On Apr 24, 12:59*am, "David Kane" wrote:

Kasparov's manipulations to keep the title by leaving
FIDE are well known. They may not be historically
out of line with champion's behavior pre-FIDE, but
neither it is anything to boast about. He played just
two title defenses in a 10-year period.

Dave, I'm having trouble seeing what 10-year period you mean. Here
are Kasparov's title matches:

1984-85 vs. Karpov (nullified w/o result by FIDE)
1985 -- wins title from Karpov
1986 -- retains title vs. Karpov
1987 -- retains title vs. Karpov
1990 -- retains title vs. Karpov
1993 -- retains title vs. Short
1995 -- retains title vs. Anand
2000 -- loses title to Kramnik

I can see a 9-year period that could be considered to have "just two
title defenses," i.e. 1991-1999, though I would not use the word
"just," which seems to imply that GK was relatively inactive or
ducking competition. One could as easily characterize it as a rather
active period by saying he played four title matches in 11 years.
The 1990 match ended on December 31st, and the 2000 match began on
October 8th, so the longest period involving "just two title defenses"
by Kasparov was 9 years, 9 months and 7 days. This is quite comparable
to, say, Botvinnik, who after winning the title at Hague-Moscow 1948,
played "just two title defenses" in the period June 1948 through
February 1957.

wrote in message
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On Apr 24, 12:59 am, "David Kane" wrote:

Kasparov's manipulations to keep the title by leaving
FIDE are well known. They may not be historically
out of line with champion's behavior pre-FIDE, but
neither it is anything to boast about. He played just
two title defenses in a 10-year period.

Dave, I'm having trouble seeing what 10-year period you mean. Here
are Kasparov's title matches:

1984-85 vs. Karpov (nullified w/o result by FIDE)
1985 -- wins title from Karpov
1986 -- retains title vs. Karpov
1987 -- retains title vs. Karpov
1990 -- retains title vs. Karpov
1993 -- retains title vs. Short
1995 -- retains title vs. Anand
2000 -- loses title to Kramnik

I can see a 9-year period that could be considered to have "just two
title defenses," i.e. 1991-1999, though I would not use the word
"just," which seems to imply that GK was relatively inactive or
ducking competition. One could as easily characterize it as a rather
active period by saying he played four title matches in 11 years.
The 1990 match ended on December 31st, and the 2000 match began on
October 8th, so the longest period involving "just two title defenses"
by Kasparov was 9 years, 9 months and 7 days. This is quite comparable
to, say, Botvinnik, who after winning the title at Hague-Moscow 1948,
played "just two title defenses" in the period June 1948 through
February 1957.

I knew Parr was too stupid and lazy to count the months, but
I guess I should have expected somebody to! Based on your
research, I will correct my statement to "He played just two
title defenses in a 9.75 year period" (Hasn't anyone ever
heard of rounding??)

FIDE was based on a 3 year cycle. Because of the nullified match
and the rematch clause, it took 3 matches to complete one cycle.
Then it follows the pattern until 1990 (Kasparov retaining the
title by tie in one case, demonstrating the importance of the
champion's advantage)

Then we go to the non-FIDE era (essentially Kasparov doing
whatever he felt like). He started off reasonably well, then
there is a period where he doesn't play a match for ~5 years.
There are various ways to interpret what happened in that
period, others beside Kasparov bear some of the responsibility,
but at the end of the day it was his show and he wasn't playing
WC matches. Nothing comparable to the credibility of
FIDE's cycle had been developed.

So basically, I was refuting the Parr claim that Kasparov was
somehow an advocate of fair play. He gave himself statistically
larger champion's advantage than those who were champion
in the FIDE era, and manipulated things to suit himself.
Not that this was in any way abnormal for
a chess world champion! It is depressingly normal.

Rich Hutnik wrote:
" wrote:
THIS CRAZY WORLD OF CHESS BY GM LARRY EVANS (page 14)

Kasparov gave two reasons for sticking with this system at a symposium
we both attended in Madrid:

1. Since he had to overcome draw odds when he was the underdog, he
saw no reason why the challenger shouldn't have to vault the same
obstacle.

2. Organizers must have a definite budget and solid dates when they
book a playing hall, which isn't possible in an open-ended match.

Kasparov's argument makes sense, yet Fischer's point is still valid.
Only wins should count. This way, a champion can't cling to the title
by playing for draws.

And this explains why the format remains. Someone gets to be
champion, no way are they going to lower the bar in any way for the
challenger. So, it looks like it is now stuck.

I think you need to read up on the history of the championship -- you
seem to be overlooking an awful lot of basic points, here.

Up to 1948, the world championship was, essentially, the property of
the champion. He could set his own rules and do whatever he wanted.
For example, Capablanca and Alekhine were never able to agree terms
for a rematch after Alekhine won the title; Alekhine instead played
and won matches against the weaker Bogoljubow.

From 1948, the championship was run by FIDE. While the champion has a
certain weight in arguing for the terms he wants, ultimately, FIDE has
the final say. For example, Fischer wanted the 1975 match to be
played as first to ten wins but FIDE said no and he refused to play
the match, forfeiting the title in the process.

