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Main
Date: 30 Jul 2008 10:00:31
From: samsloan
Subject: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
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Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship br Dr. Reuben
Fine has been reprinted and published today.
Within 48-72 hours you will find it listed on Amazon at the following
address:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0923891471
The author, Dr. Reuben Fine, was a chess grandmaster and one of the
strongest players in the world, who retired from chess to become a
leading psychoanalyst.
In this book, he both analyzes the moves of the chess match and he
psychoanalyzes Bobby Fischer, whom he knew from Bobby's childhood.
I need especially to thank International Chess Master Dr. Anthony
Saidy, the man who more than any other person got Bobby to Iceland to
play the match and even drove Bobby to the airport, for providing a
(not entirely favorable) review of this Bobby Fischer book.
Sam Sloan
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Date: 14 Aug 2008 04:11:27
From: thumbody
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of Everest..
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thumbody wrote:
>
> help bot wrote:
>
> > Obviously, you know nothing about physics--
>
> I'm aware I know nothing bot which paradoxically adds up to something, a
> concept which has exercised the minds of the great & good these many
> long years..
>
> Here is a nice little lecture which thumbody was quite pleased with
> apart from the good Profs. unfortunate use of the execrable 'paradigm'
> word..
>
> MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
>
> Professor John D Barrow
>
> Today we�re going to hear lots about nothing, I fear. Those of you who
> attended Robin Wilson�s talk a few months ago about zero in mathematics
> will have heard about that side of the story and so I won�t talk in very
> much detail about that. If you want to go and learn more than you ever
> wanted to know about that aspect of nothing, then you should take a look
> at my book from a few years ago which was called The Book of Nothing!
> The curious thing about nothing is that it is one of those ideas that
> induces feelings of nausea and panic and boredom simultaneously. It�s
> something of a pivotal idea in all sorts of different areas of human
> thinking, and I�m going to try today to touch on some of those areas to
> show you how the idea of nothing is rather more subtle and was rather
> more important and pivotal in all sorts of ways of thinking about the
> world. Philosophers tied themselves in knots thousands of years ago
> wondering how it could be that nothing could be something, and in the
> West at least, that was a considerable impediment to developing a
> coherent idea about nothing, developing mathematics which included a
> zero. In physics and mathematics, the situation is more predictable, but
> literature, art and music, all have facets of nothingness. Theologians
> were always worried about trying to create the world out of nothing, or
> not, and cosmologists, well, they�re interested in whether the world
> might disappear back in to nothing.
>
> Let�s start with the mathematical side of things. If you were to write
> down 3 strokes � 111 � and you were to talk to a Roman centurion, they
> would imagine that this was the number 3, but if you talk to somebody
> here, 111 means a hundred and eleven. But if you talk to the wrong sort
> of computer scientist, who works in binary, 111 means something
> different altogether, so it means one, plus two to the one, plus two
> squared times one. So if you use a base two arithmetic, 111 means
> something different to what it means if you use base 10. This idea of
> the position of a numeral having a meaning was something that was
> introduced originally by the Sumerians and the Babylonians. It�s a
> rather sophisticated idea. It wasn�t used by the Egyptians, it wasn�t
> used by the Ancient Greeks, it wasn�t used by the Romans. But once you
> start to record numbers, like the Babylonians did, you have a stylus of
> a particular shape; you can represent it vertically, horizontally, and
> the position of the marks you make carries some meaning. The Babylonians
> used a system which combined a base 10 with a base 60, so instead of
> having hundreds, they had multiples of 60 times 60; instead of having
> tens, they would have multiples of 60, and then they would have the
> rest.
>
> For a long period of time, they simply left a space on the tablet, but
> that could create an ambiguity. It wasn�t too clear what the number was.
> So inclined marks of the stylus were used to indicate an empty slot in
> the register, what we would call a zero. All this may sound rather
> remote, but on the other hand, what we�ve derived from the Babylonian
> system is our measure of keeping time � 60 seconds to the minute, 60
> minutes to the hour � and of angular measure � degrees, minutes and
> seconds of arc. Their way of representing numbers was almost like us
> thinking in terms of degrees, minutes and seconds of arc.
>
> The Babylonians weren�t the only people to think of zero. The other
> culture that developed a system that needed to use a zero, a great
> culture, but very mysterious, was the Mayans. I had the great privilege
> to go the Mayan Riviera, as you might call it, into Mexico, in November
> for a couple of weeks, and was able to see some of the Mayan glyphs and
> old cities there � an extraordinary culture that developed mathematics
> to a relatively sophisticated level, but never invented the wheel. What
> the Mayans did was to produce images of numbers, in rows. In the first
> row, you would keep track of what we would call units, and then they had
> a base 20 system rather than 10, so they counted the number of digits
> feet and their fingers originally. So the number 400 would be denoted by
> the dot, two dots, and a strange shell-like symbol, which represented
> zero. At the top you would see lots of pictures from different glyphs.
> What they would then do was to add a number alongside a rather exotic
> picture of a creature, which was representing the number being shown.
> What�s curious � they have a place value system in a sense, so they sat
> in particular positions, so when they created the artistic work on the
> glyph, if they didn�t have a symbol for zero, they had a gap in the
> ornamentation. And so zero was in effect invented for aesthetic reasons
> to complete the picture, as it were.
>
> Babylonians finally got round to introducing their explicit zero around
> 500BC. The Mayans, as you know, just before William the Conqueror came
> along, were dying out. Nobody seems to quite know why they did; they
> weren�t necessarily conquered completely by the Spaniards in any way.
>
> The other great culture that developed the zero in the form that we know
> it is the Indian tradition. The early Indians developed mathematics and
> geometry in a sophisticated way using very nice notation. They used the
> decimal system, they used the same numerals that we use today, and this
> entire way of doing mathematics came to Europe, and ultimately to us, by
> way of the Arab cultures in the early Middle Ages. What�s interesting
> about the Indian conception is it does something that really the Greeks
> were unable to do. The Greeks, because of their philosophical views
> about nothing, never had a zero symbol, and nor did the Romans. All
> these logical problems about whether it was an illegal move to regard
> nothing as something made them very reluctant to introduce the idea of
> zero as a formal element in logical argument, because if you introduce
> one false element, then everything collapses and you can prove any
> statement. The Indians of course, because of their philosophical views,
> were much more mystical, much more conversant with the concept of
> nothingness and non-being, very comfortable with these ideas, and so
> what you find in Indian culture is not just a zero symbol, but the whole
> panoply of interconnections of the words for zero with nothingness and
> the void and the vacuum that we�re familiar with. For the Babylonians, a
> nation of accountants and astronomers, the zero symbol was just a gap in
> the register, but for the Indians had basic words which were used for
> the void, or for the zero, or for that red dot on the woman�s forehead.
> In Indian poetry, you�ll see women�s beauty is extolled in the same
> language, rather like mathematics of generating dots and zeros. From
> this, you generate all the concepts that we�re now familiar with about
> non-existence and the void and things being worthless and having no
> value, going all the way down to the more abstract notions about
> emptiness, nothing, and the mathematical ideas that if you multiply
> something by zero, you get zero, and even if you divide by zero, you get
> infinity. All these ideas were present in early Indian arithmetic and
> mathematics.
>
> We�re familiar today with the words zero and cipher. In slightly older
> English, there�s a usage of the word cipher rather different to how we
> use it today. We tend to use it as meaning a code of some sort, but a
> cipher was just a nonentity, so if you said that a gentleman was a
> cipher in his own household, you meant that he was a zero presence. So
> these two terms have come to have slightly different meanings, and we
> still see them in language today. The interesting message is the way
> that the philosophical climate in India was conducive to the development
> of the mathematical idea of zero.
>
> One of the things of a non-mathematical sort that are rather interesting
> about European and certainly English culture in the early Middle Ages,
> up to the time of Shakespeare or so, was there was a great tradition of
> word play and linguistic paradoxes about nothing, hence Much Ado About
> Nothing. The whole tradition that there are certain paradoxes about
> nothingness and zero began even with some of the early Greeks like Zeno,
> and all the paradoxes revolve around the idea that nothing might be
> something. There was something of an insurance element in this; there
> was a time when, for philosophical and religious reasons, the idea of
> nothingness or vacuum was something of a forbidden idea, a heresy, if
> you like. In the Jewish tradition, and therefore the early Christian
> tradition, nothingness and the void was something that was anathema �
> this was characteristic of the world without God, before the world was
> made. This was not something that you wanted to pursue � quite different
> from the Indian tradition. And so if you wanted to talk about nothing,
> with these sorts of paradoxes, nothing is what is not, as it were, in
> Shakespeare�s terms; it�s a safe way to talk about it, because if
> someone challenges you for propagating heretical ideas about nothing and
> the vacuum, you can always say that you were merely exhibiting these
> linguistic paradoxes to bring the whole idea into disrepute. Countless
> writers played this game, so in the early 1500s; you�ll find a whole
> literature of this nihil paradox type game.
>
> Shakespeare really did it better than anybody, and if you look through
> his plays, you�ll find constant word play and use of this idea of
> nothing. If you look through Lear and other plays, you�ll find that he�s
> constantly using this idea of nothing being something.
>
> The other ingredient of it, which had a sort of theological element, was
> that there was something that we might now in the press regard as the
> moral vacuum. So the world of nothingness and the vacuum, was something
> without god, it was something where there were no morals, where humanity
> wouldn�t go. This whole period of thinking that you could learn
> something about nothingness and the vacuum and the void just by playing
> games with linguistic paradoxes really went on right up until Galileo
> came along. Galileo did away with this whole idea of thinking that just
> by studying what people said long ago, by creating linguistic paradoxes,
> you might learn something about the vacuum, and he replaced it by real
> experiments.
>
> While all sorts of the arts are fascinated by nothingness and the void,
> there are countless works of art around the world that look like blank
> canvases. There�s something terribly unoriginal about these sort of
> works; for some reason they all have a rectangular frame � you never see
> pictures that have an elliptical or asymmetrically shaped frame. And the
> musician John Cage, with his 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence, that�s
> 273 seconds of silence, the absolute zero of sound. And the other matter
> of silence in music, which is more serious, experts can talk to us at
> great length, is the whole matter of timing in music, the silences
> between the notes, which are absolutely crucial for determining the
> structure and the effect.
>
> I want to complete what one might say about mathematics by telling you
> about something that developed after the ordinary idea of zero and
> counting. By the time we got to the 19 th Century, mathematicians
> realised that there wasn�t one mathematics � counting, geometry and so
> on � and these were the thoughts of god and this was the way the world
> worked, as even Galileo believed, but mathematics was made of all sorts
> of mathematical systems, collections of axioms. There were different
> geometries � non-Euclidian ones, Euclidian ones - different arithmetics,
> lots of different mathematical systems. You specify what the objects are
> � whether they�re lines or points or symbols - and you specify the rules
> of the game, rather like chess or drafts, and all the possible games of
> chess are like all the truths and theorems that can be proved using that
> system. What this means is that each system has its own zero, and
> although the word might be the same for each system, the idea is
> completely different. So if your zero is something that you do to the
> objects in your system which doesn�t change them, then if you have a
> collection of symbols and just the operation of addition, then you have
> what we denote by our zero symbol, but if you had a system where only
> multiplication is defined, then the symbol that doesn�t change your A,
> which is what we normally call one. Every system of logic and
> mathematics has an operation, if you wish, that corresponds to zero, but
> they�re different, so there is an infinite number of zeros or versions
> of that concept.
>
> The nearest to the original idea of zero in mathematics is something
> that�s known to mathematicians as the empty set. A set�s just a
> collection of things, a collection of cars in your garage, in the toy
> box, and the empty set is the set that doesn�t have any members. This is
> quite different from the numerical zero, which is defined as part of
> arithmetic. So this is the set that has no members, and out of that set,
> you can define all the numbers of arithmetic. Out of nothing, you can
> generate everything. How do you do that? Well, you define what we
> normally call zero just to be the empty set, and you�ll define by the
> number one the set which has got a single member, and you�ll define two
> to be the set that contains the object zero, and one as members. So the
> number two is defined to be the empty set and the set which contains the
> empty set, and so on with three. The number three is defined to be the
> set that has these members; the empty set, the set containing the empty
> set, and the set containing the empty set, and the set that contains the
> empty set, and so on forever. So you can define all the numbers just in
> terms of the empty set.
>
> Well, I warned you that it was Galileo who really taught us about taking
> the vacuum seriously experimentally. The idea of a physical vacuum is
> something that had been a tortuous question, particularly for early
> Greek philosophers, for medieval scientists and philosophers, and there
> were two rather crucial examples that played a role for thousands of
> years. The first was a Greek object � sometimes it�s called the Water
> Catcher. This would be made out of metal, had a tube, then lots of holes
> were made in it. You can imagine what happens if you put this in water.
> So if you immerse it in water, with your finger off the top so it fills
> up, and then you put your finger over the top and you pull it out of the
> water, then the water doesn�t come out of the holes, but if you take
> your finger off the top, the water will all come out of the holes. If
> you take it empty, and you put your finger on the top and you immerse it
> in the water, the water won�t come in, but if you take your finger off,
> the water will. This understanding of why the object behaved in this way
> was a problem that took thousands of years to solve, and there were all
> sorts of extraordinary ideas about why this object behaved as it did.
>
> The other great paradigm that began really with Lucretius was the idea
> of just having two plates, maybe of metal, later of glass. You put them
> very close together, and then you ask when you separate them, does a
> vacuum form instantaneously or not? Why is that interesting? Well,
> ancient philosophers had all sorts of great ideas about the vacuum on
> which an awful lot rested because they were pivotal ideas in great
> philosophical systems. For Plato, the whole idea of a vacuum, of having
> nothing, was inconceivable, because for Plato, what we saw around us
> were just expressions of the abstract forms in some other world of
> ideas, so even if there was nothing here, there still had to be a form
> corresponding to that, so there is no possibility of there being nothing
> at all. Aristotle believed it was impossible to create a physical
> vacuum, so it was not possible to make a vacuum in the world. And this
> became bound up with the whole idea that it was not possible for nothing
> to be something, for nothing to be part of the whole story and
> argumentation about the world. What Aristotle and his followers for
> thousands of years would have argued is that you cannot create nor have
> what they called intra-cosmic void. You can�t make a void, a complete
> vacuum, anywhere in the world, or in the visible universe, but it might
> be possible to have what they called extra-cosmic void. So if you
> imagine that the world is some great finite ball, then beyond it, there
> might be a void, a complete vacuum. But that�s another story.
>
> All these little experiments with the water catcher and the two strips
> all revolved around the question of whether it was really possible to
> make an intra-cosmic void. Some people were arguing that if you put two
> slabs together perfectly, then there�s nothing between. When you pull
> them apart, air rushes in, but there must be a fleeting moment before
> the air gets in when there�s a vacuum. And if you look at the whole
> medieval argument about this, it�s really quite sophisticated and very
> interesting. The next stage, people say, no, you can never have
> perfectly smooth surfaces, so actually there isn�t a perfect vacuum to
> start with, and so you don�t have to wait for the air to rush in. And
> then Blasius of Parma pointed out, well, it�s worse than that; if they
> were perfectly smooth, you wouldn�t be able to separate them. And then
> other people pointed out, you don�t need two slabs at all; just take one
> slab, drop it on the floor, and at the moment when it�s in contact
> before it bounces, it�s in perfect contact, and when it bounces off,
> that�s the same process of a vacuum being replaced after a finite time
> by air rushing in. Other people said, the air rushes in at exactly the
> right rate never to allow the vacuum to form, because there�s a sort of
> celestial agent, as William Burley called it, rather like Roger
> Penrose�s cosmic sensor that wants to stop naked singularities forming
> in the universe � exactly the same sort of philosophy. The celestial
> agent stops a vacuum ever forming in the world. And so there was a great
> argument then about whether the laws of nature really could have
> negative aspects, whether there could be a law of nature that says no
> vacuum ever forms. The trouble with that was, when you looked at your
> water catcher, the celestial agent could stop a vacuum forming in all
> sorts of ways, in that when you took your finger off, it could fill it
> up with water, but it could also have made the metal collapse and squash
> everything out. Why did it choose to do one thing rather than another?
> The celestial agent didn�t really tell you enough.
>
> All these arguments about whether it was possible to make a vacuum or
> not went on pretty much unabated until the famous event in 1277, the
> Paris condemnations, Albert the Great, when there were theological
> statements for the first time trying to place no restrictions on the
> actions of God. It wasn�t possible for you to say, for example, that
> there couldn�t be infinities in the world because this was somehow a
> challenge to the operation of God�s actions. So this whole story about
> the physical vacuum had an interesting experimental, philosophical
> background.
>
> This was all changed in the early 1600s by Galileo and Torrichelly, his
> student. As he wandered the country, Galileo had noticed rather
> interesting things when farmers were pumping water in their fields. He
> noticed that nobody could pump water higher than a particular height,
> about 10.5 metres in our units, and he obviously had a strong idea why
> this was so. He talked to his student and secretary, Torrichelly, who
> became a great scientist and mathematician himself, and Torrichelly
> picked a different, much denser, material than water, the densest liquid
> there is, mercury, to demonstrate this effect and then understand what
> was going on. He created the manometer, or the barometer that we know
> today. You take a long tube, longer than 76 centimetres in length, you
> fill it up with mercury, and then you invert it in a little jug of
> mercury and watch what happens. The level of the mercury in the tube
> drops, and you get a height of 76 centimetres, what we call atmospheric
> pressure. This was very mysterious, philosophically, theologically. You
> see, when the tube started, it was completely full, there was nothing in
> it, and nothing�s been allowed to get in it, but when it was stood up
> vertically, what happened was that a vacuum appeared. It doesn�t matter
> what shape the tube is, the mercury will always rise to the same level,
> and so the issue was, what was that? Torrichelly maintained this is a
> perfect vacuum � I have created a vacuum here before you in the
> laboratory. If you�re a physicist, the way you work out the height, you
> work out the weight of the mercury that�s pressing down, which is its
> density times its volume times acceleration due to gravity, and that�s
> equal to the force exerted by the pressure of air, which is just the
> pressure times the area over which the pressure is acting. You notice
> the areas cancel out. It doesn�t matter what the cross-sectional shape
> of your tube is. The height of the mercury is given by air pressure,
> divided by the density of mercury, and the acceleration due to gravity.
> As Galileo and Torrichelly appreciated, if you did this experiment in
> different places, at different heights above the Earth�s surface, you
> get a slightly different rise. But this created a whole sea change in
> attitude, so you see what I meant by saying Galileo did away with the
> old way of thinking about nothing and vacuum and the void. Suddenly,
> it�s an experimental issue, and you don�t discuss the vacuum by
> linguistic paradoxes, but you make a vacuum and you try to do things to
> it.
>
> In this country, Robert Boyle, not very far away, carried out all sorts
> of exotic experiments � putting canaries in tanks, and evacuating the
> air and watching the canary become unconscious, then putting the air
> back in again and it comes back to life; seeing if magnetic fields were
> propagated, as it were, across a vacuum, and noting that chemical
> reactions came to a halt if you took all the air out of a chamber. So
> there began an early experimental phase of investigating the vacuum.
>
> The most spectacular experiment of all was carried out by Otto von
> Guericke, who was the Mayor of Magdeburg. They don�t do experiments like
> this anymore. It might be a great Gresham experiment on the day of the
> Lord Mayor�s processionI What what Guericke did was to have two enormous
> bronze hemispheres made, which he joined together, and then pumped out
> the air, and then of course they were locked together, they couldn�t be
> separated. He then got two teams of eight horses attached to each side
> of the hemispheres, and had the horses revved up, pull in opposite
> directions, to try and separate the hemispheres, and they couldn�t do
> it. Then he just went along and turned the switch and let the air in,
> and the hemispheres just fell apart. You can still see the hemispheres
> in the city museum in Munich today. What was remarkable about this
> experiment, great showman that he was, he wanted to demonstrate that the
> vacuum really was something, that it wasn�t just a vague idea. Worse
> than that, Aristotle and early Judeo-Christian philosophy told you that
> the vacuum was something that always tried to go away; if you made a
> vacuum it was always filled, so it was unstable. But this vacuum didn�t
> want you to destroy it, so if you created a vacuum inside the
> hemispheres, pull as you might, you couldn�t separate them and destroy
> it.
