any
case ....


The truth: it is naturally POSSIBLE to know why
portions of Mr. Winter's attack on GM Evans' column
did not appear. Letters from readers are kept on
file. GM Evans states that the letter was published
as provided by the author. Mr. Winter's smear is NOT
that GM Evans cuts portions of letters for reasons of
length or linguistical sanitation (which every Q &A
columnist must do); his smear is that GM Evans cuts
portions of letters to affect tone and meaning.

Writes Mr. Winter, "This further illustrates" -
stop right there. "This" has no antecedent beyond the
reference that it is "naturally impossible to know"
why a portion of Mr. Winter's tirade was not contained
in a reader's letter. Mr. Winter has provided no
foundation even in an unsubstantiated accusation to
merit the smear that GM Evans might alter letters to
affect tone and meaning.

Smear by non-accusation. Ya gotta love it.


AN AGONIZING APPRAISAL

Edward Winter is "Fast Eddie" without much speed. His
intellectual hands are not quicker than the mind's
eye.

We have seen him retail structural, substantive
and rhetorical lies, while sloppily misquoting GM
Evans on at least three occasions in an essay of 5,000
words - a rate of error by Mr. Winter, which were it
extrapolated to the 10 million or so words written by
GM Evans, would come to 6,000 misquotations. Still,
give the man some credit. He did find three games
that GM Evans muffed to varying degrees.

Mr. Winter's central structural lie was to argue
that the 25 mistakes he found defined the oeuvre of GM
Evans - a lie that he compounded when endeavoring to
make errors appear worse than they were. For example,
his failure to inform readers that The Chess Beat was
a photocopied collection of newspaper articles was a
dandy of a doozy. But what can one expect from a man
who lied about GM Evans mismatching authors and book
titles as a norm and who trumpeted errors on page 45
in one printing of GM Evans' The 10 Most Common Chess
Mistakes without mentioning that these errors were
corrected in a second printing?

What can one expect?

One can expect that Mr. Winter would and did
misattribute errors made by a reader to GM Evans
himself. One can expect that Mr. Winter would allege
"countless" personal attacks without finding one
example. One can expect that Mr. Winter would adduce
a list of attacks "on me" that were actually
criticisms of his published work. One can expect that
Mr. Winter would childishly attack GM Evans for
contradictory statements about himself, while
"forgetting" - if that is quite the word - that he
changed his views about GM Evans after this celebrated
grandmaster began to attack FIDE in earnest. One can
expect that Mr. Winter would level a smear against GM
Evans concerning his treatment of letters to his
column without grounding it even in an unsubstantiated
accusation.

One can expect, in short, that Mr. Winter would
live up to the monicker, "Fast Eddie." Fast with the
lies. Fast with the errors. And fast with his
beloved "facts."

On Nov 12, 1:08 pm, " wrote:

Taylor Kingston regurgitated a ChessCafe
piece in which Edward Winter attacked Larry Evans'
writing.

No, Larry, I posted a link to it.

He accused Evans' of making numerous errors.
Several of those
mistakes already had been acknowledged and corrected
by GM Evans himself..

Ah, yes, like when he "corrected" the date of the Steinitz-Zukertort
WCh match, and still didn't even get the right decade. A marvelous
example of scholarship. But we must give Evans some credit for trying,
however ineptly.
So then, Larry, how about you emulate your idol and acknowledge,
correct, and apologize for the various errors, lies, distortions and
misrepresentations you've posted in this thread? I've pointed out
quite a few, and you haven't addressed a single one. Except I do
notice the list of errors/lies/sins/whatever you attribute to me has
been diminishing as each of your points has been refuted.
You know, this all really is so silly of you, Larry. GM Evans'
10/1996 article is a shoddy piece of work. Always has been, always
will be -- nothing you ever do can change that. A reasonable man would
simply accept the fact, but of course on the subject of Larry Evans
you are anything but reasonable. So all you can think of is to attack
me, or anyone else you find handy, by fair means or foul, almost
always the latter.
You imagine yourself to be defending Evans, but in fact you are a
serious embarassment to him. With friends like you, Evans hardly needs
enemies.

On Nov 12, 4:40 pm, Taylor Kingston wrote:

...You know, this all really is so silly of you, Larry. GM Evans'
10/1996 article is a shoddy piece of work.

But that article was a masterpiece compared to the follow-up article
entitled "Case Closed!" published in the September 2001 Chess Life. I
imagine that our bitter disputants (TK and LP) both have copies ready
to hand --- I've mislaid mine.

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.)

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. 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.

Larry T.

On Nov 12, 5:27 pm, Larry Tapper wrote:
On Nov 12, 4:40 pm, Taylor Kingston wrote:

...You know, this all really is so silly of you, Larry. GM Evans'
10/1996 article is a shoddy piece of work.

But that article was a masterpiece compared to the follow-up article
entitled "Case Closed!" published in the September 2001 Chess Life. I
imagine that our bitter disputants (TK and LP) both have copies ready
to hand --- I've mislaid mine.

You mention bitterness, Larry T., and sadly it is an apt word. Aside
from some satisfaction at (I hope) advancing research on what I
consider an important question in chess history, the main thing I've
gotten from the whole K-B business, insofar as it concerns GM Evans,
has been bitter disillusionment.
Like probably most Americans of my generation (I'm 58), I had always
held GM Evans in high esteem. Along with Fischer, Benko, and a few
others, he was one of my American chess heroes.
Even when my research into the Keres-Botvinnik case led me to change
my mind about the value of his 1996 article, I held Evans in respect,
and made sure that respect was expressed in my 1998 article, as anyone
who bothers actually to read what I wrote will see (
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/kb1.txt and http://www.chesscafe.com/text/kb2.txt
). I even defended Evans against what I considered uncalled-for
attacks by Chess Life readers ("wild charges", "crackpot theory," "a
fire sale on paranoia" etc.) and said that he was raising important
issues.
Yet all that came back from Evans, and his mouthpiece Parr, was a
cascade of falsehoods, distortions, misquotations and
misrepresentations, including Evans' 1999 letter to Kingpin, utterly
false and misleading statements in Chess Life and (through Parr) a
continual smear campaign on rec.games.chess that (as we see here) is
still going on (see http://www.chesscafe.com/text/skittles165.pdf for
some of the details).
I don't know if Evans habitually thinks and acts this way, or if he
is merely led into it by Parr. Either way, I could no longer regard
him as any sort of chess hero, and was left with a definitely bitter
aftertaste.