In 1993, Kasparov (the then FIDE champion) and Short (the then FIDE
challenger) became annoyed enough with FIDE's handling of the match
arrangements that they decided to run the match themselves, outside
FIDE. This created a parallel `personal property' championship that
stayed in Kasparov's hands until he was beaten by Kramnik in 2000.
Meanwhile, FIDE continued to organize their own championship,
initially in the form of challenger-vs-champion matches, then as a
knock-out tournament and, more recently, as a round-robin tournament
contested by the top players. FIDE did not recognize Kasparov or
Kramnik as world champion.

I believe that Kasparov's comments refer to the period 1993-2000 when
he was effectively able to set terms for world championship matches.


Dave.

--
David Richerby Crystal Lead Widget (TM): it's like
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ a thingy that weighs a ton but it's
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On Apr 24, 3:29 am, " wrote:

DAVID KANE TRIES TO REWRITE HISTORY?

David Kane, as usual, made some bizarre claims,
but instead of refuting them, we get this equally
bizarre response from chief rat Larry Parr:


EVANS: If Fischer had asked for a return match clause instead
of ten wins, do you think FIDE would have given it to him?

AVERBAKH: Of course. Of course.

Generally speaking, it is the *reigning champion*
who makes selfish "demands", not the challenger.

In this case, the fact that it was Bobby Fischer
making "demands", shows just how ludicrous the
handling of this cycle was. Former world champ
Tigran Petrosian wrote that this nonsense placed
the other players in the same situation psycho-
logically, as men under fire in a foxhole during war.


EVANS: But this clause was a bigger mathematical advantage than
the one FIDE had denied Fischer.

Larry Evans later came under fire when this
sweeping claim was debunked.


-- help bot

"help bot" wrote in message
...
On Apr 24, 3:29 am, " wrote:




EVANS: But this clause was a bigger mathematical advantage than
the one FIDE had denied Fischer.

Larry Evans later came under fire when this
sweeping claim was debunked.


It's not a question that can be answered mathematically. Having
a chance at a rematch and having an advantage in a match itself
are two separate things.

Does Evans argue that Fischer never became World Champion
because he refused to offer Spassky a rematch? Of course not.

I am not personally a fan of the rematch clause, even though
some rematches have produced good chess. However, it
could be viewed as compensation of a different sort for
playing a match without any advantage, as Karpov did
three times.

Note that the current FIDE system includes a bizarre form
of rematch, though it doesn't pertain to a head-to-head match.
Kramnik "lost" to Anand (i.e. finished behind him in a
tournament) so now gets his "rematch".


-- help bot

On Apr 24, 11:50 am, "David Kane" wrote:

So basically, I was refuting the Parr claim that Kasparov was
somehow an advocate of fair play.

The ploy of mentioning that Gary Kasparov had
"renounced" the champion's unfair advantage has
come back to bite.

In fact, the only real "advocate of fair play" I can
think of offhand is Larry Evans, in his famous
article in Chess Life where he refused to endorse
the unfair "demands" of Bobby Fischer. Some
time afterward, a crotchety old man replaced the
real Larry Evans, and in this new form, he began
attempting every conceivable method to "justify"
what had happenned, and shift the blame to
anyone *but* Bobby Fischer.

This shape-shifting, blame-transferring incarnation
of Larry Evans is the one that countless critics have
identified as being fundamentally dishonest. But
how could he be otherwise? You want to know
what's really funny? Today, in the real chess world,
"we" -- that is the USA -- have another contender
for the world championship title, but because he is
not a native-born American, the Evans ratpack
does not recognize that he exists! Too bad
Larry Christiansen or Nick "gimme another, and
make it a double" DeFirmian were not better chess
players.


-- help bot

In article ,
wrote:
On this matter I must basically agree with Parr. In his
autobiography, Botvinnik describes how he himself was the main author
of the regulations FIDE adopted for world championship matches and
challenger qualifying. I'm not sure whether they were then "imposed"
on FIDE, or FIDE just adopted them willingly, but either way Botvinnik
and his Soviet supporters got what they wanted.

Does or did anyone think it mattered? For the couple of
decades from 1948 until Larsen and then Fischer became serious
contenders, the WC and the Olympiads were Soviet monopolies. If
the WCs had not been Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky,
the most likely alternatives were Keres, Bronstein, Geller, Korchnoi
and others from the USSR. Reshevsky, Najdorf, Szabo, Gligoric and
so on were strong GMs, but it's hard to argue that any of them bar
just possibly Reshevsky on top form were serious contenders for the
title [as opposed to likely qualifiers for the Candidates].

If the WC match is between Soviet GMs and held in the USSR,
it's hard to argue that any other country should have had much of
a say in the match conditions. Whether Keres, Bronstein, Smyslov
and Tal were hard done by is "interesting", even important, esp when
assessing Botvinnik's [in particular] greatness as a player, but
largely a matter of internal Soviet politics.

In 1972 it all changed ....

--
Andy Walker
Nottingham

J.D. Walker wrote:
One possibility of ensuring more decisive match results would be to
change the way draws are scored. I like the idea of giving White
.45 of the point and Black .55 of the point. Mathematicians might
come up with a better way to split the point. A drawn 24 game match
would seem to be much more unlikely with this idea.