>
> Pascal was another to really complete the story. He played the game of
> taking Torrichelly�s type of barometers up to the top of Notre Dame
> Cathedral and up into the French countryside, to the highest mountains
> that he could find, and of course what he discovered was that the height
> of mercury that was raised at the top of the cathedral, on the
> mountains, was different, because air pressure varies with altitude, and
> even the acceleration due to gravity.
>
> This is an era of demonstration that the vacuum is not just a vague
> idea, that it�s part of science, you can manipulate it. In many ways, it
> was the mathematicians who, by introducing the idea of zero into Europe,
> along with eventually the Indo-Arab system of mathematics, really
> smoothed the way for the physicists and other scientists and engineers
> to use the idea of the vacuum without huge amounts of persecution and
> oppression; so the zero in mathematics was relatively uncontroversial.
> It eventually assumed a significant role in accountancy and mathematical
> science in Europe, and this gave credence and acceptance to the idea of
> nothing as being something.
>
> Moving to the 19 th century, following Newton, and at the time of
> Maxwell and others, in physics and astronomy, there grew up a belief
> that the whole of the universe was filled with a mysterious fluid, the
> so-called ether, and you should imagine us just sitting inside a great
> celestial fluid of ether. Physicists took this very seriously. As the
> Earth moved in orbit around the Sun, it was moving through this ether.
> The challenge was could you identify the ether? Could you measure its
> existence?
>
> A famous experiment took place in 1881 by two Americans, Michelson and
> Morley, and what they did was to test whether there exists such an ether
> by examining what happens to the motion of light in the universe. The
> idea, to begin with, is rather like going swimming in a river, so you
> think of the ether as flowing past us, rather like a great stream.
> Suppose you swim across to the other bank; suppose this is a hundred
> metres, and you swim a hundred metres against the flow and a hundred
> metres back, and you time yourself on these two swims. Well, if you do
> everything exactly the same each time, there�ll be a time difference in
> how long it takes you to swim 200 metres by the route where you never go
> against the flow, and where you have to against the flow and then with
> the flow. You would be able to detect whether there was a flow of the
> stream by comparing the round swim times. If there was no current, you
> should have exactly the same time to do the two trips. What Michelson
> and Morley did was to set up an experiment which timed the travel of
> light on two different paths at right angles to each other. This
> requires rather fancy technology and very, very high precision
> measurement using what�s now become known as interferometer. You can
> shine a beam which gets split, you can send light up and back, and you
> can allow light to go through and come back. You have the distances
> equal, and if the light returning is not coming back at the same moment
> and is slightly out of phase, you get interference fringes, which you
> can measure with fantastic precision. This great experiment which they
> performed, probably the most famous null experiment in modern physics,
> discerned no time travel difference for the light in the two paths, and
> this, as Einstein predicted, is what you should see if there is no
> ether. If there had been ether, you would find a time travel difference.
> This experiment pretty much did away with the idea that there was this
> extraordinary ethereal fluid that we were moving through. Einstein then
> developed the general theory of relativity which contains the idea that
> there can be so-called vacuum universes, universes which just contain
> waves of gravity; they don�t contain any material at all.
>
> http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=4&EventId=258
>
> Aww? - something happened here bot. My 'puter sort of froze up..
>
> > especially those areas in which AE goofed up
> > royally.
>
> You mean something along these lines: Summary
>
> The question whether the speed of light is a true physical limit has no
> definite answer yet. It depends on the real structure of the space-time
> continuum, which is presently unknown. If absolute time (and a preferred
> reference frame) exist, then faster-than-light speeds - and even
> faster-than-light travel - are possible, at least in principle. Although
> the theory of special relativity states against absolute time and
> superluminal phenomena, it does it not by proof, but only by assumption.
> If superluminal signals are to be discovered in the future, then the
> notion absolute time will surely have to be reintroduced to physics.
>
> Are there indications that absolute time and faster-than-light p
|
| |
Date: 14 Aug 2008 03:53:54
From: thumbody
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of Everest..
|
help bot wrote:
> Obviously, you know nothing about physics--
I'm aware I know nothing bot which paradoxically adds up to something, a
concept which has excersised the minds of the great & good these many
long years..
Here is a nice little lecture which thumbody was quite pleased with
apart from the good Profs. unfortunate use of the execrable 'paradigm'
word..
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Professor John D Barrow
Today we�re going to hear lots about nothing, I fear. Those of you who
attended Robin Wilson�s talk a few months ago about zero in mathematics
will have heard about that side of the story and so I won�t talk in very
much detail about that. If you want to go and learn more than you ever
wanted to know about that aspect of nothing, then you should take a look
at my book from a few years ago which was called The Book of Nothing!
The curious thing about nothing is that it is one of those ideas that
induces feelings of nausea and panic and boredom simultaneously. It�s
something of a pivotal idea in all sorts of different areas of human
thinking, and I�m going to try today to touch on some of those areas to
show you how the idea of nothing is rather more subtle and was rather
more important and pivotal in all sorts of ways of thinking about the
world. Philosophers tied themselves in knots thousands of years ago
wondering how it could be that nothing could be something, and in the
West at least, that was a considerable impediment to developing a
coherent idea about nothing, developing mathematics which included a
zero. In physics and mathematics, the situation is more predictable, but
literature, art and music, all have facets of nothingness. Theologians
were always worried about trying to create the world out of nothing, or
not, and cosmologists, well, they�re interested in whether the world
might disappear back in to nothing.
Let�s start with the mathematical side of things. If you were to write
down 3 strokes � 111 � and you were to talk to a Roman centurion, they
would imagine that this was the number 3, but if you talk to somebody
here, 111 means a hundred and eleven. But if you talk to the wrong sort
of computer scientist, who works in binary, 111 means something
different altogether, so it means one, plus two to the one, plus two
squared times one. So if you use a base two arithmetic, 111 means
something different to what it means if you use base 10. This idea of
the position of a numeral having a meaning was something that was
introduced originally by the Sumerians and the Babylonians. It�s a
rather sophisticated idea. It wasn�t used by the Egyptians, it wasn�t
used by the Ancient Greeks, it wasn�t used by the Romans. But once you
start to record numbers, like the Babylonians did, you have a stylus of
a particular shape; you can represent it vertically, horizontally, and
the position of the marks you make carries some meaning. The Babylonians
used a system which combined a base 10 with a base 60, so instead of
having hundreds, they had multiples of 60 times 60; instead of having
tens, they would have multiples of 60, and then they would have the
rest.
For a long period of time, they simply left a space on the tablet, but
that could create an ambiguity. It wasn�t too clear what the number was.
So inclined marks of the stylus were used to indicate an empty slot in
the register, what we would call a zero. All this may sound rather
remote, but on the other hand, what we�ve derived from the Babylonian
system is our measure of keeping time � 60 seconds to the minute, 60
minutes to the hour � and of angular measure � degrees, minutes and
seconds of arc. Their way of representing numbers was almost like us
thinking in terms of degrees, minutes and seconds of arc.
The Babylonians weren�t the only people to think of zero. The other
culture that developed a system that needed to use a zero, a great
culture, but very mysterious, was the Mayans. I had the great privilege
to go the Mayan Riviera, as you might call it, into Mexico, in November
for a couple of weeks, and was able to see some of the Mayan glyphs and
old cities there � an extraordinary culture that developed mathematics
to a relatively sophisticated level, but never invented the wheel. What
the Mayans did was to produce images of numbers, in rows. In the first
row, you would keep track of what we would call units, and then they had
a base 20 system rather than 10, so they counted the number of digits
feet and their fingers originally. So the number 400 would be denoted by
the dot, two dots, and a strange shell-like symbol, which represented
zero. At the top you would see lots of pictures from different glyphs.
What they would then do was to add a number alongside a rather exotic
picture of a creature, which was representing the number being shown.
What�s curious � they have a place value system in a sense, so they sat
in particular positions, so when they created the artistic work on the
glyph, if they didn�t have a symbol for zero, they had a gap in the
ornamentation. And so zero was in effect invented for aesthetic reasons
to complete the picture, as it were.
Babylonians finally got round to introducing their explicit zero around
500BC. The Mayans, as you know, just before William the Conqueror came
along, were dying out. Nobody seems to quite know why they did; they
weren�t necessarily conquered completely by the Spaniards in any way.
The other great culture that developed the zero in the form that we know
it is the Indian tradition. The early Indians developed mathematics and
geometry in a sophisticated way using very nice notation. They used the
decimal system, they used the same numerals that we use today, and this
entire way of doing mathematics came to Europe, and ultimately to us, by
way of the Arab cultures in the early Middle Ages. What�s interesting
about the Indian conception is it does something that really the Greeks
were unable to do. The Greeks, because of their philosophical views
about nothing, never had a zero symbol, and nor did the Romans. All
these logical problems about whether it was an illegal move to regard
nothing as something made them very reluctant to introduce the idea of
zero as a formal element in logical argument, because if you introduce
one false element, then everything collapses and you can prove any
statement. The Indians of course, because of their philosophical views,
were much more mystical, much more conversant with the concept of
nothingness and non-being, very comfortable with these ideas, and so
what you find in Indian culture is not just a zero symbol, but the whole
panoply of interconnections of the words for zero with nothingness and
the void and the vacuum that we�re familiar with. For the Babylonians, a
nation of accountants and astronomers, the zero symbol was just a gap in
the register, but for the Indians had basic words which were used for
the void, or for the zero, or for that red dot on the woman�s forehead.
In Indian poetry, you�ll see women�s beauty is extolled in the same
language, rather like mathematics of generating dots and zeros. From
this, you generate all the concepts that we�re now familiar with about
non-existence and the void and things being worthless and having no
value, going all the way down to the more abstract notions about
emptiness, nothing, and the mathematical ideas that if you multiply
something by zero, you get zero, and even if you divide by zero, you get
infinity. All these ideas were present in early Indian arithmetic and
mathematics.
We�re familiar today with the words zero and cipher. In slightly older
English, there�s a usage of the word cipher rather different to how we
use it today. We tend to use it as meaning a code of some sort, but a
cipher was just a nonentity, so if you said that a gentleman was a
cipher in his own household, you meant that he was a zero presence. So
these two terms have come to have slightly different meanings, and we
still see them in language today. The interesting message is the way
that the philosophical climate in India was conducive to the development
of the mathematical idea of zero.
One of the things of a non-mathematical sort that are rather interesting
about European and certainly English culture in the early Middle Ages,
up to the time of Shakespeare or so, was there was a great tradition of
word play and linguistic paradoxes about nothing, hence Much Ado About
Nothing. The whole tradition that there are certain paradoxes about
nothingness and zero began even with some of the early Greeks like Zeno,
and all the paradoxes revolve around the idea that nothing might be
something. There was something of an insurance element in this; there
was a time when, for philosophical and religious reasons, the idea of
nothingness or vacuum was something of a forbidden idea, a heresy, if
you like. In the Jewish tradition, and therefore the early Christian
tradition, nothingness and the void was something that was anathema �
this was characteristic of the world without God, before the world was
made. This was not something that you wanted to pursue � quite different
from the Indian tradition. And so if you wanted to talk about nothing,
with these sorts of paradoxes, nothing is what is not, as it were, in
Shakespeare�s terms; it�s a safe way to talk about it, because if
someone challenges you for propagating heretical ideas about nothing and
the vacuum, you can always say that you were merely exhibiting these
linguistic paradoxes to bring the whole idea into disrepute. Countless
writers played this game, so in the early 1500s; you�ll find a whole
literature of this nihil paradox type game.
Shakespeare really did it better than anybody, and if you look through
his plays, you�ll find constant word play and use of this idea of
nothing. If you look through Lear and other plays, you�ll find that he�s
constantly using this idea of nothing being something.
The other ingredient of it, which had a sort of theological element, was
that there was something that we might now in the press regard as the
moral vacuum. So the world of nothingness and the vacuum, was something
without god, it was something where there were no morals, where humanity
wouldn�t go. This whole period of thinking that you could learn
something about nothingness and the vacuum and the void just by playing
games with linguistic paradoxes really went on right up until Galileo
came along. Galileo did away with this whole idea of thinking that just
by studying what people said long ago, by creating linguistic paradoxes,
you might learn something about the vacuum, and he replaced it by real
experiments.
While all sorts of the arts are fascinated by nothingness and the void,
there are countless works of art around the world that look like blank
canvases. There�s something terribly unoriginal about these sort of
works; for some reason they all have a rectangular frame � you never see
pictures that have an elliptical or asymmetrically shaped frame. And the
musician John Cage, with his 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence, that�s
273 seconds of silence, the absolute zero of sound. And the other matter
of silence in music, which is more serious, experts can talk to us at
great length, is the whole matter of timing in music, the silences
between the notes, which are absolutely crucial for determining the
structure and the effect.
I want to complete what one might say about mathematics by telling you
about something that developed after the ordinary idea of zero and
counting. By the time we got to the 19 th Century, mathematicians
realised that there wasn�t one mathematics � counting, geometry and so
on � and these were the thoughts of god and this was the way the world
worked, as even Galileo believed, but mathematics was made of all sorts
of mathematical systems, collections of axioms. There were different
geometries � non-Euclidian ones, Euclidian ones - different arithmetics,
lots of different mathematical systems. You specify what the objects are
� whether they�re lines or points or symbols - and you specify the rules
of the game, rather like chess or drafts, and all the possible games of
chess are like all the truths and theorems that can be proved using that
system. What this means is that each system has its own zero, and
although the word might be the same for each system, the idea is
completely different. So if your zero is something that you do to the
objects in your system which doesn�t change them, then if you have a
collection of symbols and just the operation of addition, then you have
what we denote by our zero symbol, but if you had a system where only
multiplication is defined, then the symbol that doesn�t change your A,
which is what we normally call one. Every system of logic and
mathematics has an operation, if you wish, that corresponds to zero, but
they�re different, so there is an infinite number of zeros or versions
of that concept.
The nearest to the original idea of zero in mathematics is something
that�s known to mathematicians as the empty set. A set�s just a
collection of things, a collection of cars in your garage, in the toy
box, and the empty set is the set that doesn�t have any members. This is
quite different from the numerical zero, which is defined as part of
arithmetic. So this is the set that has no members, and out of that set,
you can define all the numbers of arithmetic. Out of nothing, you can
generate everything. How do you do that? Well, you define what we
normally call zero just to be the empty set, and you�ll define by the
number one the set which has got a single member, and you�ll define two
to be the set that contains the object zero, and one as members. So the
number two is defined to be the empty set and the set which contains the
empty set, and so on with three. The number three is defined to be the
set that has these members; the empty set, the set containing the empty
set, and the set containing the empty set, and the set that contains the
empty set, and so on forever. So you can define all the numbers just in
terms of the empty set.
Well, I warned you that it was Galileo who really taught us about taking
the vacuum seriously experimentally. The idea of a physical vacuum is
something that had been a tortuous question, particularly for early
Greek philosophers, for medieval scientists and philosophers, and there
were two rather crucial examples that played a role for thousands of
years. The first was a Greek object � sometimes it�s called the Water
Catcher. This would be made out of metal, had a tube, then lots of holes
were made in it. You can imagine what happens if you put this in water.
So if you immerse it in water, with your finger off the top so it fills
up, and then you put your finger over the top and you pull it out of the
water, then the water doesn�t come out of the holes, but if you take
your finger off the top, the water will all come out of the holes. If
you take it empty, and you put your finger on the top and you immerse it
in the water, the water won�t come in, but if you take your finger off,
the water will. This understanding of why the object behaved in this way
was a problem that took thousands of years to solve, and there were all
sorts of extraordinary ideas about why this object behaved as it did.
The other great paradigm that began really with Lucretius was the idea
of just having two plates, maybe of metal, later of glass. You put them
very close together, and then you ask when you separate them, does a
vacuum form instantaneously or not? Why is that interesting? Well,
ancient philosophers had all sorts of great ideas about the vacuum on
which an awful lot rested because they were pivotal ideas in great
philosophical systems. For Plato, the whole idea of a vacuum, of having
nothing, was inconceivable, because for Plato, what we saw around us
were just expressions of the abstract forms in some other world of
ideas, so even if there was nothing here, there still had to be a form
corresponding to that, so there is no possibility of there being nothing
at all. Aristotle believed it was impossible to create a physical
vacuum, so it was not possible to make a vacuum in the world. And this
became bound up with the whole idea that it was not possible for nothing
to be something, for nothing to be part of the whole story and
argumentation about the world. What Aristotle and his followers for
thousands of years would have argued is that you cannot create nor have
what they called intra-cosmic void. You can�t make a void, a complete
vacuum, anywhere in the world, or in the visible universe, but it might
be possible to have what they called extra-cosmic void. So if you
imagine that the world is some great finite ball, then beyond it, there
might be a void, a complete vacuum. But that�s another story.
All these little experiments with the water catcher and the two strips
all revolved around the question of whether it was really possible to
make an intra-cosmic void. Some people were arguing that if you put two
slabs together perfectly, then there�s nothing between. When you pull
them apart, air rushes in, but there must be a fleeting moment before
the air gets in when there�s a vacuum. And if you look at the whole
medieval argument about this, it�s really quite sophisticated and very
interesting. The next stage, people say, no, you can never have
perfectly smooth surfaces, so actually there isn�t a perfect vacuum to
start with, and so you don�t have to wait for the air to rush in. And
then Blasius of Parma pointed out, well, it�s worse than that; if they
were perfectly smooth, you wouldn�t be able to separate them. And then
other people pointed out, you don�t need two slabs at all; just take one
slab, drop it on the floor, and at the moment when it�s in contact
before it bounces, it�s in perfect contact, and when it bounces off,
that�s the same process of a vacuum being replaced after a finite time
by air rushing in. Other people said, the air rushes in at exactly the
right rate never to allow the vacuum to form, because there�s a sort of
celestial agent, as William Burley called it, rather like Roger
Penrose�s cosmic sensor that wants to stop naked singularities forming
in the universe � exactly the same sort of philosophy. The celestial
agent stops a vacuum ever forming in the world. And so there was a great
argument then about whether the laws of nature really could have
negative aspects, whether there could be a law of nature that says no
vacuum ever forms. The trouble with that was, when you looked at your
water catcher, the celestial agent could stop a vacuum forming in all
sorts of ways, in that when you took your finger off, it could fill it
up with water, but it could also have made the metal collapse and squash
everything out. Why did it choose to do one thing rather than another?
The celestial agent didn�t really tell you enough.
All these arguments about whether it was possible to make a vacuum or
not went on pretty much unabated until the famous event in 1277, the
Paris condemnations, Albert the Great, when there were theological
statements for the first time trying to place no restrictions on the
actions of God. It wasn�t possible for you to say, for example, that
there couldn�t be infinities in the world because this was somehow a
challenge to the operation of God�s actions. So this whole story about
the physical vacuum had an interesting experimental, philosophical
background.
This was all changed in the early 1600s by Galileo and Torrichelly, his
student. As he wandered the country, Galileo had noticed rather
interesting things when farmers were pumping water in their fields. He
noticed that nobody could pump water higher than a particular height,
about 10.5 metres in our units, and he obviously had a strong idea why
this was so. He talked to his student and secretary, Torrichelly, who
became a great scientist and mathematician himself, and Torrichelly
picked a different, much denser, material than water, the densest liquid
there is, mercury, to demonstrate this effect and then understand what
was going on. He created the manometer, or the barometer that we know
today. You take a long tube, longer than 76 centimetres in length, you
fill it up with mercury, and then you invert it in a little jug of
mercury and watch what happens. The level of the mercury in the tube
drops, and you get a height of 76 centimetres, what we call atmospheric
pressure. This was very mysterious, philosophically, theologically. You
see, when the tube started, it was completely full, there was nothing in
it, and nothing�s been allowed to get in it, but when it was stood up
vertically, what happened was that a vacuum appeared. It doesn�t matter
what shape the tube is, the mercury will always rise to the same level,
and so the issue was, what was that? Torrichelly maintained this is a
perfect vacuum � I have created a vacuum here before you in the
laboratory. If you�re a physicist, the way you work out the height, you
work out the weight of the mercury that�s pressing down, which is its
density times its volume times acceleration due to gravity, and that�s
equal to the force exerted by the pressure of air, which is just the
pressure times the area over which the pressure is acting. You notice
the areas cancel out. It doesn�t matter what the cross-sectional shape
of your tube is. The height of the mercury is given by air pressure,
divided by the density of mercury, and the acceleration due to gravity.