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, he no longer
denies that he posted under bogus screen names, pretending to be
someone else IN ORDER TO SUPPORT HIS OWN ARGUMENT

Shoddy research, selective bias, flawed logic - the Evans article
is a travesty of historiograhy. That's why it has been ignored by
scholars. It's just not worth their time. -- Taylor Kingston

That's hartdly what this gent first had to say after Chess Life
published THE TRAGEDY OF PAUL KERES by GM Evans

"Larry Evans's article 'The Tragedy of Paul Keres' in your October
1996 issue was one of the best pieces
of chess historical writing you've ever run. Evans's analysis of games
from the 1948 World Championship makes a strong case that Keres'
failure, and
Botvinnik's consequent success, were the result of coercion by Soviet
authorities...We could be on the verge of uncovering one of the major
scandals
in chess history." -- Taylor Kingston's Letter to the Editor of Chess
Life, August 1997).

Needless to add, he later disavowed the praise expressed in this
letter to the editor.

Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Nov 10, 4:02 am, " wrote:

KINGSTON'S REVIVES HIS SMEAR CAMPAIGN

Nope, Larry, just stating facts. I must say, however, I do enjoy the
ironic spectacle of you complaining about an alleged "smear campaign."
Rather like Mike Tyson complaining about ear-biting. I will ignore
your usual assortment of slurs, red herrings and fabrications and
stick to the point.


If Mr. Kingston wishes to dredge up this topic again and play the
numbers game, let him cite the scholars who disagree with GM Evans.

False dichotomy, Larry. The plain fact is that scholars have
virtually *_ignored_* Evans's article. It's not that some agree and
some disagree - it's that they are entirely indifferent to it. And
with good reason. The article is not the least bit scholarly - its
citing of James Schroeder is by itself enough to disqualify it - and
overall it just does a real lousy job of supporting Evans' thesis.
Therefore scholars won't touch it with a ten-foot pole.
It is you who have made the claim that "most scholars" consider it
"seminal," "groundbreaking" etc. It's entirely up to *_you_* to
produce references to that effect

Now, then, to scholars agreeing with GM Evans.

Straw man, Larry. The question is not agreement or disagreement with
Evans' *_conclusion_*. A blind idiot flipping a coin has a 50/50
chance of being right on the question of coercion at Hague-Moscow 1948
- it's basically a yes/no proposition. The question is whether Evans
did a good job of *_supporting_* his conclusion. He did not, and
scholars who have read the article know it.
Evans's main technique was closer to the reading of animal entrails.
To buttress this he skimmed through a small part of the relevant
literature and chose quotes that supported his foregone conclusion,
never dealing with sources that contradicted him.

First, we dismiss Edward Winter as a scholar of chess history

Translation: Winter has nailed historical errors by Evans so many
times that Parr can only try to redefine him out of existence.

Scholars, if one may use the word in connection with chess,
who have supported the Evans position include GM Ray Keene

Ray Keene is a scholar while Winter is not?? Riiiight ... and the
Monkees were a better band than the Beatles.

My recollection is that Tony Saidy also supported Evans'
position,

Please cite a reference in which Saidy praised the Evans
*_article_*. BTW, I contacted Saidy during my research circa 1997-98
and he refused to go on the record with any opinion on the Keres
matter.

Harry Golombek also strongly implies that Keres threw games.

In view of the fact that Golombek died on January 7, 1995, while the
Evans article appeared in October 1996, I rather doubt that he ever
expressed any opinion on the article.

Shoddy research, selective bias, flawed logic - the Evans article is
a travesty of historiograhy. That's why it has been ignored by
scholars. It's just not worth their time.
Interested readers can find my critiques of the Evans article he

http://www.chesscafe.com/text/kb1.txt
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/kb2.txt
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/skittles165.pdf

Larry Parr wrote (Nov 11, 10:28 pm):

7 ... Kingston, who will not answer whether he posted here
7 under fake names IN PRAISE OF HIMSELF, ...
_
_
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)
_
_
Larry Parr wrote (Nov 11, 10:28 pm):

7 ... What follows is an essay that I penned ...
7 ...
7 ... To my mind, Mr. Winter's lowest, in fact subterranean,
7 device is to argue that GM Evans is loath to admit mistakes.
7 ...
_
_
"Where is there a quote of Edward Winter saying
that GM Evans is loath to admit mistakes?" - Louis
Blair (4 Apr 2006 06:33:09 -0700)
_
_
Larry Parr wrote (Nov 11, 10:28 pm):

7 ... GM Evans was and is hungry, indeed ravenous, for such
7 corrections ...
_
_
"In the December 1999 Chess Life column, GM
Evans presented a letter from a reader that
contained these words: 'Wilhelm Steinitz was
50 when he defeated Johannes Zukertort (44) in
1892.'
_
Later, GM Evans wrote: 'obviously 1892
was a typo instead of 1872'.
_
Did GM Evans ever make it clear to his
readers that the year should have been
1886?" - Louis Blair (25 Mar 2006 17:22:26 -0800)