There are a number of problems with that proposal. First and
foremost, doesn't it encourage both players to play for the draw with
black?

It might not actually help too much, either. If the match is going to
be tied, it's likely that most of the games will be drawn. With only
a few wins, it's quite likely that all the wins will be with the white
pieces, which means that the match will still be tied with the
suggested scoring system.

It also has a rather counter-intuitive property. Suppose that a match
is played that would have been drawn under standard scoring of half a
point each for a draw. It follows that the players both won the same
number of games. But now look at the number of wins each player has
with each colour. Every win a player gets with a particular colour is
one less draw with that colour. In particular, winning more games
with black means drawing fewer games with black, which means fewer
points.

Consider the following four-game match, with Alice having white in the
first game.

Alice + = - = 2.1
Bob - = + = 1.9

It seems a bit strange that Bob loses the match, given that he won his
game as black, which is harder than winning with white.

I suppose you could try to fix this by changing the scores for wins,
to compensate for the points `lost' by not getting the draw.

If players can get used to decimal results as opposed to whole
number results it should work fine in tournaments also. We can do
it. Look at how we adapted to the metric system! Oops, I forgot,
we didn't.

The rest of the world did. :-P


Dave.

--
David Richerby Psychotic Windows (TM): it's like a
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ graphical user interface but it wants
to kill you!

On Apr 24, 2:41*pm, (Andy Walker) wrote:
In article ,

wrote:
*On this matter I must basically agree with Parr. In his
autobiography, Botvinnik describes how he himself was the main author
of the regulations FIDE adopted for world championship matches and
challenger qualifying. I'm not sure whether they were then "imposed"
on FIDE, or FIDE just adopted them willingly, but either way Botvinnik
and his Soviet supporters got what they wanted.

* * * * Does or did anyone think it mattered? *

That's rather beside the point I was trying to make, Andy. The point
of my post was simply to say that Parr had given the historial facts
accurately on this particular occasion.
With the exception of the rematch clause, I don't think the
Botvinnik rules were markedly unfair. One could argue that the clause,
by which the incumbent retained his title in the event of a tie match,
was unfair, but it was nothing new, going back at least to Lasker-
Schlechter 1910.
What _was_ unfair were the Soviets' behind the scenes machinations,
e.g. keeping Najdorf out in 1948, and their collusive tactics,
especially in the Candidates Tournaments to ensure that no non-Soviet
player got to be the challenger.

For the couple of
decades from 1948 until Larsen and then Fischer became serious
contenders,

Fischer became a serious contender before Larsen. They both played
in an Interzonal for the first time in 1958, but Fischer became a FIDE
Candidate first, in 1959, based on his 5th place in that Interzonal.
Larsen placed only 16th in that event, and did not make it to the
Candidates cycle until 1965.

the WC and the Olympiads were Soviet monopolies. *If
the WCs had not been Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky,
the most likely alternatives were Keres, Bronstein, Geller, Korchnoi
and others from the USSR. *Reshevsky, Najdorf, Szabo, Gligoric and
so on were strong GMs, but it's hard to argue that any of them bar
just possibly Reshevsky on top form were serious contenders for the
title [as opposed to likely qualifiers for the Candidates].

I never have been able to buy the argument that Soviet cheating was
OK because they would have won anyway without it. Surely you're not
saying that?

Rich Hutnik wrote:
How many organized sports have players playing 24 games? And, let's
get real here people, when you start to introduce time controls to
chess, having titles, awarding points, Chess becomes a sport.

Well, I'm not sure that's the distinguishing feature of a sport but
let's not get side-tracked on that.

Why should any sport need more than 24 games in order to decide who
the world champion is?

Snooker uses a best of 35 match, over three days. (It's not possible
for a frame to be tied so the odd number of games guarantees a
winner.)

The point is that the champion and challenger are very closely-matched
in skill. Very short matches mean that the title can be decided by a
single error, which leads to a feeling that the title is not really
earnt.

Want a simple solution? How about if the defending champion doesn't
secure more points than his opponent after 24 games, then he loses
his title, and there is no reigning world champ.

That has the same problem as the idea of declaring joint champions in
the same situation -- how do you arrange the *next* championship?

Someone please tell me exactly what reigning world champions do to
help the growth of chess?

Serve as an aspiration and a role model? Almost all sports have world
and regional champions so I assume there must be some value in it.

If nothing, why not end up not having one, if allows chess to to make
needed changes. As I see it, the reigning chess champion is known by
next to no one outside the chess world. How useful is that? Are we
supposed to blame the reigning champ as not being Bobby Fischer?

My guess is that, if you ask the man on the street who is the world
chess champion, he'll say `I don't know' or `Garry Kasparov'.

As far as unlimited number of games go, are they going to hold the
world championship in the FIDE headquarters? Please tell me how
exactly you will be able to have a location to have the tournament
for MONTHS? Also, tell me how the world is going to care.

These are exactly the problems that led to the matches being fixed at
twenty-four games, with draw odds for the champion!


Dave.
--
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