As Galileo and Torrichelly appreciated, if you did this experiment in
different places, at different heights above the Earth�s surface, you
get a slightly different rise. But this created a whole sea change in
attitude, so you see what I meant by saying Galileo did away with the
old way of thinking about nothing and vacuum and the void. Suddenly,
it�s an experimental issue, and you don�t discuss the vacuum by
linguistic paradoxes, but you make a vacuum and you try to do things to
it.
In this country, Robert Boyle, not very far away, carried out all sorts
of exotic experiments � putting canaries in tanks, and evacuating the
air and watching the canary become unconscious, then putting the air
back in again and it comes back to life; seeing if magnetic fields were
propagated, as it were, across a vacuum, and noting that chemical
reactions came to a halt if you took all the air out of a chamber. So
there began an early experimental phase of investigating the vacuum.
The most spectacular experiment of all was carried out by Otto von
Guericke, who was the Mayor of Magdeburg. They don�t do experiments like
this anymore. It might be a great Gresham experiment on the day of the
Lord Mayor�s processionI What what Guericke did was to have two enormous
bronze hemispheres made, which he joined together, and then pumped out
the air, and then of course they were locked together, they couldn�t be
separated. He then got two teams of eight horses attached to each side
of the hemispheres, and had the horses revved up, pull in opposite
directions, to try and separate the hemispheres, and they couldn�t do
it. Then he just went along and turned the switch and let the air in,
and the hemispheres just fell apart. You can still see the hemispheres
in the city museum in Munich today. What was remarkable about this
experiment, great showman that he was, he wanted to demonstrate that the
vacuum really was something, that it wasn�t just a vague idea. Worse
than that, Aristotle and early Judeo-Christian philosophy told you that
the vacuum was something that always tried to go away; if you made a
vacuum it was always filled, so it was unstable. But this vacuum didn�t
want you to destroy it, so if you created a vacuum inside the
hemispheres, pull as you might, you couldn�t separate them and destroy
it.
Pascal was another to really complete the story. He played the game of
taking Torrichelly�s type of barometers up to the top of Notre Dame
Cathedral and up into the French countryside, to the highest mountains
that he could find, and of course what he discovered was that the height
of mercury that was raised at the top of the cathedral, on the
mountains, was different, because air pressure varies with altitude, and
even the acceleration due to gravity.
This is an era of demonstration that the vacuum is not just a vague
idea, that it�s part of science, you can manipulate it. In many ways, it
was the mathematicians who, by introducing the idea of zero into Europe,
along with eventually the Indo-Arab system of mathematics, really
smoothed the way for the physicists and other scientists and engineers
to use the idea of the vacuum without huge amounts of persecution and
oppression; so the zero in mathematics was relatively uncontroversial.
It eventually assumed a significant role in accountancy and mathematical
science in Europe, and this gave credence and acceptance to the idea of
nothing as being something.
Moving to the 19 th century, following Newton, and at the time of
Maxwell and others, in physics and astronomy, there grew up a belief
that the whole of the universe was filled with a mysterious fluid, the
so-called ether, and you should imagine us just sitting inside a great
celestial fluid of ether. Physicists took this very seriously. As the
Earth moved in orbit around the Sun, it was moving through this ether.
The challenge was could you identify the ether? Could you measure its
existence?
A famous experiment took place in 1881 by two Americans, Michelson and
Morley, and what they did was to test whether there exists such an ether
by examining what happens to the motion of light in the universe. The
idea, to begin with, is rather like going swimming in a river, so you
think of the ether as flowing past us, rather like a great stream.
Suppose you swim across to the other bank; suppose this is a hundred
metres, and you swim a hundred metres against the flow and a hundred
metres back, and you time yourself on these two swims. Well, if you do
everything exactly the same each time, there�ll be a time difference in
how long it takes you to swim 200 metres by the route where you never go
against the flow, and where you have to against the flow and then with
the flow. You would be able to detect whether there was a flow of the
stream by comparing the round swim times. If there was no current, you
should have exactly the same time to do the two trips. What Michelson
and Morley did was to set up an experiment which timed the travel of
light on two different paths at right angles to each other. This
requires rather fancy technology and very, very high precision
measurement using what�s now become known as interferometer. You can
shine a beam which gets split, you can send light up and back, and you
can allow light to go through and come back. You have the distances
equal, and if the light returning is not coming back at the same moment
and is slightly out of phase, you get interference fringes, which you
can measure with fantastic precision. This great experiment which they
performed, probably the most famous null experiment in modern physics,
discerned no time travel difference for the light in the two paths, and
this, as Einstein predicted, is what you should see if there is no
ether. If there had been ether, you would find a time travel difference.
This experiment pretty much did away with the idea that there was this
extraordinary ethereal fluid that we were moving through. Einstein then
developed the general theory of relativity which contains the idea that
there can be so-called vacuum universes, universes which just contain
waves of gravity; they don�t contain any material at all.
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=4&EventId=258
Aww? - something happened here bot. My 'puter sort of froze up..
> especially those areas in which AE goofed up
> royally.
You mean something along these lines: Summary
The question whether the speed of light is a true physical limit has no
definite answer yet. It depends on the real structure of the space-time
continuum, which is presently unknown. If absolute time (and a preferred
reference frame) exist, then faster-than-light speeds - and even
faster-than-light travel - are possible, at least in principle. Although
the theory of special relativity states against absolute time and
superluminal phenomena, it does it not by proof, but only by assumption.
If superluminal signals are to be discovered in the future, then the
notion absolute time will surely have to be reintroduced to physics.
Are there indications that absolute time and faster-than-light processes
exist? The opinion of the author is "yes"! It is the task of the next
section to present some physical evidence.
http://homepage.sunrise.ch/homepage/schatzer/space-time.html
> And when you say AE was a complete
> patzer, I imagine people have too-high
> expectations based on his great fame in
> other areas.
He failed maths too..
t.
>
|
| |
Date: 11 Aug 2008 16:47:10
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 11, 5:54=A0pm, "Chess One" <[email protected] > wrote:
(...nothing of note.)
Note to the clueless commentator on the
magazine /Chess Lies/: the dynamic duo
write (or at any rate, very recently wrote)
articles which were given high priority,
being placed near the front just like, say,
LE or AS used to.
The secret identities of the dynamo duet
are, of course, Susan Polgar and Paul
Truong. In one issue, it just happened
by chance that the dynamo annotated
the very same game as another writer
for CL, and this provided a rather unique
opportunity to compare the quality of
their respective work. My conclusion
was that although their anno-Fritzations
were far from top-notch, the dymamic duo
trumped the also-ran author by a wide
margin, and my guess is this had to do
with their extensive use of Fritz, in
conjunction with a deeper understanding
of chess (SP) and/or genuine effort (on
the part of PT).
Now, when I complain about the low
quality of such work, I am generally
pointing to the amount of effort that is
put into the process by most CL writers.
Clearly, if a rank patzer can find holes in
the analysis of such writers, they are not
giving it much real effort, but are instead
just "winging it", as they say. Either that,
or perhaps the trouble is that nowadays
rank patzers are given FIDE and USCF
titles, so it's just one patzer /cooking/
the analysis of another.
This reminds me of the old days, back
when Larry Evans was still doing chess
analysis and the slow rise of computers
caught him off-guard, as patzers began
bombarding him with /cooks/ or
refutations of his work. Rather than
hunker down and fight off the onslaught,
Mr. Evans just surrendered without a
fight. It was like when the German tanks
rolled through Liechtenstein, finding not
even one soldier to oppose them (see:
WWII, Germany's toughest opponent).
In any case, as I said before, things with
the Chess Lies magazine are so bad and
have been for so long, that substantive
improvement ought to be a piece of cake.
That's how the optimists see things,
anyway.
-- help bot
|
| |
Date: 11 Aug 2008 13:36:06
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 11, 7:06=A0am, "Chess One" <[email protected] > wrote:
> =A0 Really, if LE cannot do better than just
> inventing lies, he ought to be replaced.
> I say they ought to give Edward Winter
> a shot--
>
> **Once again, I assume no pun intended
"Thinking" pattern duly noted. You know,
Norman Bates was okay... until he got a
hold of a knife again. Perhaps you should
get rid of any guns you might have around
the house... you know, to keep the kids
from playing with them. I'm not suggesting
that YOU would so anything silly... not at
all! You are not a psychotic. You do not
think about killing messengers who bring
bad news about your idols. You did not
just make a Freudian slip-up. No, no, no!
> =A0even though his dry style may
> put some CL readers to sleep.
>
> **splutter! now we have 'put to sleep'. If CL beacme any drier camels wou=
ld
> cross it.
Opinion noted. Personally, I found the
writing style of the dynamic duo to be just
fine. Where they goofed was in their poor
selection of games, as for instance seen
in the game selected to display the great
talent of Boris Gulko (a game which was
not only against a far weaker opponent,
but which also contained a serious error
by BG which threw away his hard-earned
advantage). Another problem was in their
"quickie" use of Fritz for analysis-- which
can easily be refuted by a deeper look
using the very same program.
I never make it very far in reading the
magazine anymore, so I can't comment
on the lesser writers therein. But I would
say "dryness" of style is not the real
issue. It's more a matter of quality.
Still, if you think they are as dry as the
desert, then replacing someone with EW
couldn't hurt. After all, that and petty
pedantry are his only weaknesses, while
has plenty of strengths (unlike those
other guys).
> =A0 At least
> the back issues could then be used as
> references containing facts and correct
> dates,
>
> **What /would/ improve it immensely is an index. Of course, in the er, dr=
y
> times, its embarassing to index a pamphlet, but the magazine could be
> produced quarterly, like a big NiC.
In fact, the USCF could buy out NIC and
then drop /Chess Lies/ in favor of that far
superior magazine. However, our focus is
supposedly on coverage of more local
events, not obsessing over openings
theory.
> Similarly, since many English people can
> read Murken, and German's typically write better English than the natives=
,
> flying it in Europe [Yurp] to foreigners [Forns] might be attempted.
You forgot about the skyrocketing cost of jet
fuel.
> **This would mean leaving out prize-giving of Scholastic events, but thes=
e
> have little long-term interest anyway, and those sorts of things can be
> published in the monthly pamphlet, remaned Chess Variety.
Or maybe scholastic events could be
covered in the CL Kids magazine? In any
event, the current magazine leaves lots of
room for improvement, which ought to
make the job of improving it rather easy.
-- help bot
|
| | |
Date: 11 Aug 2008 17:54:58
From: Chess One
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been reprinted today
|
"help bot" <[email protected] > wrote in message
news:fb216fb4-f07e-4992-88d5-efe7a6234625@e39g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
On Aug 11, 7:06 am, "Chess One" <[email protected] > wrote:
> Really, if LE cannot do better than just
> inventing lies, he ought to be replaced.
> I say they ought to give Edward Winter
> a shot--
>
> **Once again, I assume no pun intended
"Thinking" pattern duly noted. You know,
Norman Bates was okay... until he got a
hold of a knife again. Perhaps you should
get rid of any guns you might have around
the house... you know, to keep the kids
**I was in the military - I know about guns used seriously, but no doubt
your endless and empty advise is superior?
from playing with them. I'm not suggesting
that YOU would so anything silly... not at
all! You are not a psychotic. You do not
think about killing messengers who bring
bad news about your idols. You did not
just make a Freudian slip-up. No, no, no!
**Thank you for your projections, about what is apparently /not/ a joke, not
a coincidence! ;(
> even though his dry style may
> put some CL readers to sleep.
>
> **splutter! now we have 'put to sleep'. If CL beacme any drier camels
> would
> cross it.
Opinion noted. Personally, I found the
writing style of the dynamic duo
**who?
to be just
fine. Where they goofed was in their poor
selection of games, as for instance seen
in the game selected to display the great
talent of Boris Gulko (a game which was
not only against a far weaker opponent,
but which also contained a serious error
by BG which threw away his hard-earned
advantage). Another problem was in their
"quickie" use of Fritz for analysis-- which
can easily be refuted by a deeper look
using the very same program.
**no doubt you rant with singular, if naturally vague reference, to some
published people you could out-do in your sleep? Given a chance that is -
but you have been given a chance, as in my offer of a MAMS review, and
therefore such remonstrations fall rather flat. It is as if you cudda, but
cudda takes work, so you merely complain. What's new about why we whine?
I never make it very far in reading the
magazine anymore, so I can't comment
on the lesser writers therein. But I would
say "dryness" of style is not the real
issue. It's more a matter of quality.
**Say more...
Still, if you think they are as dry as the
desert, then replacing someone with EW
couldn't hurt.
**Quite so, wouldn't hurt a camel. But do they play much chess?
After all, that and petty
pedantry are his only weaknesses, while
has plenty of strengths (unlike those
other guys).
**Like you, actually, a good whiner about what others fail to do, and not
exampled by himself?
Face it, that's normal use-net crap, and merely demi-monde journalisme, or
in Murken, spiteful remembrance wedded to lack-lustre work ethic.
> At least
> the back issues could then be used as
> references containing facts and correct
> dates,
>
> **What /would/ improve it immensely is an index. Of course, in the er, dry
> times, its embarassing to index a pamphlet, but the magazine could be
> produced quarterly, like a big NiC.
In fact, the USCF could buy out NIC
**USCF are about $150k in the whole every year, since the great
Hall-Goichberg make-over, and own $16,000 equity in the building they
inhabit. Membership is declining, and strong players go to ICC. They make
all their profit from kids by rating them, and rated less 1000. In other
words, they can scarcely afford to pay even $100,000 to defend the current
law-suit from Susan Polgar, and they got that money from a t of $300,000
'to promote chess'.
**Therefore, fantsy scenarios are out, even with other people's money.
and
then drop /Chess Lies/ in favor of that far
superior magazine. However, our focus is
supposedly on coverage of more local
events, not obsessing over openings
theory.
> Similarly, since many English people can
> read Murken, and German's typically write better English than the natives,
> flying it in Europe [Yurp] to foreigners [Forns] might be attempted.
You forgot about the skyrocketing cost of jet
fuel.
**They have printing presses there, since a couple blokes named Gutenburg
and Caxton got it together about 600 years ago. They are not so backward as
they are frequently not-reported. The reasons for that may be that the
contrast is not complimentary, but let us not talk health care! When New
Guinea can look down on USA, that's not a strong platform [for USA]
> **This would mean leaving out prize-giving of Scholastic events, but these
> have little long-term interest anyway, and those sorts of things can be
> published in the monthly pamphlet, remaned Chess Variety.
Or maybe scholastic events could be
covered in the CL Kids magazine?
**That is, or was, after all, the main market. Super geniuses think they can
diss the main market, and go for broke.
In any
event, the current magazine leaves lots of
room for improvement, which ought to
make the job of improving it rather easy.
**USCF suffers a severe identity crisis, and there is no one market for all
levels of chess skill, nor even for historic articles about chess history
and its players. In fact it is a typical fractured market, and as we know,
the consumer doesn't give a damn for that, but for what they want.
**And what do they want? Not what you want! You are too strong a player to
be even median, and you think you know as much about Fischer's chess as you
want to know, and you want to 'save' something which never even existed. For
each these reasons CL will never appeal to you, and the thing of it is, not
to anyone particularly, since your individual tastes are not much different
than any national publics. Therefore, direct magazine aimed at identifyable
constituencies, ie, learning chess, club norm, advanced, are necessary
vehicles to attract natural interest of readers.
Phil Innes
-- help bot
|
| |
Date: 11 Aug 2008 13:16:14
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 7, 10:35=A0pm, [email protected] wrote:
> help bot wrote:
> > =A0 Really, if LE cannot do better than just
> > inventing lies, he ought to be replaced.
> > I say they ought to give Edward Winter
> > a shot-- even though his dry style may
> > put some CL readers to sleep. =A0At least
> > the back issues could then be used as
> > references containing facts and correct
> > dates, not nonsense and fabrications.
> > If we wanted nonsense and fabrications,
> > we could give the column to Dr. IMnes
> > and pay him half as much as what LE
> > gets, for twice as much production.
>
> Um, replaced as what?
As a columnist for Chess Lies magazine.
> His Q&A column in Chess Life was canceled a
> couple of years ago. I believe he still writes one for Chess Life for
> Kids. Which, come to think of it, might be about Greg's speed.
A while back, Larry Parr had a hissy-fit
over CL "firing" Mr. Evans, but eventually
he relented after they supposedly
reinstated him. Somebody explained that
his hackneyed column got the axe, but it
was more a question of fame and glory,
so it seems; of being able to brag that he
still writes for the national chess
organization in some capacity.
The real issue is value for the money;
why pay LE to write lies and to invent
stories (which could perhaps get the
USCF sued, if you look at how people
are sometimes smeared by LE on a
whim), when they could pay somebody
like, say, nearly-an-IM Innes and get
twice the output, for half the money?
If you don't understand this concept, try
asking an economist -- or a high school
student, for that matter -- how it works.
-- help bot
|
| |
Date: 11 Aug 2008 12:56:16
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 7, 1:13=A0pm, thumbody <[email protected] > wrote:
> But, Einstein being a complete chess-patzer already knew that Lasker's
> fixed idea, his obsession that an absolute vacuum was an impossibility
> intuitively determined that Emmanuel was not as brilliant as he was &
> that he would become hugely more renowned than him & that his mastery of
> physics was somehow unique
Obviously, you know nothing about physics--
especially those areas in which AE goofed up
royally.
And when you say AE was a complete
patzer, I imagine people have too-high
expectations based on his great fame in
other areas. Lots of people are "decent"
chess players, but if your expectations are
set in the clouds, they might /seem/ to be
complete patzers due to the discrepancy.
Any comparison to Em. Lasker in chess
was bound to lead to 99% "patzers", and
only a precious few others; this is merely
a reflection of EL's immense skill. But what
do we really know of "ordinary" players back
then? Precious little, I expect, apart from
the fact that many received odds in casual
games-- unlike today.
-- help bot
|
| |
Date: 07 Aug 2008 19:35:40
From:
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
help bot wrote:
> Really, if LE cannot do better than just
> inventing lies, he ought to be replaced.
> I say they ought to give Edward Winter
> a shot-- even though his dry style may
> put some CL readers to sleep. At least
> the back issues could then be used as
> references containing facts and correct
> dates, not nonsense and fabrications.
> If we wanted nonsense and fabrications,
> we could give the column to Dr. IMnes
> and pay him half as much as what LE
> gets, for twice as much production.
>
>
> -- help bot
Um, replaced as what? His Q&A column in Chess Life was canceled a
couple of years ago. I believe he still writes one for Chess Life for
Kids. Which, come to think of it, might be about Greg's speed.
|
| |
Date: 07 Aug 2008 17:31:33
From:
Subject: Re: Emanuel Lasker and Einstein
|
On Aug 7, 7:20=A0pm, "[email protected]" <[email protected] > wrote:
> EINSTEIN ON LASKER (an excerpt, October 1952)
>
> I met Emanuel Lasker in the house of my old friend Alexander
> Moszkowski, and I came to know him well during the many walks we took
> together, discussing ideas on a variety of subjects. It was a somewhat
> unilateral discussion in which, almost invariably, I was in the
> position of listener, for it seemed to be the natural thing for this
> eminently creative man to generate his own ideas rather than adjust
> himself to those of someone else...
>
> Finally, I should like to add a word of explanation as wo why I never
> attempted, either in writing or in conversation, to deal with Lasker's
> criticism of the theory of =A0relativity.
>
> His keen analytical brain had immediately and clearly recognised that
> the entire problem hinged on the constancy of the velocity of light in
> empty space. He clearly saw that, once such constancy was admitted,
> the relativism of time was unanswerable whether one liked it or not
> (and he did not like it at all). What then was to be done? He tried to
> emulate what Alexander the (so called) 'Great' did when cutting
> through the Gordian knot.
>
> Lasker's argument could be summarized thus: No one has any direct and
> immediate knowledge about the velocity of light in absolutely empty
> space: for even interstellar space contains a certain if infinitesimal
> quantity of matter, and this applies even more to space from which the
> air has been pumpted by imperfect human agencies. Who then can presume
> to deny that the velocity of light in absolutely empty space would be
> infinite?
>
> This is the gist of Lasker's argument, and it could be answered in
> this way: True enough, no one can tell from any direct and
> experimental knowledge precisely how light could move in absolutely
> empty space. But it is virtually impossible to think of any reasonable
> theory of light based on the notion that infinitesimal traces of
> matter, while influencing the velocity of light to a remarkable
> extent, would yet remain almost independent of the density of such
> matter.
>
> Pending the proposition of such a theory, which, incidentally would
> have to accord with well known optical phenomena in ALMOST empty
> space, any physicist must consider this particular Gordian knot to be
> still unravelled and unravellable, unless he is content with the
> existing extent of the unravelling. And the moral? A keen brain and a
> powerful mind is no substitute for the deft touch of nimble fingers.
> However, I rather liked Lasker's stubborn intellectual independence, a
> most rare quality in a generation whose intellectuals are amost
> invariably mere camp-followers. And so I let the matter rest.
>
> As for myself, I shall remember with gratitude the pleasing
> conversations I enjoyed with that incessantly eager, truly independent
> and yet most modest of men.
Yes, Larry, you have faithfully reproduced all but the first two
paragraphs of Einstein's foreword to "Emanuel Lasker: The Life of a
Chess Master" by J. Hannak, English translation by Heinrich Fraenkel.
In omitting the first two paragraphs, however, you leave out
Einstein's first sentence: "Emanuel Lasker was undoubtedly one of the
most interesting people I came to know in my later life."
Since Einstein makes clear he did not know Lasker until his "later
life," where did Larry Evans get the idea that their discussions on
relativity took place "in their youth"? I think help-bot is wrong to
insult Evans over this, but I would be interested to know how this
error crept into Evans' book.
> thumbody wrote:
> > [email protected] wrote:
> > .
>
> > > It was Lasker, not Einstein, who argued that in an
> > > *_absolute_* vacuum, something impossible to find in nature or produc=
e
> > > experimentally, the speed of light *_might_* be infinite.
>
> > But, Einstein being a complete chess-patzer already knew that Lasker's
> > fixed idea, his obsession that an absolute vacuum was an impossibility
> > intuitively determined that Emmanuel was not as brilliant as he was &
> > that he would become hugely more renowned than him & that his mastery o=
f
> > physics was somehow unique..
> >http://www-tech.mit.edu/V117/N64/collider.64w.html..
>
> > t.
>
> > > There is also garbling by Evans. He says the Einstein-Lasker
> > > discussions of relativity took place "in their youth." Yet Fine says
> > > it was "in the early 1930s," when Lasker would have been in his 60s,
> > > and Einstein in the first sentence of the biography foreword clearly
> > > states "I came to know [Lasker] in my later life."
|
| |
Date: 07 Aug 2008 16:20:19
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Emanuel Lasker and Einstein
|
EINSTEIN ON LASKER (an excerpt, October 1952)
I met Emanuel Lasker in the house of my old friend Alexander
Moszkowski, and I came to know him well during the many walks we took
together, discussing ideas on a variety of subjects. It was a somewhat
unilateral discussion in which, almost invariably, I was in the
position of listener, for it seemed to be the natural thing for this
eminently creative man to generate his own ideas rather than adjust
himself to those of someone else...
Finally, I should like to add a word of explanation as wo why I never
attempted, either in writing or in conversation, to deal with Lasker's
criticism of the theory of relativity.
His keen analytical brain had immediately and clearly recognised that
the entire problem hinged on the constancy of the velocity of light in
empty space. He clearly saw that, once such constancy was admitted,
the relativism of time was unanswerable whether one liked it or not
(and he did not like it at all). What then was to be done? He tried to
emulate what Alexander the (so called) 'Great' did when cutting
through the Gordian knot.
Lasker's argument could be summarized thus: No one has any direct and
immediate knowledge about the velocity of light in absolutely empty
space: for even interstellar space contains a certain if infinitesimal
quantity of matter, and this applies even more to space from which the
air has been pumpted by imperfect human agencies. Who then can presume
to deny that the velocity of light in absolutely empty space would be
infinite?
This is the gist of Lasker's argument, and it could be answered in
this way: True enough, no one can tell from any direct and
experimental knowledge precisely how light could move in absolutely
empty space. But it is virtually impossible to think of any reasonable
theory of light based on the notion that infinitesimal traces of
matter, while influencing the velocity of light to a remarkable
extent, would yet remain almost independent of the density of such
matter.
Pending the proposition of such a theory, which, incidentally would
have to accord with well known optical phenomena in ALMOST empty
space, any physicist must consider this particular Gordian knot to be
still unravelled and unravellable, unless he is content with the
existing extent of the unravelling. And the moral? A keen brain and a
powerful mind is no substitute for the deft touch of nimble fingers.
However, I rather liked Lasker's stubborn intellectual independence, a
most rare quality in a generation whose intellectuals are amost
invariably mere camp-followers. And so I let the matter rest.
As for myself, I shall remember with gratitude the pleasing
conversations I enjoyed with that incessantly eager, truly independent
and yet most modest of men.
thumbody wrote:
> [email protected] wrote:
> .
>
> > It was Lasker, not Einstein, who argued that in an
> > *_absolute_* vacuum, something impossible to find in nature or produce
> > experimentally, the speed of light *_might_* be infinite.
>
> But, Einstein being a complete chess-patzer already knew that Lasker's
> fixed idea, his obsession that an absolute vacuum was an impossibility
> intuitively determined that Emmanuel was not as brilliant as he was &
> that he would become hugely more renowned than him & that his mastery of
> physics was somehow unique..
> http://www-tech.mit.edu/V117/N64/collider.64w.html..
>
> t.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > There is also garbling by Evans. He says the Einstein-Lasker
> > discussions of relativity took place "in their youth." Yet Fine says
> > it was "in the early 1930s," when Lasker would have been in his 60s,
> > and Einstein in the first sentence of the biography foreword clearly
> > states "I came to know [Lasker] in my later life."
|
| |
Date: 08 Aug 2008 03:13:40
From: thumbody
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
[email protected] wrote:
.
> It was Lasker, not Einstein, who argued that in an
> *_absolute_* vacuum, something impossible to find in nature or produce
> experimentally, the speed of light *_might_* be infinite.
But, Einstein being a complete chess-patzer already knew that Lasker's
fixed idea, his obsession that an absolute vacuum was an impossibility
intuitively determined that Emmanuel was not as brilliant as he was &
that he would become hugely more renowned than him & that his mastery of
physics was somehow unique..
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V117/N64/collider.64w.html..
t.
> There is also garbling by Evans. He says the Einstein-Lasker
> discussions of relativity took place "in their youth." Yet Fine says
> it was "in the early 1930s," when Lasker would have been in his 60s,
> and Einstein in the first sentence of the biography foreword clearly
> states "I came to know [Lasker] in my later life."
|
| |
Date: 08 Aug 2008 02:44:06
From: thumbody
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
help bot wrote:
.
> Lately, I have discovered that a lot of
> "genius" in the history of science was
> part luck;
Nah, nah nah & nah. Genius I'm here to tell y'all is 99% pure
perspiration & the rest naturally, all you little cotton bred tykes know
all about now don't you?..
As I recall it must have been W.C. Fields who came up with the line that
them who don't like kids & dogs can't be all bad. Not a bad line that -
in my view..
t.
for instance, some guy dying
> and leaving his successor just the right
> info. or tools, at just the right time to
> make his intellectual advance. Why
> can't I ever seem to have that kind of
> luck, in chess? Why can't some world
> champion die while playing me a match
> in which I am ahead at the time-- or
> something like that?
>
> -- help bot
|
| |
Date: 07 Aug 2008 04:59:47
From:
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 6, 7:17=A0pm, help bot <[email protected] > wrote:
> On Aug 6, 9:30=A0am, [email protected] wrote:
>>
> > =A0 Fine most definitely goofed, because Einstein's theory emphatically
> > does *_not_* involve the assumption that the speed of light in a
> > vacuum is infinite. Quite the opposite: it assumes that the speed of
> > light in empty space is finite and constant, about 186,000 miles per
> > second. It was Lasker, not Einstein, who argued that in an
> > *_absolute_* vacuum, something impossible to find in nature or produce
> > experimentally, the speed of light *_might_* be infinite.
>
> =A0 But the forward
foreword
> was supposedly written
> by Mr. Einstein himself. =A0How could /Mr.
> Fine/ have goofed this up, when the part
> Larry Evans is "paraphrasing" was written
> by AE himself?
As I noted yesterday, it appears Evans did not check the actual
Einstein foreword. Instead he was paraphrasing the second-hand version
by Fine, who clearly misunderstood EL's and AE's discussion about the
speed of light.
> > =A0 There is also garbling by Evans. He says the Einstein-Lasker
> > discussions of relativity took place "in their youth." Yet Fine says
> > it was "in the early 1930s," when Lasker would have been in his 60s,
>
> =A0 That's not "garbling"; it's proof that LE
> either can't reason, or can't do simple
> math, or both.
I'm sure LE can do both, but "in their youth" just seems to be a
gratuitous addition, based on nothing. I have no idea what prompted
Evans to write that. Probably he just misremembered -- something our
Greg does quite often.
|
| |
Date: 07 Aug 2008 00:06:50
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 7, 2:16=A0am, J=FCrgen R. <[email protected] > wrote:
> Have some pity - the guy probably had a deadline to meet.
> Parr, on the other hand, has no deadline and
> is too sloppy and too stupid to check his sources.
I don't buy the tripe about anecdotal stories
containing gross misrepresentations of the
facts due to some imaginary "deadline"; what
a bunch of hooey! Deadlines may affect news
stories, and they certainly come into play in
competitive OTB chess, but making stuff up
off the top of one's head can be done in a
very short time, and as we know, Mr. Evans
always knew *well in advance* that yet
another issue of /Chess Lies/ was being put
together, once *every* month. As far as I
know, the calendar we use here in the USA
has not been suddenly and without warning
changed dramatically, thus putting hapless
CL columnists like LE in a /Maroczy bind/.
As for Mr. Parr, he is a mindless parrot
who just repeats whatever nonsense LE
writes, without no more concern for its
merits than the brightly colored bird whose
behavior so closely resembles his own.
My criticism of him, therefore, is that his
behavior somehow lacks that which the
true parrot has in spades-- a uniqueness
of abilities. It is one thing for a bird to do
it, but quite another for a creature
descended from primates, who are all
able to "ape" one another as a matter of
course.
Really, if LE cannot do better than just
inventing lies, he ought to be replaced.
I say they ought to give Edward Winter
a shot-- even though his dry style may
put some CL readers to sleep. At least
the back issues could then be used as
references containing facts and correct
dates, not nonsense and fabrications.
If we wanted nonsense and fabrications,
we could give the column to Dr. IMnes
and pay him half as much as what LE
gets, for twice as much production.
-- help bot
|
| | |
Date: 11 Aug 2008 07:06:44
From: Chess One
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been reprinted today
|
"help bot" <[email protected] > wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
On Aug 7, 2:16 am, J�rgen R. <[email protected] > wrote:
My criticism of him, therefore, is that his
behavior somehow lacks that which the
true parrot has in spades--
**blush - though I assume no pun intended...
a uniqueness
of abilities. It is one thing for a bird to do
it, but quite another for a creature
descended from primates, who are all
able to "ape" one another as a matter of
course.
Really, if LE cannot do better than just
inventing lies, he ought to be replaced.
I say they ought to give Edward Winter
a shot--
**Once again, I assume no pun intended
even though his dry style may
put some CL readers to sleep.
**splutter! now we have 'put to sleep'. If CL beacme any drier camels would
cross it.
At least
the back issues could then be used as
references containing facts and correct
dates,
**What /would/ improve it immensely is an index. Of course, in the er, dry
times, its embarassing to index a pamphlet, but the magazine could be
produced quarterly, like a big NiC. Similarly, since many English people can
read Murken, and German's typically write better English than the natives,
flying it in Europe [Yurp] to foreigners [Forns] might be attempted.
**This would mean leaving out prize-giving of Scholastic events, but these
have little long-term interest anyway, and those sorts of things can be
published in the monthly pamphlet, remaned Chess Variety.
**Before his demise a few years ago, the publisher of 64 gospodin Roschal
was interested in a for-Adults world print magazine in English language. He
said that most countries have difficulty in producing their own national
brand, and economies of scale would operate in favor of joint-contributions
from Russia, USA, Europe, to make a first-class 'keeper'.
not nonsense and fabrications.
If we wanted nonsense and fabrications,
we could give the column to Dr. IMnes
and pay him half as much as what LE
gets, for twice as much production.
**In as much as vague and abstracted commentary goes, by people who
hypocritically cannot write shit about chess themselves, there is plenty
here on this newsgroup!
**But I think contribute-not should continue his writing carear here as
practice for when he can include such esoterica as 'topically matter' [look
it up], which is sometimes called 'subject matter', thereby attain a little
pith in his writing. Until that occurs being pithed-off is his own choice.
Phil Innes
---
-- help bot
|
| |
Date: 06 Aug 2008 16:17:20
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 6, 9:30=A0am, [email protected] wrote:
> > =A0 My question is this: is the quote at top
> > accurate? =A0=A0
> =A0 J=FCrgen is right. The quote Parr gives from Evans:
>
> =A0 "Albert Einstein wrote a foreword to Lasker=92s biography recalling
> long debates in their youth about the theory of relativity. Lasker
> argued there was no proof the speed of light in a vacuum was infinite.
> Einstein said he couldn=92t wait indefinitely for proof, especially
> since no way to verify his theory was available at the moment."
>
> is just a rewording of Fine:
>
> =A0 "For several years, in the early 1930s, Lasker was friendly with
> Einstein, and the latter contributed a foreword to Lasker's biography.
> Among other things, Einstein relates that the two men had long
> arguments about the theory of relativity. Lasker offered the unusual
> objection that it had not been demonstrated that the speed of light in
> a vacuum is infinite, and that since this assumption is a cornerstone
> of the theory of relativity, Einstein was not justified in applying
> the theory until the assumption was proved or disproved. To this
> Einstein replied that one could not wait indefinitely, especially
> since no ascertainable method of verification was available at the
> moment ..." "The Psychology of the Chess Player," page 45
Thanks for clearing that up. My suggestion
to Mr. Evans would be to hang it up; the AE
version put things into better perspective; he
"sets the scene", whereas the LE version
clumsily yanks things out of context--
relatively speaking.
> > Are you saying that Mr. Fine
> > goofed in his retelling of the story?
> =A0 Fine most definitely goofed, because Einstein's theory emphatically
> does *_not_* involve the assumption that the speed of light in a
> vacuum is infinite. Quite the opposite: it assumes that the speed of
> light in empty space is finite and constant, about 186,000 miles per
> second. It was Lasker, not Einstein, who argued that in an
> *_absolute_* vacuum, something impossible to find in nature or produce
> experimentally, the speed of light *_might_* be infinite.
But the forward was supposedly written
by Mr. Einstein himself. How could /Mr.
Fine/ have goofed this up, when the part
Larry Evans is "paraphrasing" was written
by AE himself?
> =A0 There is also garbling by Evans. He says the Einstein-Lasker
> discussions of relativity took place "in their youth." Yet Fine says
> it was "in the early 1930s," when Lasker would have been in his 60s,
That's not "garbling"; it's proof that LE
either can't reason, or can't do simple
math, or both.
> and Einstein in the first sentence of the biography foreword clearly
> states "I came to know [Lasker] in my later life."
This somehow reminds me of the story
about a chess master who, LE said, had
won a game in which he ought to have
resigned, by his opponent dying before
resumption. The dates did not add up;
the facts did not square with reality, but
Mr. Evans blames those who point out
the actual facts and the real dates for
his multitudinous errors.
-- help bot
|
| | |
Date: 07 Aug 2008 08:16:20
From: =?Windows-1252?Q?J=FCrgen_R.?=
Subject: AW: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been reprinted today
|
[...]
> This somehow reminds me of the story
> about a chess master who, LE said, had
> won a game in which he ought to have
> resigned, by his opponent dying before
> resumption. The dates did not add up;
> the facts did not square with reality, but
> Mr. Evans blames those who point out
> the actual facts and the real dates for
> his multitudinous errors.
Have some pity - the guy probably had a deadline to meet.
Parr, on the other hand, has no deadline and
is too sloppy and too stupid to check his sources.
>
>
> -- help bot
|
| |
Date: 06 Aug 2008 13:20:22
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
THIS CRAZY WORLD OF CHESS by GM Larry Evans (page 253)
Einstein noted that his friend=92s persistent skepticism derived from
chess which was, after all, just a trivial pursuit. Thus he echoed
George Bernard Shaw who scribbled, "Chess is a foolish expedient for
making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when
they are only wasting their time."
But Lasker maintained that playing games is necessary and no less
worthy than building bridges or making bombs.
Despite the anguish of exile after fleeing Nazi Germany and the loss
of all his wordly goods, Lasker remained cheerful. "Everything in the
long run changes for the better," he wrote.
After long layoffs away from the arena, he did well at Nottingham
1936, his last tournament. Two rounds before the end he bumped the
reigning world champion out of the lead when Euwe stumbled trying to
win a dead draw from the grand old man.
Lasker died as a charity case at New York in 1941.
***************************************************************************=
********
LASKER'S LAST WORDS
Wiki notes that his wife Martha died in 1937 while Emanuel died on
January 11, 1941. Yet not everything written about him can be trusted.
EMANUEL LASKER: THE LIFE OF A CHESS MASTER by J. Hannak states on
page 315: "Reuben Fine and his young wife came to see him for the last
time. He could merely give them a feeble wave of his hand. When Fine
had gone, Martha heard Emanuel whisper: 'A King of Chess.'
"These were the last words he was heard to speak. He died next day, on
13 January 1941."
Chess One wrote:
> <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:f0f1ede1-521a-4424-8304-ffa2362ee060@s50g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
> On Aug 5, 8:30 pm, help bot <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Aug 5, 5:33 pm, J?rgen R. <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > > Amusing is that Evans is quoting Fine (Psychology of the Chess Player=
,
> > > p.
> > > 45).
> > > So we have Parr parroting Evans and Evans parotting Fine and
> > > Fine garbling the story completely, not one of the three
> > > comprehending what they are babbling about.
> >
> > My question is this: is the quote at top
> > accurate?
>
> J?rgen is right. The quote Parr gives from Evans:
>
> "Albert Einstein wrote a foreword to Lasker?s biography recalling
> long debates in their youth about the theory of relativity. Lasker
> argued there was no proof the speed of light in a vacuum was infinite.
> Einstein said he couldn?t wait indefinitely for proof, especially
> since no way to verify his theory was available at the moment."
>
> is just a rewording of Fine:
>
> "For several years, in the early 1930s, Lasker was friendly with
> Einstein, and the latter contributed a foreword to Lasker's biography.
> Among other things, Einstein relates that the two men had long
> arguments about the theory of relativity. Lasker offered the unusual
> objection that it had not been demonstrated that the speed of light in
> a vacuum is infinite, and that since this assumption is a cornerstone
> of the theory of relativity, Einstein was not justified in applying
> the theory until the assumption was proved or disproved. To this
> Einstein replied that one could not wait indefinitely, especially
> since no ascertainable method of verification was available at the
> moment ..." "The Psychology of the Chess Player," page 45
>
> > Are you saying that Mr. Fine
> > goofed in his retelling of the story?
>
> Fine most definitely goofed, because Einstein's theory emphatically
> does *_not_* involve the assumption that the speed of light in a
> vacuum is infinite. Quite the opposite: it assumes that the speed of
> light in empty space is finite and constant, about 186,000 miles per
> second. It was Lasker, not Einstein, who argued that in an
> *_absolute_* vacuum, something impossible to find in nature or produce
> experimentally, the speed of light *_might_* be infinite.
>
> **well, infinite would need some sort of relative definition. since the 6=
0s
> people have been more concerned with wave-forms than particles, even phot=
on
> particles. current theory deals with whichever is easier to account for!
> secondly, even if particles are not considered, we know that other forces
> act in absolute vacuums, for example gravity, and we also know that galac=
tic
> lensing can change path - though whether it inhibits or accelerates the
> photon or wave-form is difficult to resolve. above i say relative definit=
ion
> because we must consider if intergalatic space is itself in motion, as a=
re
> groups of galaxies moving at terrific speeds. evidently black-holes captu=
re
> radiation ['light'] and thus could be said to slow it down or indeed 'tra=
p
> it, though since Sagan there has been speculation on what is happening 'o=
n
> the other side'; are they seedbeds for new suns, or hyper-accelerators of
> radiation? or does the universe not actually work like that at all, and a=
re
> the infamous worm-holes created? a sort of galaxy sized Fabry-Perot filte=
r?
> In the film dedicated to Sagan, Jodi Foster travels 'through' one, which
> eludes everyone's understanding of both energy and time - Phil Innes
>
> There is also garbling by Evans. He says the Einstein-Lasker
> discussions of relativity took place "in their youth." Yet Fine says
> it was "in the early 1930s," when Lasker would have been in his 60s,
> and Einstein in the first sentence of the biography foreword clearly
> states "I came to know [Lasker] in my later life."
|
| |
Date: 06 Aug 2008 06:30:14
From:
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 5, 8:30=A0pm, help bot <[email protected] > wrote:
> On Aug 5, 5:33=A0pm, J=FCrgen R. <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > Amusing is that Evans is quoting Fine (Psychology of the Chess Player, =
p.
> > 45).
> > So we have Parr parroting Evans and Evans parotting Fine and
> > Fine garbling the story completely, not one of the three
> > comprehending what they are babbling about.
>
> =A0 My question is this: is the quote at top
> accurate? =A0=A0
J=FCrgen is right. The quote Parr gives from Evans:
"Albert Einstein wrote a foreword to Lasker=92s biography recalling
long debates in their youth about the theory of relativity. Lasker
argued there was no proof the speed of light in a vacuum was infinite.
Einstein said he couldn=92t wait indefinitely for proof, especially
since no way to verify his theory was available at the moment."
is just a rewording of Fine:
"For several years, in the early 1930s, Lasker was friendly with
Einstein, and the latter contributed a foreword to Lasker's biography.
Among other things, Einstein relates that the two men had long
arguments about the theory of relativity. Lasker offered the unusual
objection that it had not been demonstrated that the speed of light in
a vacuum is infinite, and that since this assumption is a cornerstone
of the theory of relativity, Einstein was not justified in applying
the theory until the assumption was proved or disproved. To this
Einstein replied that one could not wait indefinitely, especially
since no ascertainable method of verification was available at the
moment ..." "The Psychology of the Chess Player," page 45
> Are you saying that Mr. Fine
> goofed in his retelling of the story?
Fine most definitely goofed, because Einstein's theory emphatically
does *_not_* involve the assumption that the speed of light in a
vacuum is infinite. Quite the opposite: it assumes that the speed of
light in empty space is finite and constant, about 186,000 miles per
second. It was Lasker, not Einstein, who argued that in an
*_absolute_* vacuum, something impossible to find in nature or produce
experimentally, the speed of light *_might_* be infinite.
There is also garbling by Evans. He says the Einstein-Lasker
discussions of relativity took place "in their youth." Yet Fine says
it was "in the early 1930s," when Lasker would have been in his 60s,
and Einstein in the first sentence of the biography foreword clearly
states "I came to know [Lasker] in my later life."
|
| | |
Date: 06 Aug 2008 12:21:14
From: Chess One
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been reprinted today
|
<[email protected] > wrote in message
news:f0f1ede1-521a-4424-8304-ffa2362ee060@s50g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
On Aug 5, 8:30 pm, help bot <[email protected] > wrote:
> On Aug 5, 5:33 pm, J�rgen R. <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > Amusing is that Evans is quoting Fine (Psychology of the Chess Player,
> > p.
> > 45).
> > So we have Parr parroting Evans and Evans parotting Fine and
> > Fine garbling the story completely, not one of the three
> > comprehending what they are babbling about.
>
> My question is this: is the quote at top
> accurate?
J�rgen is right. The quote Parr gives from Evans:
"Albert Einstein wrote a foreword to Lasker�s biography recalling
long debates in their youth about the theory of relativity. Lasker
argued there was no proof the speed of light in a vacuum was infinite.
Einstein said he couldn�t wait indefinitely for proof, especially
since no way to verify his theory was available at the moment."
is just a rewording of Fine:
"For several years, in the early 1930s, Lasker was friendly with
Einstein, and the latter contributed a foreword to Lasker's biography.
Among other things, Einstein relates that the two men had long
arguments about the theory of relativity. Lasker offered the unusual
objection that it had not been demonstrated that the speed of light in
a vacuum is infinite, and that since this assumption is a cornerstone
of the theory of relativity, Einstein was not justified in applying
the theory until the assumption was proved or disproved. To this
Einstein replied that one could not wait indefinitely, especially
since no ascertainable method of verification was available at the
moment ..." "The Psychology of the Chess Player," page 45
> Are you saying that Mr. Fine
> goofed in his retelling of the story?
Fine most definitely goofed, because Einstein's theory emphatically
does *_not_* involve the assumption that the speed of light in a
vacuum is infinite. Quite the opposite: it assumes that the speed of
light in empty space is finite and constant, about 186,000 miles per
second. It was Lasker, not Einstein, who argued that in an
*_absolute_* vacuum, something impossible to find in nature or produce
experimentally, the speed of light *_might_* be infinite.
**well, infinite would need some sort of relative definition. since the 60s
people have been more concerned with wave-forms than particles, even photon
particles. current theory deals with whichever is easier to account for!
secondly, even if particles are not considered, we know that other forces
act in absolute vacuums, for example gravity, and we also know that galactic
lensing can change path - though whether it inhibits or accelerates the
photon or wave-form is difficult to resolve. above i say relative definition
because we must consider if intergalatic space is itself in motion, as are
groups of galaxies moving at terrific speeds. evidently black-holes capture
radiation ['light'] and thus could be said to slow it down or indeed 'trap
it, though since Sagan there has been speculation on what is happening 'on
the other side'; are they seedbeds for new suns, or hyper-accelerators of
radiation? or does the universe not actually work like that at all, and are
the infamous worm-holes created? a sort of galaxy sized Fabry-Perot filter?
In the film dedicated to Sagan, Jodi Foster travels 'through' one, which
eludes everyone's understanding of both energy and time - Phil Innes
There is also garbling by Evans. He says the Einstein-Lasker
discussions of relativity took place "in their youth." Yet Fine says
it was "in the early 1930s," when Lasker would have been in his 60s,
and Einstein in the first sentence of the biography foreword clearly
states "I came to know [Lasker] in my later life."
|
| |
Date: 05 Aug 2008 17:30:29
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 5, 5:33=A0pm, J=FCrgen R. <[email protected] > wrote:
> [email protected] wrote:
>
> > Albert Einstein wrote a foreword to Lasker=92s biography recalling long
> > debates in their youth about the theory of relativity. Lasker argued
> > there was no proof the speed of light in a vacuum was infinite.
> > Einstein said he couldn=92t wait indefinitely for proof, especially
> > since no way to verify his theory was available at the moment.
> Here Parr is quoting nonsense from Evans.
CAN A ZEBRA CHANGE HIS STRIPES?
You just don't understand the nature of the
problem; what else is there for LP to quote
from LE, apart from his nonsense?
Decades ago, Mr. Evans wrote /some/
rational discussion, as in his refutation of
BF's so-called demands, but for the most
part all there is for Mr. Parr to quote from
is a plethora of nonsense by LE. It just
isn't in the man's nature to sift through
his idol's intellectual droppings, finding a
few crumbs here and there. To the
contrary, Mr. Parr has a long history of
*mindlessly* repeating the ravings of his
mentors, without any examination of
their actual merits. A zebra cannot
change his stripes.
> Amusing is that Evans is quoting Fine (Psychology of the Chess Player, p.
> 45).
> So we have Parr parroting Evans and Evans parotting Fine and
> Fine garbling the story completely, not one of the three
> comprehending what they are babbling about.
My question is this: is the quote at top
accurate? Are you saying that Mr. Fine
goofed in his retelling of the story? The
reason I ask is that I have not yet been
able to figure out a way to measure the
speed of light inside a vacuum (because
it is so dark and dusty in there).
Lately, I have discovered that a lot of
"genius" in the history of science was
part luck; for instance, some guy dying
and leaving his successor just the right
info. or tools, at just the right time to
make his intellectual advance. Why
can't I ever seem to have that kind of
luck, in chess? Why can't some world
champion die while playing me a match
in which I am ahead at the time-- or
something like that?
-- help bot
|
| |
Date: 05 Aug 2008 16:18:32
From: thumbody
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
help bot wrote:
>
> On Aug 4, 2:32 am, J�rgen R. <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > I'm afraid you have not fully understood Sloan's
> > business model.
>
> Model? I see you have adopted the latest fad
> in business-related jargon.
Not at all. That would be paradigm which I like to pronounce
par-a-did-je-me just so everyone knows what's being talked about..
t.
>
> My comment -- at any rate, the one where I
> pointed to timeliness of release -- has little to
> do with such things. Looking back at chess
> history, we see that around the time of BF's
> 1972 seizure of the FIDE world championship
> title, a large number of writers churned out
> their wares with success; this was no mere
> coincidence.
>
> But perhaps the Sam Sloan "model" has as
> its objective something besides sales and
> profits? If that is the case, then I somehow
> got the wrong impression. Or maybe you
> are talking about voo-doo economics, later
> re-dubbed "Reaganomics"? It really is hard
> to tell, the details being kept a big secret.
>
> Mr. Sloan is now complaining that no one
> has yet bought his book-- after three days on
> Amazon dot com. The complaint itself seems
> to indicate disappointing sales (which means
> he will likely not get listed on the NYSE until
> at least next year-- provided he can meet the
> stringent requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley).
>
> Anyway, once Mr. Obama is sworn in, he'll
> double the taxes, triple the taxes-- tax the
> heart and soul out of the people (as in the
> Robin Hood cartoon movie), so Mr. Sloan
> needs to make hay while he still can. My
> guess is that a book on Mr. Obama being in
> reality a part slave-child of Abraham Lincoln
> could sell well right about now.
>
> I admit that I don't /know/ the goals of Mr.
> Sloan's business venture... but is it not self-
> evident that one of them has to be making a
> profit?
>
> -- help bot
|
| |
Date: 04 Aug 2008 21:47:09
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
AD HOMINEM MAN RETURNS
More mindless ad hominem from Mr. Parr.
This reminds me of Mr. Reti, whose tiresome
"windmills" against rank duffers did not
impress much, either.
The fact is, when it suits his whim, the
dimwitted Mr. Parr will scold TK for not
agreeing with Larry Evans' every whim.
However, when he gets a hankering, Mr.
Parr will oft reverse course, praising TK to
the skies for not agreeing with some other
annoying critic of Larry Evans' many
fantasies.
Perhaps something can be gleaned from a
close examination of the letters Mr. Kingston
wrote to the editors of Chess Life magazine.
In the first one, TK agreed with one of LE's
fantasies, apparently not having given the
matter any serious thought. But in a later
letter, writ after considerable mental effort by
TK, our clueless book-maven completely
reversed course, roundly criticizing LE's
methodology. Further articles were written
and published on the Web by Mr. Kingston,
wherein he attempted -- without success --
to break the issue down according to the
methods of logic and reason.
Nevertheless, TK's final attempt was a vast
improvement over all the efforts of LP and
LE combined, for he at least discovered the
source of the "story", and followed it's trail
back home. IMO, it appeared that RK had
swallowed whole some second-hand story
originating perhaps in the state of Ohio,
then Larry Evans aped his commentary,
and finally, Larry Parr did what he does
best: mindlessly repeating a story from LE,
without even a cursory glance at its merits
or lack thereof.
I would like to thrash Mr. Kingston for his
futile tussling with logic and reason, but I
can't; that is because it would not be fair
to pick on him when others -- like RK, LE
and LP -- gave it their best shot and fell
flat on their respective faces, not even
managing to get half as far as TK did. Oh
well, some days it just doesn't pay to be
a super-hero... some days you just can't
get rid of a bomb.
-- help bot
|
| |
Date: 04 Aug 2008 21:12:10
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
GREG IS A SPEARED FLOUNDER
Greg Kennedy calls Taylor Kingston a "cowardly blowhard."
Cowardly, maybe. Blowhard, nope.
Mr. Kingston would have served himself better
over the years by blowing harder in many of his book
reviews. Too much mannered prose.
Greg avers that he and Mr. Kingston are of two
different sorts. It amounts to this: The former feels
something and then talks about it. The latter reads
about something, thinks about it and then writes about it --
albeit sometimes sicklied o'er by too much pale cast
of thought.
As for the point at hand, Greg is obviously a
speared flounder. Kingston calls for facts; Greg has
no facts, though he could mount a decent defense were
he to summon some.
Needless to add, Fischer left Em. Lasker off his list of 10
greatest masters, an omission that famously infuriated Edward Lasker.
Yours, Larry Parr
[email protected] wrote:
> On Aug 4, 7:06?pm, help bot <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Aug 4, 9:21?am, [email protected] wrote:
> >
> > > ? Still waiting for you to cite examples of this "widely" criticism of
> > > Lasker's style. If it's so widespread, surely you can find more than
> > > one, bot? Or did this one, like most of your claims, come from rectal
> > > extraction?
> >
> > ? Perhaps Mr. Kingston has no mind, no
> > memories of anything that is not right in
> > front of him at the moment, in one of his
> > many chess books.
> >
> > ? I am a different breed; I can recall, often
> > decades after the fact, ideas and opinions
> > I have read long ago. ?In fact, without this
> > ability, I would probably have every bit as
> > much difficulty with reality as TK clearly
> > has.
>
> Then pray provide, O Great One, some of these "ideas and opinions"
> from your prodigious memory, that support your claim that Lasker's
> chess style was "widely criticized." Otherwise the rest of us will
> continue in the view that the "difficulty with reality" is yours.
|
| |
Date: 04 Aug 2008 18:52:53
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 4, 8:21=A0pm, [email protected] wrote:
> > =A0 Perhaps Mr. Kingston has no mind, no
> > memories of anything that is not right in
> > front of him at the moment, in one of his
> > many chess books.
>
> > =A0 I am a different breed; I can recall, often
> > decades after the fact, ideas and opinions
> > I have read long ago. =A0In fact, without this
> > ability, I would probably have every bit as
> > much difficulty with reality as TK clearly
> > has.
>
> =A0 Then pray provide, O Great One, some of these "ideas and opinions"
> from your prodigious memory, that support your claim that Lasker's
> chess style was "widely criticized." Otherwise the rest of us will
> continue in the view that the "difficulty with reality" is yours.
Tell me, just how many of "you" do you
believe exist? I've heard of split-personality
disorder, and I know from personal
experience what "disorder" looks like (see
my quarters, for instance), but how do you
actually count the various "you"s, and what
is your exact tally, as of this moment?
Dr. Fine was the real expert, of course;
but that doesn't mean the rest of us can't
speculate as to the possible causes or
effects here, which happen to remind me
of the famous case of Nick Bourbaki-- a
fellow who seemed to think he spoke for
a vast array of well-respected academics
from Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and perhaps
three hundred or so other famous schools.
In fact, the Nick Bourbaki case was far
more interesting, for he actually had a
few interesting ideas, and if I recall
correctly, he did not suffer from diseases
causing an utter inability to properly
analyze chess positions or chess history.
The arrogance is similar, though.
-- help bot
|
| |
Date: 04 Aug 2008 17:21:04
From:
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 4, 7:06=A0pm, help bot <[email protected] > wrote:
> On Aug 4, 9:21=A0am, [email protected] wrote:
>
> > =A0 Still waiting for you to cite examples of this "widely" criticism o=
f
> > Lasker's style. If it's so widespread, surely you can find more than
> > one, bot? Or did this one, like most of your claims, come from rectal
> > extraction?
>
> =A0 Perhaps Mr. Kingston has no mind, no
> memories of anything that is not right in
> front of him at the moment, in one of his
> many chess books.
>
> =A0 I am a different breed; I can recall, often
> decades after the fact, ideas and opinions
> I have read long ago. =A0In fact, without this
> ability, I would probably have every bit as
> much difficulty with reality as TK clearly
> has.
Then pray provide, O Great One, some of these "ideas and opinions"
from your prodigious memory, that support your claim that Lasker's
chess style was "widely criticized." Otherwise the rest of us will
continue in the view that the "difficulty with reality" is yours.
|
| |
Date: 04 Aug 2008 16:51:39
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 4, 2:32=A0am, J=FCrgen R. <[email protected] > wrote:
> I'm afraid you have not fully understood Sloan's
> business model.
Model? I see you have adopted the latest fad
in business-related jargon.
My comment -- at any rate, the one where I
pointed to timeliness of release -- has little to
do with such things. Looking back at chess
history, we see that around the time of BF's
1972 seizure of the FIDE world championship
title, a large number of writers churned out
their wares with success; this was no mere
coincidence.
But perhaps the Sam Sloan "model" has as
its objective something besides sales and
profits? If that is the case, then I somehow
got the wrong impression. Or maybe you
are talking about voo-doo economics, later
re-dubbed "Reaganomics"? It really is hard
to tell, the details being kept a big secret.
Mr. Sloan is now complaining that no one
has yet bought his book-- after three days on
Amazon dot com. The complaint itself seems
to indicate disappointing sales (which means
he will likely not get listed on the NYSE until
at least next year-- provided he can meet the
stringent requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley).
Anyway, once Mr. Obama is sworn in, he'll
double the taxes, triple the taxes-- tax the
heart and soul out of the people (as in the
Robin Hood cartoon movie), so Mr. Sloan
needs to make hay while he still can. My
guess is that a book on Mr. Obama being in
reality a part slave-child of Abraham Lincoln
could sell well right about now.
I admit that I don't /know/ the goals of Mr.
Sloan's business venture... but is it not self-
evident that one of them has to be making a
profit?
-- help bot
|
| |
Date: 04 Aug 2008 16:18:22
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 4, 11:47=A0am, SBD <[email protected] > wrote:
> I was trying to understand the one about Reti and the windmill - the
> "one trick pony" comment that was sort of flabbergasting given Reti's
> tactical and analytical ability - I guess sacking two rooks twice in
> the same year against a future world champion makes him a "one trick
> pony" as well as being the author of the second most well-known
> endgame study of all time, beating Capa, etc.
You would have to have read the book on
Mr. Reti, published by Dover, in which his
games made a rather poor impression
*relative to those greats* I had studied at
around the same time.
Clearly, if you search for all of Mr. Reti's
games and replay them, you will not get
the same perspective as someone who
read /that book/ in between studying Mr.
Reti's superiors, as I did. Maybe the book
did not do him justice? That would be a
first, for most such books tend to dramatic-
ally /overstate/ the talents and accomplish-
ments of their subjects.
One article I recall having read addressed
the issue of the correctness of calling this
chap "Richard the Fifth", in recognition of
his many fifth-place finishes in tourneys.
There was some dispute between the
talking heads over this, but what I see is
that they are arguing, not over who was
the world's best chess player, but whether
RR finished *fifth* enough times to justify
such a moniker. Compare and contrast to
the others I studied around that time, who
would of course have been argued over as
to whether they were first or second best.
Enough said.
-- help bot
|
| | |
Date: 04 Aug 2008 18:27:14
From: Mike Murray
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been reprinted today
|
On Mon, 4 Aug 2008 16:18:22 -0700 (PDT), help bot
<[email protected] > wrote:
>On Aug 4, 11:47�am, SBD <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I was trying to understand the one about Reti and the windmill -
...
> One article I recall having read addressed
>the issue of the correctness of calling this
>chap "Richard the Fifth", in recognition of
>his many fifth-place finishes in tourneys.
That would have had the undesirable consequence of confusing him with
Teichmann.
|
| | | |
Date: 05 Aug 2008 17:51:27
From: thumbody
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been reprinted today
|
Mike Murray wrote:
>
> On Mon, 4 Aug 2008 16:18:22 -0700 (PDT), help bot
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >On Aug 4, 11:47 am, SBD <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >> I was trying to understand the one about Reti and the windmill -
> ...
> > One article I recall having read addressed
> >the issue of the correctness of calling this
> >chap "Richard the Fifth", in recognition of
> >his many fifth-place finishes in tourneys.
>
> That would have had the undesirable consequence of confusing him with
> Teichmann.
You see, I've heard of all these chappies: Reti, Nimsovitch, Tal,
Morphy, Alekhine, Lasker, Smyslov, Botvinnik, Nigel etc. & they're all
famous for some reason - maybe they cut a deal with the Evil-one for
this recognition - I just don't know..
I've played through many of these chappies games, marvelling @ their
chutzpah & admiring of the masterful display even adopting Lasker's
dictum of forgetting everything learnt over the preceding 30yrs or so &
it works or maybe I'm just getting old..
Now with regards to helpbot who is quite famous here on rgc. Over the
past few weeks I've noticed him tossing ad homin around with gay abandon
- raisin bran, buffoon, knowitall, idiotti etc etc which is quite out of
character for him & leads me to assume that he & his wife rybka helpbot
are a bit concerned over her pregnancy. Another program to feed, the
recent floods the price of corn etc. Anyways bot, digitals crossed the
new chip is a pentium & all the best to the missus..
t.
|
| |
Date: 04 Aug 2008 16:06:46
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 4, 9:21=A0am, [email protected] wrote:
> =A0 Still waiting for you to cite examples of this "widely" criticism of
> Lasker's style. If it's so widespread, surely you can find more than
> one, bot? Or did this one, like most of your claims, come from rectal
> extraction?
Perhaps Mr. Kingston has no mind, no
memories of anything that is not right in
front of him at the moment, in one of his
many chess books.
I am a different breed; I can recall, often
decades after the fact, ideas and opinions
I have read long ago. In fact, without this
ability, I would probably have every bit as
much difficulty with reality as TK clearly
has.
However, as I already pointed out, when
confronted with facts which he does not
"like", poor Mr.Kingston builds himself a
protective shack on the shores of de Nile,
staying there to fish and pet the croc's
until he feels it is safe to come back out.
In short, even if I were *paid* big money
to retrieve a multitude of examples and if I
presented them here in all their glory, the
poor chap would retreat into his shack by
de Nile, refusing to accept reality. There
can therefore be no point in providing any
further proofs of TK's separation from
reality... however, if I wanted to do so, my
preference would be to address some
other issue which is of greater import. I
have no desire to re-read old manuscripts
in which the talking-heads of their day
expounded upon their vast superior; I got
more than enough of /that/ the first time
around, coming away quite disappointed.
My own opinion of Em. Lasker duly
recognizes the apparent aesthetic flaws
noted by others, while *at the same time*
also recognizing his superiority in the
realm of tactics-- a superiority that is
perhaps best demonstrated by looking at
a few charts at www.chessmetrics.com.
For beauty is one thing, but results can
be plotted *objectively* (if not by these
turkeys, then by others like, say, Arpad
Elo).
As for waiting-- I am still waiting for a
flat-out denial regarding windmills, and
expect to continue indefinitely "waiting"
for the obvious reason: Mr. Kingston is
a cowardly blowhard, who has not the
guts to even phrase his impish denials
such as to mean anything at all. The
built-in escape hatches dominate every
ship he has ever launched; it is a very
poor substitute for just learning how to
swim.
Oh, BTW, Mr. Parr seems to have
provided a few quotes in a similar vein,
then contrasted them with others in
which EL was praised highly. (But he
often mucks up his quotations, or
quotes nitwits who are obviously out of
their depth-- i.e. on relativity theory.)
-- help bot
|
| |
Date: 04 Aug 2008 15:46:41
From: William Hyde
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 3, 3:33 am, "[email protected]" <[email protected] > wrote:
> EMANUEL LASKER
The rap against
> Lasker is that he played the man rather than the
> position
In once game he had a chance between two rook moves,
and commented something like "Rd1 is the best move
against Tarrasch, against Janowski it would be a serious
mistake and Re1 would be preferred".
Both rook moves were decent, but the position after Re1
would play to Janowski's weaknesses. I forget the specifics
of the position, but Janowski was a feared attacking player
and a weak endgame player, while Tarrasch was excellent
in both respects - though perhaps more in the endgame.
So given a choice between an endgame with a minuscule
advantage, or a middlegame in which the opponent has, say,
not quite enough of an attack for a pawn Lasker would make
different choices when playing Janowski or Tarrasch.
In fact there is a famous Tarrasch-Lasker game in which
Lasker, in an inferior position, offered Tarrasch a strong
attack in return for a pawn, and eventually won the game
with the extra pawn. Lasker thought that his chances
were better in this line than in allowing Tarrasch to
continue positionally. Against Janowski he would
probably have played positionally, and eventually
outmaneuvered him ("There is no master, living or
dead, whose maneuvering ability approaches that
of Lasker"- Nimzowitsch). But Tarrasch was no mean
hand at maneuvering himself.
Lasker thought the idea of not paying attention to an opponent's
particular strengths and weaknesses to be absurd. Steinitz
wanted to find the truth of a given position, and winning was
to an extent secondary (hence Lasker's comment that Steinitz, while a
genius, was not at heart a player). Lasker played to win, and if
Eternal Truth was not the result, too bad. If he wanted more such
truths he could return to mathematics.
William Hyde
|
| |
Date: 04 Aug 2008 09:47:49
From:
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 4, 11:47=A0am, SBD <[email protected] > wrote:
> On Aug 4, 8:21 am, [email protected] wrote:
>
> > On Aug 1, 5:22 pm, help bot <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > > =A0 Well, it takes a certain level of understanding
> > > to "get" these kinds of jokes. =A0Methinks Mr.
> > > Larsen was poking fun at Em. Lasker's rather
> > > peculiar /style/ of play, which has been widely
> > > criticized in spite of his stellar results.
>
> > =A0 Still waiting for you to cite examples of this "widely" criticism o=
f
> > Lasker's style. If it's so widespread, surely you can find more than
> > one, bot? Or did this one, like most of your claims, come from rectal
> > extraction?
>
> I was trying to understand the one about Reti and the windmill - the
> "one trick pony" comment that was sort of flabbergasting given Reti's
> tactical and analytical ability -
That puzzled me too. Here's what he wrote:
"I once read a Dover book about his games, and he seemed to be a one-
trick pony (relative to other famous players, that is). But I will say
this: he handled the Reti opening far, far more successfully that
[sic] I ever have;"
It's not clear whether "one-trick pony" refers to the windmill
theme, the R=E9ti Opening, or something else. But clarity has never been
Greg's strong suit, though he does better than Innes in that regard.
If the "one-trick pony" claim refers to his opening repertoire as
White, it is easily demolished; R=E9ti played hundreds of games in which
he did not open 1.Nf3. Granted, in what are probably his most famous
games, from New York 1924, that is the opening he played, but one
tournament is not a whole career.
The windmill comment is equally perplexing. He claims it is based
upon "a number of games," but he has yet to cite a single one. That is
his usual modus argumentum: a wild assertion, claimed to be backed by
mountains of evidence, which somehow never surfaces.
> I guess sacking two rooks twice in
> the same year against a future world champion makes him a "one trick
> pony" as well as being the author of the second most well-known
> endgame study of all time, beating Capa, etc.
>
> I was looking for any evidence of this when I happened upon Winter's
> discussion of the "Seesaw/Windmill" and realized that Reti had played
> one consultation game with a Zwickmu'hle and this was probably what
> Greg based his assertion on.... =A0Very silly, but typical, assertion by
> the Hoosier.
|
| |
Date: 04 Aug 2008 08:47:16
From: SBD
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 4, 8:21 am, [email protected] wrote:
> On Aug 1, 5:22 pm, help bot <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Well, it takes a certain level of understanding
> > to "get" these kinds of jokes. Methinks Mr.
> > Larsen was poking fun at Em. Lasker's rather
> > peculiar /style/ of play, which has been widely
> > criticized in spite of his stellar results.
>
> Still waiting for you to cite examples of this "widely" criticism of
> Lasker's style. If it's so widespread, surely you can find more than
> one, bot? Or did this one, like most of your claims, come from rectal
> extraction?
I was trying to understand the one about Reti and the windmill - the
"one trick pony" comment that was sort of flabbergasting given Reti's
tactical and analytical ability - I guess sacking two rooks twice in
the same year against a future world champion makes him a "one trick
pony" as well as being the author of the second most well-known
endgame study of all time, beating Capa, etc.
I was looking for any evidence of this when I happened upon Winter's
discussion of the "Seesaw/Windmill" and realized that Reti had played
one consultation game with a Zwickmu'hle and this was probably what
Greg based his assertion on.... Very silly, but typical, assertion by
the Hoosier.
|
| |
Date: 04 Aug 2008 06:21:19
From:
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 1, 5:22=A0pm, help bot <[email protected] > wrote:
>
> =A0 Well, it takes a certain level of understanding
> to "get" these kinds of jokes. =A0Methinks Mr.
> Larsen was poking fun at Em. Lasker's rather
> peculiar /style/ of play, which has been widely
> criticized in spite of his stellar results.
Still waiting for you to cite examples of this "widely" criticism of
Lasker's style. If it's so widespread, surely you can find more than
one, bot? Or did this one, like most of your claims, come from rectal
extraction?
|
| |
Date: 03 Aug 2008 17:47:05
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 3, 7:20=A0pm, "[email protected]" <[email protected] > wrote:
> Even toward the end, during the great Nottingham Tournament (1936)
> when he was 68, his quick sight of the board was still notable. In
> this connection I am reminded of
> the following incident: I had just won a very important game and was
> on my way back to the hotel. During the course of the game my opponent
> built up a magnificent position. At a certain point he saw an
> opportunity to win the Exchange, and did so.
> Yet he lost the game! Some of the world=92s greatest masters, who were
> present, began to study the game. All of them began their
> investigations from the point where my opponent had won the Exchange,
> for they assumed that this had been the proper course, and that his
> error must have occurred later on.
>
> They spent a good deal of time on the game, and meanwhile Lasker came
> in. They told him how the game had ended and played it over for him;
> but when they came to the point where my opponent had won the
> Exchange, he interrupted them and said, =91Oh no, that move can=92t be
> right!=92 The aged master had realized at once what the others had
> failed to perceive: that the win of the Exchange was an error which
> lost not only the advantage, but the game itself.
>
> Lasker saw that it was not my opponent who had made a combination but
> I! Several hours later he met me in the hotel and said, =91You must have
> been relieved when your opponent swallowed the bait,=92 Then he added,
> =91These players are not so
> strong as most people think.=92"
>
> And so Lasker had been the only one who had correctly appraised the
> position and had been fully aware of the possibilities it contained.
If this happens to be the same incident I
am thinking of, we could add a few
interesting details... such as these:
In fact, Jose Capablanca himself had not
analyzed the position particularly well (not
just the other masters he talked about
being inferior to EL).
In addition, the annotations gave the
impression that Mr. Lasker had access to
all the other analysts' work, giving him a
clear advantage. In the compendium of
analysis I saw, it was Mr. Lasker who
made the fewest (and most guarded)
comments, while those who thought they
understood everything were quite often in
disaccord with Fritz-- the true master of
tactics in messy positions.
Note how -- if this is indeed the very
same incident I'm thinking of -- JC told
his story such as to exclude himself
from the group of "misguided" masters.
If it is not the same game, everything
I said above still holds, except for the
part about the story being changed to
yield a more-favorable impression of
the story-teller.
-- help bot
|
| |
Date: 03 Aug 2008 17:18:59
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 3, 7:13=A0pm, samsloan <[email protected] > wrote:
> > Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship br Dr. Reuben
> > Fine has been reprinted and published today.
> Thank you for the discussions about the book I just reprinted, but
> nobody has actually bought the book yet.
Dear Mr. Sloan,
You do realize that not only is Bobby
Fischer dead, but that his conquest of
the FIDE chess championship title is
now ancient history, right?
Many people probably now regard the
speculations of that Freudian psycho
analyst, Mr. Fine, to be a bit "over the
top" as they say, and his commentary
stops rather early, while the passing
of considerable time has added much
that is new.
It boils down to a matter of supply vs.
demand. While there are lots of young
players who may not have seen this
book before, they are less likely to be
obsessed with a man who retired from
active play in 1972 A.D, than say,
oldsters like Larry Evans or Larry Parr.
Timing is important, too. Suppose
you had just reprinted a book on the
origins of the Olympics-- bingo. But
this ancient fossil of a subject -- the
inner grindings of the mind of BF as
interpreted by an old-school Freudian
-- is, well, about as timely as disco
music or a Slinky toy. You need to
like, get hip; be cool-- not square,
man. You dig? This is not the '60s.
-- cool bot
|
| | |
Date: 04 Aug 2008 08:32:41
From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=FCrgen_R.?=
Subject: AW: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been reprinted today
|
> Dear Mr. Sloan,
>
> You do realize that not only is Bobby
> Fischer dead, but that his conquest of
> the FIDE chess championship title is
> now ancient history, right?
>
> Many people probably now regard the
> speculations of that Freudian psycho
> analyst, Mr. Fine, to be a bit "over the
> top" as they say, and his commentary
> stops rather early, while the passing
> of considerable time has added much
> that is new.
>
> It boils down to a matter of supply vs.
> demand. While there are lots of young
> players who may not have seen this
> book before, they are less likely to be
> obsessed with a man who retired from
> active play in 1972 A.D, than say,
> oldsters like Larry Evans or Larry Parr.
>
> Timing is important, too. Suppose
> you had just reprinted a book on the
> origins of the Olympics-- bingo. But
> this ancient fossil of a subject -- the
> inner grindings of the mind of BF as
> interpreted by an old-school Freudian
> -- is, well, about as timely as disco
> music or a Slinky toy. You need to
> like, get hip; be cool-- not square,
> man. You dig? This is not the '60s.
>
>
> -- cool bot
I'm afraid you have not fully understood Sloan's
business model.
|
| |
Date: 03 Aug 2008 16:20:16
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
THIS CRAZY WORLD OF CHESS by GM Larry Evans (page 36)
>As so often happens, Mr. Parr has missed the forest-- and the trees.> -- G=
reg Kennedy (aka Help Bot)
CAPABLANCA ON LASKER
Confirmation of Edward Lasker=92s view of Emanuel (as opposed to
Bobby=92s) may be found in a recently published book, Last Lectures, by
Bobby=92s acknowledged hero, Capablanca:
"No other great master has been so misunderstood ... It was often said
of Lasker that he had rather a dry style, that he could not play
brilliantly and that his victories were chiefly the result of his
uncanny endgame skill and of his opponent=92s mistakes. That he was a
great endgame player is unquestionable; in fact, he was the greatest I
have ever known. But he was also the most profound and imaginative
player I have every known.
Even toward the end, during the great Nottingham Tournament (1936)
when he was 68, his quick sight of the board was still notable. In
this connection I am reminded of
the following incident: I had just won a very important game and was
on my way back to the hotel. During the course of the game my opponent
built up a magnificent position. At a certain point he saw an
opportunity to win the Exchange, and did so.
Yet he lost the game! Some of the world=92s greatest masters, who were
present, began to study the game. All of them began their
investigations from the point where my opponent had won the Exchange,
for they assumed that this had been the proper course, and that his
error must have occurred later on.
They spent a good deal of time on the game, and meanwhile Lasker came
in. They told him how the game had ended and played it over for him;
but when they came to the point where my opponent had won the
Exchange, he interrupted them and said, =91Oh no, that move can=92t be
right!=92 The aged master had realized at once what the others had
failed to perceive: that the win of the Exchange was an error which
lost not only the advantage, but the game itself.
Lasker saw that it was not my opponent who had made a combination but
I! Several hours later he met me in the hotel and said, =91You must have
been relieved when your opponent swallowed the bait,=92 Then he added,
=91These players are not so
strong as most people think.=92"
And so Lasker had been the only one who had correctly appraised the
position and had been fully aware of the possibilities it contained.
GROWING PAINS
Of course, no one=97not even a champion performer=97is expected to be an
insightful critic. It is said that Bill Tilden, the tennis great,
could never pick a winner in any match. Bobby=92s judgment, or lack of
it, may not affect the quality of his play. But his performances away
from the board are, for the most part, interesting because of what
they tell us about him as a human being; they shed little light on
Bobby the chess master.
Still, the master lives in the man=97not the other way around.
Ironically, it was Emanuel Lasker who emphasized that chess involves a
struggle of the total human personality in which the rounded man and
not necessarily the better player is eventually bound to triumph.
Perhaps in a few years we may feel, looking back, that many of his
statements and much of his behavior simply reflected growing pains.
help bot wrote:
> On Aug 3, 3:33?am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > EMANUEL LASKER
> >
> > To be fair to Greg Kennedy, Taylor Kingston has
> > the easier side of an argument that involves defending
> > or praising Emanuel Lasker rather than belittling and
> > attacking the man who was champion for 27 years.
>
>
> As so often happens, Mr. Parr has missed
> the forest-- and the trees.
>
> Mr. Kingston commented that he was
> unable -- meaning unwilling -- to find any
> examples of writers making negative
> comments regarding Em Lasker-- more
> specifically, his playing style (not his
> results).
>
> My position is simply that Mr. Kingston
> is a buffoon who could not be trusted to
> locate his own behind, and thus his
> obvious lack of abilities says nothing on
> the matter. I also noted the poor chap's
> ignorance of Mr. Reti's famous so-called
> windmill attacks, which can be found by
> many children, and probably by more
> than a few trained chimpanzees.
>
>
> >?The rap against
> > Lasker is that he played the man rather than the
> > position or adopted severe practicality at the expense
> > of making the correct move that might lead to a draw.
> > His games are thereby considered less aesthetic.
>
> 'Twas not only draws, but the dogmatists'
> "equalization" mantra that Em. Lasker
> eschewed. Offhand, I can think of one
> very famous game in which EL was playing
> his supposed arch-rival, the dogmatic Mr.
> Tarrasch, where the latter had the White
> pieces and a beautiful position. Mr. Lasker
> allowed his pawn structure to become
> mangled, activated some pieces and then
> calmly sacrificed a couple of Bishops, ala
> Mr. Harrwitz (sp?), lifted a Rook and won
> via a direct King assault.
>
> I tend to see this as evidence of one side's
> tactical superiority, rather than as a battle
> between (Good) dogmatism and (Evil) it's
> nemesis. To me, there is no contradiction
> here; White attained the far prettier position,
> but Black won by attacking the exposed (we
> discovered it was exposed, only thanks to
> EL's immense tactical ability) King-- which
> trumps prettiness and bows in one's hair.
>
>
> > ?Yet those who praise Lasker are legion. ?Tal
> > listed Lasker and Morphy as his two favorite players.
>
> Bobby Fischer once called EL "eine coffeehousen
> playeren". (To which EL replied: "You lost to Mednis?
> Edmar Mednis? Dumkhoff!)
>
>
> > In Russian-language chess literature Lasker is praised
> > effusively. ?Siegbert Tarrasch, who is often portrayed
> > as an antagonist of Lasker, heaped praise upon praise
> > on Lasker's play in the tournament book of St.
> > Petersburg 1914. ?My recollection is that Tarrasch
> > wrote that nearly every game of Lasker's in that
> > tournament was a masterpiece. ?And let's keep in mind
> > that was not Edward Lasker writing such praise but
> > Tarrasch, who could not have had much love for Emanuel.
>
> Many years later, Mr. Alekhine -- as world
> champ -- wrote quite of a bit of criticism of
> those who participated in a great tourney
> which he sat out, a tourney won by Aron
> Nimzowitch. He sounded just a bit
> arrogant, to me.
>
>
> > In the Kotov-Keres book "The Art of the Middle
> > Game" the authors give a position from
> > Nimzovich-Lasker (St. Petersburg, 1914). ?On the 27th
> > move Lasker could have bailed out into a simplified,
> > probably disadvantageous ending that he might have
> > held after laborious defense. ?It was the move that,
> > as Keres and Kotov opine, most players good players
> > would have made. ?They say that Lasker "courageously"
> > eschewed the decision because the odds would have
> > favored Nimzo winning. ?Instead, Lasker temporized
> > with likely inferior moves that, nonetheless, forced
> > Nimzovich TO DO SOMETHING. ?Once he had to start doing
> > something, there arose some very complicated
> > positions, and Lasker capitalized on a couple of
> > errors by his opponent to draw the position.
>
> This recaps what I have been saying all
> along-- that AN had a dull, boring style in
> the games near the beginning of his great
> book, My System. (I never made it to the
> end precisely because of this dullness.)
>
>
> > What an extraordinary tactician Lasker must
> > have been -- a calculating machine a la Reshevsky.
>
> Better, I would say.
>
>
> > Emanuel Lasker held the crown for 27 years (1894?1921) longer than
> > anyone in history.
>
> Don't get me started... .
>
>
> > His classic Manual of Chess is as fresh and rich
> > today as when he first translated it to English in 1932.
>
> This indicates that EL did the translating
> himself. Is that true?
>
>
> > Lasker advises us to trust our common sense
>
> He might even have written an entire book
> about this, about /common sense in chess/.
>
>
> > and not to rely on
> > memorizing fashionable openings. "I have applied at least 30 of my 57
> > years to forgetting most of what I learned or read," he said in the
> > original German edition of 1925. Above all, Lasker saw chess as a
> > struggle. "Some ardent enthusiasts have elevated chess into a science
> > or an art. It is neither. Its chief characteristic seems to be?what
> > human nature delights in?a fight."
>
> Not long afterward, Mr. Alekhine was writing
> about these ideas, and struggling to debunk
> Mr. Capablanca's idea that a draw-death was
> fast approaching.
>
>
> > His indomitable will and fierce independence were reflected in his
> > games. Unlike many of his fellow masters who lived only for the 64
> > squares, he penned books on philosophy and mathematics as well as
> > chess.
>
> Um, writing and publishing books in no way
> separates hyper-obsessive chessplayers
> from the universal men; most people simply
> have no connection with book-publishing.
>
> Have a look at that famous fellow, Socrates--
> *he published nothing*, and yet he is long
> remembered as a great thinker on a wide
> variety of subjects.
>
>
> > Albert Einstein wrote a foreword to Lasker?s biography recalling long
> > debates in their youth about the theory of relativity.
>
> Two theories, in fact. One of them is even
> considered "special".
>
>
> > Lasker argued there was no proof the speed
> > of light in a vacuum was infinite.
>
> Look, if you want to travel to the stars, better
> get rid of the vacuum and focus on ships--
> *very fast ships*. We're talking Lockheed
> Martin here, not Hoover or Eureka.
>
>
> > Einstein said he couldn?t wait indefinitely for proof, especially
> > since no way to verify his theory was available at the moment.
>
> Nonsense. My theory is that chess can
> in fact be "solved", and I am still patiently
> waiting for it to happen. The important
> thing is to not fool yourself into thinking
> something "can't be done", when you
> clearly don't know, one way or the other.
>
>
> -- help bot
|
| |
Date: 03 Aug 2008 16:13:29
From: samsloan
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Jul 30, 12:00 pm, samsloan <[email protected] > wrote:
> Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship br Dr. Reuben
> Fine has been reprinted and published today.
>
> Within 48-72 hours you will find it listed on Amazon at the following
> address:
>
> http://www.amazon.com/dp/0923891471
>
> The author, Dr. Reuben Fine, was a chess grandmaster and one of the
> strongest players in the world, who retired from chess to become a
> leading psychoanalyst.
>
> In this book, he both analyzes the moves of the chess match and he
> psychoanalyzes Bobby Fischer, whom he knew from Bobby's childhood.
>
> I need especially to thank International Chess Master Dr. Anthony
> Saidy, the man who more than any other person got Bobby to Iceland to
> play the match and even drove Bobby to the airport, for providing a
> (not entirely favorable) review of this Bobby Fischer book.
>
> Sam Sloan
Thank you for the discussions about the book I just reprinted, but
nobody has actually bought the book yet.
If has been offered on sale on Amazon for three days since Thursday.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0923891471
Sam Sloan
|
| |
Date: 03 Aug 2008 14:50:20
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 3, 3:33=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected] > wrote:
> EMANUEL LASKER
>
> To be fair to Greg Kennedy, Taylor Kingston has
> the easier side of an argument that involves defending
> or praising Emanuel Lasker rather than belittling and
> attacking the man who was champion for 27 years.
As so often happens, Mr. Parr has missed
the forest-- and the trees.
Mr. Kingston commented that he was
unable -- meaning unwilling -- to find any
examples of writers making negative
comments regarding Em Lasker-- more
specifically, his playing style (not his
results).
My position is simply that Mr. Kingston
is a buffoon who could not be trusted to
locate his own behind, and thus his
obvious lack of abilities says nothing on
the matter. I also noted the poor chap's
ignorance of Mr. Reti's famous so-called
windmill attacks, which can be found by
many children, and probably by more
than a few trained chimpanzees.
>=A0The rap against
> Lasker is that he played the man rather than the
> position or adopted severe practicality at the expense
> of making the correct move that might lead to a draw.
> His games are thereby considered less aesthetic.
'Twas not only draws, but the dogmatists'
"equalization" mantra that Em. Lasker
eschewed. Offhand, I can think of one
very famous game in which EL was playing
his supposed arch-rival, the dogmatic Mr.
Tarrasch, where the latter had the White
pieces and a beautiful position. Mr. Lasker
allowed his pawn structure to become
mangled, activated some pieces and then
calmly sacrificed a couple of Bishops, ala
Mr. Harrwitz (sp?), lifted a Rook and won
via a direct King assault.
I tend to see this as evidence of one side's
tactical superiority, rather than as a battle
between (Good) dogmatism and (Evil) it's
nemesis. To me, there is no contradiction
here; White attained the far prettier position,
but Black won by attacking the exposed (we
discovered it was exposed, only thanks to
EL's immense tactical ability) King-- which
trumps prettiness and bows in one's hair.
> =A0Yet those who praise Lasker are legion. =A0Tal
> listed Lasker and Morphy as his two favorite players.
Bobby Fischer once called EL "eine coffeehousen
playeren". (To which EL replied: "You lost to Mednis?
Edmar Mednis? Dumkhoff!)
> In Russian-language chess literature Lasker is praised
> effusively. =A0Siegbert Tarrasch, who is often portrayed
> as an antagonist of Lasker, heaped praise upon praise
> on Lasker's play in the tournament book of St.
> Petersburg 1914. =A0My recollection is that Tarrasch
> wrote that nearly every game of Lasker's in that
> tournament was a masterpiece. =A0And let's keep in mind
> that was not Edward Lasker writing such praise but
> Tarrasch, who could not have had much love for Emanuel.
Many years later, Mr. Alekhine -- as world
champ -- wrote quite of a bit of criticism of
those who participated in a great tourney
which he sat out, a tourney won by Aron
Nimzowitch. He sounded just a bit
arrogant, to me.
> In the Kotov-Keres book "The Art of the Middle
> Game" the authors give a position from
> Nimzovich-Lasker (St. Petersburg, 1914). =A0On the 27th
> move Lasker could have bailed out into a simplified,
> probably disadvantageous ending that he might have
> held after laborious defense. =A0It was the move that,
> as Keres and Kotov opine, most players good players
> would have made. =A0They say that Lasker "courageously"
> eschewed the decision because the odds would have
> favored Nimzo winning. =A0Instead, Lasker temporized
> with likely inferior moves that, nonetheless, forced
> Nimzovich TO DO SOMETHING. =A0Once he had to start doing
> something, there arose some very complicated
> positions, and Lasker capitalized on a couple of
> errors by his opponent to draw the position.
This recaps what I have been saying all
along-- that AN had a dull, boring style in
the games near the beginning of his great
book, My System. (I never made it to the
end precisely because of this dullness.)
> What an extraordinary tactician Lasker must
> have been -- a calculating machine a la Reshevsky.
Better, I would say.
> Emanuel Lasker held the crown for 27 years (1894=961921) longer than
> anyone in history.
Don't get me started... .
> His classic Manual of Chess is as fresh and rich
> today as when he first translated it to English in 1932.
This indicates that EL did the translating
himself. Is that true?
> Lasker advises us to trust our common sense
He might even have written an entire book
about this, about /common sense in chess/.
> and not to rely on
> memorizing fashionable openings. "I have applied at least 30 of my 57
> years to forgetting most of what I learned or read," he said in the
> original German edition of 1925. Above all, Lasker saw chess as a
> struggle. "Some ardent enthusiasts have elevated chess into a science
> or an art. It is neither. Its chief characteristic seems to be=97what
> human nature delights in=97a fight."
Not long afterward, Mr. Alekhine was writing
about these ideas, and struggling to debunk
Mr. Capablanca's idea that a draw-death was
fast approaching.
> His indomitable will and fierce independence were reflected in his
> games. Unlike many of his fellow masters who lived only for the 64
> squares, he penned books on philosophy and mathematics as well as
> chess.
Um, writing and publishing books in no way
separates hyper-obsessive chessplayers
from the universal men; most people simply
have no connection with book-publishing.
Have a look at that famous fellow, Socrates--
*he published nothing*, and yet he is long
remembered as a great thinker on a wide
variety of subjects.
> Albert Einstein wrote a foreword to Lasker=92s biography recalling long
> debates in their youth about the theory of relativity.
Two theories, in fact. One of them is even
considered "special".
> Lasker argued there was no proof the speed
> of light in a vacuum was infinite.
Look, if you want to travel to the stars, better
get rid of the vacuum and focus on ships--
*very fast ships*. We're talking Lockheed
Martin here, not Hoover or Eureka.
> Einstein said he couldn=92t wait indefinitely for proof, especially
> since no way to verify his theory was available at the moment.
Nonsense. My theory is that chess can
in fact be "solved", and I am still patiently
waiting for it to happen. The important
thing is to not fool yourself into thinking
something "can't be done", when you
clearly don't know, one way or the other.
-- help bot
|
| |
Date: 03 Aug 2008 08:38:16
From:
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 3, 3:33=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected] > wrote:
> EMANUEL LASKER
>
> To be fair to Greg Kennedy, Taylor Kingston has
> the easier side of an argument that involves defending
> or praising Emanuel Lasker rather than belittling and
> attacking the man who was champion for 27 years.
>
> In addition to an Andy Soltis writing in praise
> of Lasker, there would be the likes of Fine in his
> collection of the great man's games. =A0And Fine as an
> admirer of Lasker is important because the former is
> considered the author of many model games -- nearly
> perfect from opening through ending. =A0The rap against
> Lasker is that he played the man rather than the
> position or adopted severe practicality at the expense
> of making the correct move that might lead to a draw.
> His games are thereby considered less aesthetic.
>
> I, for one, would like someone to Fritz
> Lasker's win as White over Bogolyubov at New York
> 1924. =A0It is hard to believe that the pawn sac is
> correct, and Alekhine's notes suggest that even this
> great figure could not plumb or ferret out the truths
> about the game. =A0"Murky" is the word that comes to mind.
Fritz8 actually seems to approve the sacrifice, although it wants to
do it in a different way. After several minutes of deliberation, Its
first choice is to sac it by 13.Rb1 (rated +0.86), second choice to
defend it by 13.b3 (+0.79), and its third choice a tie between
defending by 13.Qe2, and the move Lasker actually chose, 13.Bd2 (both
+0.70). From then on, about the only move it seems to dislike at all
is 15.Nd6 (+0.49 vs. +0.79 for 15.Ba5), though it still rates White's
position as better. From then on White's edge slowly grows, to about
+1.40 at move 25, then it turns decisively in White's favor after
25...Qa5? 26.Rb7! (+2.37).
> =A0Yet those who praise Lasker are legion. =A0Tal
> listed Lasker and Morphy as his two favorite players.
> In Russian-language chess literature Lasker is praised
> effusively. =A0
Lasker did a lot for Soviet chess during his two stints in Russia.
When he had to leave Germany in the 1930s because of Hitler, and the
Soviets offered him refuge, Berlin's loss was Moscow's gain.
> Siegbert Tarrasch, who is often portrayed
> as an antagonist of Lasker, heaped praise upon praise
> on Lasker's play in the tournament book of St.
> Petersburg 1914. =A0My recollection is that Tarrasch
> wrote that nearly every game of Lasker's in that
> tournament was a masterpiece. =A0And let's keep in mind
> that was not Edward Lasker writing such praise but
> Tarrasch, who could not have had much love for Emanuel.
>
> In the Kotov-Keres book "The Art of the Middle
> Game" the authors give a position from
> Nimzovich-Lasker (St. Petersburg, 1914). =A0On the 27th
> move Lasker could have bailed out into a simplified,
> probably disadvantageous ending that he might have
> held after laborious defense. =A0It was the move that,
> as Keres and Kotov opine, most players good players
> would have made. =A0They say that Lasker "courageously"
> eschewed the decision because the odds would have
> favored Nimzo winning. =A0Instead, Lasker temporized
> with likely inferior moves that, nonetheless, forced
> Nimzovich TO DO SOMETHING. =A0Once he had to start doing
> something, there arose some very complicated
> positions, and Lasker capitalized on a couple of
> errors by his opponent to draw the position.
>
> What an extraordinary tactician Lasker must
> have been -- a calculating machine a la Reshevsky.
I quite agree. It's interesting to note that even such great
tacticians as Alekhine and Bogolyubov could not defeat Lasker until
1934, when he was 65 and had been away from serious chess for about 9
years. Euwe, Tartakower, Spielmann and Reti, great tacticians all,
never could beat him.
> Yours, Larry Parr
>
> P.S. THIS CRAZY WORLD OF CHESS by GM Larry Evans (page 253)
>
> 83. Emanuel=92s Manual
>
> Emanuel Lasker held the crown for 27 years (1894=961921) longer than
> anyone in history. His classic Manual of Chess is as fresh and rich
> today as when he first translated it to English in 1932.
>
> Lasker advises us to trust our common sense and not to rely on
> memorizing fashionable openings. "I have applied at least 30 of my 57
> years to forgetting most of what I learned or read," he said in the
> original German edition of 1925. Above all, Lasker saw chess as a
> struggle. "Some ardent enthusiasts have elevated chess into a science
> or an art. It is neither. Its chief characteristic seems to be=97what
> human nature delights in=97a fight."
>
> His indomitable will and fierce independence were reflected in his
> games. Unlike many of his fellow masters who lived only for the 64
> squares, he penned books on philosophy and mathematics as well as
> chess.
>
> Albert Einstein wrote a foreword to Lasker=92s biography recalling long
> debates in their youth about the theory of relativity. Lasker argued
> there was no proof the speed of light in a vacuum was infinite.
> Einstein said he couldn=92t wait indefinitely for proof, especially
> since no way to verify his theory was available at the moment.
Actually, he said there was no proof it was *_not_* infinite. To
quote the Einstein foreword:
" Lasker ... clearly recognized that the entire problem hinged on
the constancy of the velocity of light in empty space. He clearly saw
that, once such constancy was admitted, the relativisation of time was
unanswerable, whether one liked it or not (and he did not like it at
all) ... Lasker's argument could be summarized thus: No one has any
direct and immediate knowledge about the velocity of light in
absolutely empty space ... Who then can presume to deny that the
velocity of light in absolutely empty space would be infinite?"
In view of all the empirical validation of relativity since then, I
think Lasker now would concede that Einstein was right.
> [email protected] wrote:
> > help bot wrote:
>
> > > =A0 Let's not forget the last time out, when
> > > you were somehow "unable to find" TP's
> > > commentary, but some freaky guy came
> > > from out of nowhere, saying it took him
> > > all of thirty seconds-- without any help
> > > from me.
>
> > > =A0 -- help bot
>
> > Ah, yes, another example of the envy of the unread for the well-read.
> > Sorry, Greg, but having access to a computer won't turn a lout into a
> > scholar.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
|
| |
Date: 03 Aug 2008 05:58:22
From:
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 3, 3:33=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected] > wrote:
> EMANUEL LASKER
>
> To be fair to Greg Kennedy, Taylor Kingston has
> the easier side of an argument that involves defending
> or praising Emanuel Lasker rather than belittling and
> attacking the man who was champion for 27 years.
>
> In addition to an Andy Soltis writing in praise
> of Lasker, there would be the likes of Fine in his
> collection of the great man's games. =A0And Fine as an
> admirer of Lasker is important because the former is
> considered the author of many model games -- nearly
> perfect from opening through ending. =A0The rap against
> Lasker is that he played the man rather than the
> position or adopted severe practicality at the expense
> of making the correct move that might lead to a draw.
> His games are thereby considered less aesthetic.
>
> I, for one, would like someone to Fritz
> Lasker's win as White over Bogolyubov at New York
> 1924. =A0It is hard to believe that the pawn sac is
> correct, and Alekhine's notes suggest that even this
> great figure could not plumb or ferret out the truths
> about the game. =A0"Murky" is the word that comes to mind.
>
> =A0Yet those who praise Lasker are legion. =A0Tal
> listed Lasker and Morphy as his two favorite players.
> In Russian-language chess literature Lasker is praised
> effusively. =A0Siegbert Tarrasch, who is often portrayed
> as an antagonist of Lasker, heaped praise upon praise
> on Lasker's play in the tournament book of St.
> Petersburg 1914. =A0My recollection is that Tarrasch
> wrote that nearly every game of Lasker's in that
> tournament was a masterpiece. =A0And let's keep in mind
> that was not Edward Lasker writing such praise but
> Tarrasch, who could not have had much love for Emanuel.
>
> In the Kotov-Keres book "The Art of the Middle
> Game" the authors give a position from
> Nimzovich-Lasker (St. Petersburg, 1914). =A0On the 27th
> move Lasker could have bailed out into a simplified,
> probably disadvantageous ending that he might have
> held after laborious defense. =A0It was the move that,
> as Keres and Kotov opine, most players good players
> would have made. =A0They say that Lasker "courageously"
> eschewed the decision because the odds would have
> favored Nimzo winning. =A0Instead, Lasker temporized
> with likely inferior moves that, nonetheless, forced
> Nimzovich TO DO SOMETHING. =A0Once he had to start doing
> something, there arose some very complicated
> positions, and Lasker capitalized on a couple of
> errors by his opponent to draw the position.
>
> What an extraordinary tactician Lasker must
> have been -- a calculating machine a la Reshevsky.
>
> Yours, Larry Parr
>
> P.S. THIS CRAZY WORLD OF CHESS by GM Larry Evans (page 253)
>
> 83. Emanuel=92s Manual
>
> Emanuel Lasker held the crown for 27 years (1894=961921) longer than
> anyone in history. His classic Manual of Chess is as fresh and rich
> today as when he first translated it to English in 1932.
>
> Lasker advises us to trust our common sense and not to rely on
> memorizing fashionable openings. "I have applied at least 30 of my 57
> years to forgetting most of what I learned or read," he said in the
> original German edition of 1925. Above all, Lasker saw chess as a
> struggle. "Some ardent enthusiasts have elevated chess into a science
> or an art. It is neither. Its chief characteristic seems to be=97what
> human nature delights in=97a fight."
>
> His indomitable will and fierce independence were reflected in his
> games. Unlike many of his fellow masters who lived only for the 64
> squares, he penned books on philosophy and mathematics as well as
> chess.
>
> Albert Einstein wrote a foreword to Lasker=92s biography recalling long
> debates in their youth about the theory of relativity. Lasker argued
> there was no proof the speed of light in a vacuum was infinite.
Actually, he said there was no proof it was *_not_* infinite. To
quote the Einstein foreword:
" Lasker ... clearly recognized that the entire problem hinged on
the constancy of the velocity of light in empty space. He clearly saw
that, once such constancy was admitted, the relativisation of time was
unanswerable, whether one liked it or not (and he did not like it at
all) ... Laskers argument could be summarized thus: No one has any
direct and immediate knowledge about the velocity of light in
absolutely empty space ... Who then can presume to deny that the
velocity of light in absolutely empty space would be infinite?"
> Einstein said he couldn=92t wait indefinitely for proof, especially
> since no way to verify his theory was available at the moment.
>
>
>
> [email protected] wrote:
> > help bot wrote:
>
> > > =A0 Let's not forget the last time out, when
> > > you were somehow "unable to find" TP's
> > > commentary, but some freaky guy came
> > > from out of nowhere, saying it took him
> > > all of thirty seconds-- without any help
> > > from me.
>
> > > =A0 -- help bot
>
> > Ah, yes, another example of the envy of the unread for the well-read.
> > Sorry, Greg, but having access to a computer won't turn a lout into a
> > scholar.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
|
| |
Date: 03 Aug 2008 00:33:08
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
EMANUEL LASKER
To be fair to Greg Kennedy, Taylor Kingston has
the easier side of an argument that involves defending
or praising Emanuel Lasker rather than belittling and
attacking the man who was champion for 27 years.
In addition to an Andy Soltis writing in praise
of Lasker, there would be the likes of Fine in his
collection of the great man's games. And Fine as an
admirer of Lasker is important because the former is
considered the author of many model games -- nearly
perfect from opening through ending. The rap against
Lasker is that he played the man rather than the
position or adopted severe practicality at the expense
of making the correct move that might lead to a draw.
His games are thereby considered less aesthetic.
I, for one, would like someone to Fritz
Lasker's win as White over Bogolyubov at New York
1924. It is hard to believe that the pawn sac is
correct, and Alekhine's notes suggest that even this
great figure could not plumb or ferret out the truths
about the game. "Murky" is the word that comes to mind.
Yet those who praise Lasker are legion. Tal
listed Lasker and Morphy as his two favorite players.
In Russian-language chess literature Lasker is praised
effusively. Siegbert Tarrasch, who is often portrayed
as an antagonist of Lasker, heaped praise upon praise
on Lasker's play in the tournament book of St.
Petersburg 1914. My recollection is that Tarrasch
wrote that nearly every game of Lasker's in that
tournament was a masterpiece. And let's keep in mind
that was not Edward Lasker writing such praise but
Tarrasch, who could not have had much love for Emanuel.
In the Kotov-Keres book "The Art of the Middle
Game" the authors give a position from
Nimzovich-Lasker (St. Petersburg, 1914). On the 27th
move Lasker could have bailed out into a simplified,
probably disadvantageous ending that he might have
held after laborious defense. It was the move that,
as Keres and Kotov opine, most players good players
would have made. They say that Lasker "courageously"
eschewed the decision because the odds would have
favored Nimzo winning. Instead, Lasker temporized
with likely inferior moves that, nonetheless, forced
Nimzovich TO DO SOMETHING. Once he had to start doing
something, there arose some very complicated
positions, and Lasker capitalized on a couple of
errors by his opponent to draw the position.
What an extraordinary tactician Lasker must
have been -- a calculating machine a la Reshevsky.
Yours, Larry Parr
P.S. THIS CRAZY WORLD OF CHESS by GM Larry Evans (page 253)
83. Emanuel=92s Manual
Emanuel Lasker held the crown for 27 years (1894=961921) longer than
anyone in history. His classic Manual of Chess is as fresh and rich
today as when he first translated it to English in 1932.
Lasker advises us to trust our common sense and not to rely on
memorizing fashionable openings. "I have applied at least 30 of my 57
years to forgetting most of what I learned or read," he said in the
original German edition of 1925. Above all, Lasker saw chess as a
struggle. "Some ardent enthusiasts have elevated chess into a science
or an art. It is neither. Its chief characteristic seems to be=97what
human nature delights in=97a fight."
His indomitable will and fierce independence were reflected in his
games. Unlike many of his fellow masters who lived only for the 64
squares, he penned books on philosophy and mathematics as well as
chess.
Albert Einstein wrote a foreword to Lasker=92s biography recalling long
debates in their youth about the theory of relativity. Lasker argued
there was no proof the speed of light in a vacuum was infinite.
Einstein said he couldn=92t wait indefinitely for proof, especially
since no way to verify his theory was available at the moment.
[email protected] wrote:
> help bot wrote:
> >
> > Let's not forget the last time out, when
> > you were somehow "unable to find" TP's
> > commentary, but some freaky guy came
> > from out of nowhere, saying it took him
> > all of thirty seconds-- without any help
> > from me.
> >
> >
> > -- help bot
>
>
> Ah, yes, another example of the envy of the unread for the well-read.
> Sorry, Greg, but having access to a computer won't turn a lout into a
> scholar.
|
| | |
Date: 05 Aug 2008 23:33:37
From: =?Windows-1252?Q?J=FCrgen_R.?=
Subject: AW: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been reprinted today
|
[email protected] wrote:
>
> Albert Einstein wrote a foreword to Lasker�s biography recalling long
> debates in their youth about the theory of relativity. Lasker argued
> there was no proof the speed of light in a vacuum was infinite.
> Einstein said he couldn�t wait indefinitely for proof, especially
> since no way to verify his theory was available at the moment.
Here Parr is quoting nonsense from Evans.
Amusing is that Evans is quoting Fine (Psychology of the Chess Player, p.
45).
So we have Parr parroting Evans and Evans parotting Fine and
Fine garbling the story completely, not one of the three
comprehending what they are babbling about.
|
| | |
Date: 03 Aug 2008 15:17:59
From: =?Windows-1252?Q?J=FCrgen_R.?=
Subject: AW: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been reprinted today
|
[....]
>
> His indomitable will and fierce independence were reflected in his
> games. Unlike many of his fellow masters who lived only for the 64
> squares, he penned books on philosophy and mathematics as well as
> chess.
>
> Albert Einstein wrote a foreword to Lasker�s biography recalling long
> debates in their youth about the theory of relativity. Lasker argued
> there was no proof the speed of light in a vacuum was infinite.
> Einstein said he couldn�t wait indefinitely for proof, especially
> since no way to verify his theory was available at the moment.
>
>
>
Why do people comment upon things they don't understand?
Don't they realize that their psychophants will make fools
of themselves by blindly quoting nonsense?
|
| |
Date: 02 Aug 2008 20:58:57
From:
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
help bot wrote:
>
> Let's not forget the last time out, when
> you were somehow "unable to find" TP's
> commentary, but some freaky guy came
> from out of nowhere, saying it took him
> all of thirty seconds-- without any help
> from me.
>
>
> -- help bot
Ah, yes, another example of the envy of the unread for the well-read.
Sorry, Greg, but having access to a computer won't turn a lout into a
scholar.
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Date: 02 Aug 2008 18:58:54
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 2, 9:15=A0am, [email protected] wrote:
> > =A0 Well, it takes a certain level of understanding
> > to "get" these kinds of jokes.
>
> =A0 If it's a joke, then it hardly offers any support for your negative
> veiw of Lasker.
Who cares? I made no "authority
argument", needing any support from
others.
> > =A0Methinks Mr.
> > Larsen was poking fun at Em. Lasker's rather
> > peculiar /style/ of play, which has been widely
> > criticized in spite of his stellar results.
> =A0 I am at this moment surrounded by nearly 500 chess books. In them I
> find none of this alledgedly widespread criticism.
Let's not forget the last time out, when
you were somehow "unable to find" TP's
commentary, but some freaky guy came
from out of nowhere, saying it took him
all of thirty seconds-- without any help
from me.
Oh, and there were numerous cases
where you jumped in with your best shot
at "analysis", only to be informed, time
and again, that you were *looking at the
wrong position*. (Enough said.)
> Please present examples?
Let me get this straight. You claim to
have 500 chess books in front of you,
and you also claim to be unable to find
anything; yet you want *me* to unearth
specific examples even though you have
a long history of living in denial when
shown the facts? Hardeharhar!
> > =A0 Bad meaning ugly, or not esthetically pleasing.
>
> =A0 No, R=E9ti meant bad as in objectively inferior.
There was no such thing as "objective"
back then. (Now we have Fritz-- as fair
and even-handed a fellow as ever sang
a drunken ballad while looking over a
chess game.)
> =A0 ????? I am not aware of any R=E9ti "windmill."
No surprise there.
> > where complete duffers
> > willingly grabbed his Queen in exchange for
> > their King plus their entire second rank?
> =A0 Are you perhaps referring to the game Torre-Lasker, Moscow 1925? If
> so, its relevance here is unclear.
No. I was referring to a number of games.
I once read a Dover book about his games,
and he seemed to be a one-trick pony
(relative to other famous players, that is).
But I will say this: he handled the Reti
opening far, far more successfully that I
ever have; I have this problem of getting
into a reversed Benoni, where /at best/ I
have wasted a tempo or misplaced my QB.
> =A0 I recommended only a Soltis book.
A few of them are said to have been
quite decent works. But then, there are a
lot more than just a few of them. I am
reminded of Ray Keene-- the world's
foremost expert.
-- help bot
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Date: 02 Aug 2008 06:15:47
From:
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 1, 5:22=A0pm, help bot <[email protected] > wrote:
> On Aug 1, 9:52=A0am, [email protected] wrote:
>
> > > =A0 All well and good... except that your ad
> > > hom. directed at me has inadvertently
> > > soiled some very strong players, who
> > > shared my view.
> > =A0 Yes, a lot of nonsense has been written about Lasker, even by
> > otherwise intelligent chess masters who should have known better.
> > Larsen, for example, said "I admired him ... until I studied his
> > games."
>
> =A0 Well, it takes a certain level of understanding
> to "get" these kinds of jokes.
If it's a joke, then it hardly offers any support for your negative
veiw of Lasker.
> =A0Methinks Mr.
> Larsen was poking fun at Em. Lasker's rather
> peculiar /style/ of play, which has been widely
> criticized in spite of his stellar results.
I am at this moment surrounded by nearly 500 chess books. In them I
find none of this alledgedly widespread criticism. Please present
examples?
> =A0 Bad meaning ugly, or not esthetically pleasing.
No, R=E9ti meant bad as in objectively inferior.
> (Ad hom. reply: Did Mr. Reti know anything but
> his hackneyed windmill,
????? I am not aware of any R=E9ti "windmill." R=E9ti knew Lasker
personally. They played four tournament games, Lasker scoring +3 -0
=3D1.
> where complete duffers
> willingly grabbed his Queen in exchange for
> their King plus their entire second rank?)
Are you perhaps referring to the game Torre-Lasker, Moscow 1925? If
so, its relevance here is unclear.
>
> > =A0 No need for you to add your own nonsense, bot. We already have
> > plenty from people much more qualified but no better informed. If you
> > wish to lessen your own ignorance somewhat, may I suggest "Why Lasker
> > Matters" by Andrew Soltis (review here:http://www.chesscafe.com/text/re=
view538.pdf)
>
> =A0 You can recommend all the Ray Keene,
> Eric Schiller and Andy Soltis books you
> like;
I recommended only a Soltis book.
> it's a free country, as they say. =A0Just
> try to understand that some folks have
> what are called "standards";
Yes, some folks do. Why don't you?
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Date: 01 Aug 2008 14:44:24
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 1, 12:05=A0pm, LiamToo <[email protected] > wrote:
> "My System" is one of the best chess books that I've ever read. How do
> you assess it?
I really liked his writing style, but his games
are horrible. Look, take some games played
by Sanny of GetClub fame, and compare--
Mr. Nimzowitch was clearly the better player,
though there is a certain resemblance in the
great length of the games and in the obvious,
pained struggle to get anywhere.
But suppose you have just studied the games
of the greats, like say, Paul Morphy or Alex
Alekhine or Gary Kasparov; you will be gravely
disappointed by the long-winded contortions,
by the utter lack of oomph of AN in comparison
to such as these.
One of my favorite games is one where AN
appears to lose decisive material to AA, but
he comes up with an amazing resource which
saves the day; well, not quite saves the day,
because he was playing AA... in fact he still
loses. But it gives us a glimpse of the
potential tactical wizardry of AN-- a talent
which is so often hidden in a thik wood of
boring maneuvering against patzers, waiting
for their inevitable blunders.
This slow, almost pained style of play is
not the result of his "hypermodern" style; no,
if that were the case, then all such games
would be boring, and AA himself could never
have been counted as among the so-called
hypermoderns. Instead, there is a deliberate
attempt to close the games up, to seal them
off and to then maneuver behind the scenes
(not unlike politics inside the USCF). This
man was no "universal master", no man for
all seasons; he was more a giant sloth; a
creeping, crawling giant who bored (not
gored) opponents to death, ever so slowly.
It is an ugly style of play, even if his results
were good.
To me, the ideal style of play was that of
Paul Morphy. Sure, he had one game where
he let his opponent stick a piece in a hole at
d3, /splitting him in two/ (nobody's perfect),
but all in all, PM had a beautiful style,
incorporating energy, pizazz, and soundness.
But for some reason, Mr. Nimzowitch played
in a creepy, Adams Family-esque style.
-- help bot
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Date: 01 Aug 2008 14:22:01
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 1, 9:52=A0am, [email protected] wrote:
> > =A0 All well and good... except that your ad
> > hom. directed at me has inadvertently
> > soiled some very strong players, who
> > shared my view.
> =A0 Yes, a lot of nonsense has been written about Lasker, even by
> otherwise intelligent chess masters who should have known better.
> Larsen, for example, said "I admired him ... until I studied his
> games."
Well, it takes a certain level of understanding
to "get" these kinds of jokes. Methinks Mr.
Larsen was poking fun at Em. Lasker's rather
peculiar /style/ of play, which has been widely
criticized in spite of his stellar results.
> Euwe said it was impossible to learn much from him.
How about the many ways in which one can
win (not merely draw) from inferior positions?
> R=E9ti said he played "intentionally bad moves."
Bad meaning ugly, or not esthetically pleasing.
(Ad hom. reply: Did Mr. Reti know anything but
his hackneyed windmill, where complete duffers
willingly grabbed his Queen in exchange for
their King plus their entire second rank?)
> The young Fischer called him a "coffeehouse
player" (though later he recanted).
BF was a book player who despised the
creative mastery of original -- which is to say
inferior -- play. In fact, one anecdote or
quotation had BF recommending that weak
players (that would include 99.999% of us in
his view) study an encyclopedia of chess
openings, than do it all over again.
> =A0 No need for you to add your own nonsense, bot. We already have
> plenty from people much more qualified but no better informed. If you
> wish to lessen your own ignorance somewhat, may I suggest "Why Lasker
> Matters" by Andrew Soltis (review here:http://www.chesscafe.com/text/revi=
ew538.pdf)
You can recommend all the Ray Keene,
Eric Schiller and Andy Soltis books you
like; it's a free country, as they say. Just
try to understand that some folks have
what are called "standards"; you can get
a glimpse of what these are by typing the
words "edward winter chess" into a google
search box. Good luck.
(Oh, and don't worry about all those top
players coming after you for soiling them;
they are all dead by now.)
-- help bot
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Date: 01 Aug 2008 09:31:54
From: LiamToo
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 1, 11:18=A0am, Mike Murray <[email protected] > wrote:
> On Fri, 1 Aug 2008 09:05:40 -0700 (PDT), LiamToo
>
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> I think of Nimzovich the writer as a clown, and I mean that in the big
> >> floppy shoes and pancake makeup way. Some of his notes in the Carlsbad
> >> 1929 book cracked me up.
> >"My System" is one of the best chess books that I've ever read. How do
> >you assess it?
>
> Earlier translations took out much of Nimzovich's humor.
I must have had the earlier translations of the book then.
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Date: 01 Aug 2008 09:05:40
From: LiamToo
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 1, 4:19=A0am, Frisco Del Rosario <[email protected] > wrote:
> In article
> <[email protected]>,
> =A0help bot <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > =A0 Once upon a time, I read (or at least, tried
> > to read) books by Em. Lasker and Jose
> > Capablanca. =A0I was not impressed. =A0Yes, it
> > may well be true that their analysis is far
> > superior to many lesser players, but great
> > writers of prose they were not.
>
> Capablanca didn't like to write.
>
> > =A0 The writing style of Mr. Nimzowitch was
> > much more to my liking; but of course, he
> > simply could not play proper chess.
>
> I think of Nimzovich the writer as a clown, and I mean that in the big
> floppy shoes and pancake makeup way. Some of his notes in the Carlsbad
> 1929 book cracked me up.
"My System" is one of the best chess books that I've ever read. How do
you assess it?
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Date: 01 Aug 2008 09:36:58
From: Frisco Del Rosario
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been reprinted today
|
In article
<8eadad69-c0e1-4c18-9e05-9b4fdb504dce@e53g2000hsa.googlegroups.com >,
LiamToo <[email protected] > wrote:
> On Aug 1, 4:19�am, Frisco Del Rosario <[email protected]> wrote:
> > I think of Nimzovich the writer as a clown, and I mean that in the big
> > floppy shoes and pancake makeup way. Some of his notes in the Carlsbad
> > 1929 book cracked me up.
> "My System" is one of the best chess books that I've ever read. How do
> you assess it?
Not as amusing as Carlsbad 1929, and it gave many bad players a false
sense of chess ability.
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Date: 01 Aug 2008 09:18:00
From: Mike Murray
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been reprinted today
|
On Fri, 1 Aug 2008 09:05:40 -0700 (PDT), LiamToo
<[email protected] > wrote:
>> I think of Nimzovich the writer as a clown, and I mean that in the big
>> floppy shoes and pancake makeup way. Some of his notes in the Carlsbad
>> 1929 book cracked me up.
>"My System" is one of the best chess books that I've ever read. How do
>you assess it?
Earlier translations took out much of Nimzovich's humor.
|
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Date: 01 Aug 2008 06:52:56
From:
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Jul 31, 11:58=A0pm, help bot <[email protected] > wrote:
> On Jul 31, 8:07=A0pm, [email protected] wrote:
>
> > > =A0 Once upon a time, I read (or at least, tried
> > > to read) books by Em. Lasker and Jose
> > > Capablanca. =A0I was not impressed. =A0
>
> > =A0 Brennen's comment about monkeys and marble tables seems quite apt
> > here too.
>
> =A0 All well and good... except that your ad
> hom. directed at me has inadvertently
> soiled some very strong players, who
> shared my view.
Yes, a lot of nonsense has been written about Lasker, even by
otherwise intelligent chess masters who should have known better.
Larsen, for example, said "I admired him ... until I studied his
games." Euwe said it was impossible to learn much from him. R=E9ti said
he played "intentionally bad moves." The young Fischer called him a
"coffeehouse player" (though later he recanted).
No need for you to add your own nonsense, bot. We already have
plenty from people much more qualified but no better informed. If you
wish to lessen your own ignorance somewhat, may I suggest "Why Lasker
Matters" by Andrew Soltis (review here: http://www.chesscafe.com/text/revie=
w538.pdf)
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Date: 31 Jul 2008 20:58:16
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Jul 31, 8:07=A0pm, [email protected] wrote:
> > =A0 Once upon a time, I read (or at least, tried
> > to read) books by Em. Lasker and Jose
> > Capablanca. =A0I was not impressed. =A0
> =A0 Brennen's comment about monkeys and marble tables seems quite apt
> here too.
All well and good... except that your ad
hom. directed at me has inadvertently
soiled some very strong players, who
shared my view. (How many times do I
have to want these idiots to stay away
from ad hom. before they finally learn?
Only trained professionals should mess
with this stuff; it's just like plastic
explosives in that way, or dancing like
John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.)
What these top players seemed to
lack was not chess ability, but rather,
teaching (much, much weaker players)
ability. In this respect, modern writers
like Bruce Pandolfini and Andy Soltis
had a huge advantage in being so much
closer in strength to the level of their
readers.
Here's a very short list of names of
really strong players whose writing
style more closely approaches my
ideal: Paul Keres, whose articles in
Chess Life magazine were excellent;
Alexander Alekhine, whose games
(doctored or not) were superb; and
I must add Aron Nimzowitch, noting
however that his own games were
simply awful. Perhaps, if the last of
these writers had written a book
based on the games of Em. Lasker
and Jose Capablanca... .
-- help bot
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Date: 31 Jul 2008 17:07:08
From:
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Jul 31, 5:46=A0pm, help bot <[email protected] > wrote:
> On Jul 31, 12:46=A0pm, [email protected] wrote:
>
> > > I always thought that would be a great idea - to annotate classic
> > > books such as The Art of Sacrifice to make it more comprehensive,
> > > without changing the original text, which always seems to be dodgy.
>
> > =A0 We did such a thing with Russell Enterprises' 2007 edition of
> > Lasker's "Common Sense in Chess" (http://uscfsales.com/item.asp?
> > PID=3D865). Bruce Alberston put it into algebraic notation, and I
> > provided computer-assisted analytical endnotes to point out mistakes
> > and possible improvements.
>
> =A0 Once upon a time, I read (or at least, tried
> to read) books by Em. Lasker and Jose
> Capablanca. =A0I was not impressed. =A0
Brennen's comment about monkeys and marble tables seems quite apt
here too.
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Date: 05 Aug 2008 17:07:19
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 5, 3:51=A0am, thumbody <[email protected] > wrote:
> You see, I've heard of all these chappies: Reti, Nimsovitch, Tal,
> Morphy, Alekhine, Lasker, Smyslov, Botvinnik, Nigel etc. & they're all
> famous for some reason - maybe they cut a deal with the Evil-one for
> this recognition - I just don't know..
Impossible. Many of the players listed
above were dead, long before LP was
even born. It's simple logic, my boy.
> I've played through many of these chappies games, marvelling @ their
> chutzpah
Chutzpah? This reminds me of the good
ol' boys approach of many New York area
chess writers, who obsessed over second-
rate players of the distant past while
largely ignoring many of their betters. The
approach seems to be much as in the
advertising business, but it is also affected
by the fact that many of these writers were
"buddies" with one another. But note how
Sammy Reshevsky often seemed to get
left out-- being a Chicago man. The one
glaring exception was BF-- a man who
moved to the other coast and even took
up a different religion for a time, yet he
was always treated as if he were still one
of the good ol' boys of the Bronx.
> & admiring of the masterful display even adopting Lasker's
> dictum of forgetting everything learnt over the preceding 30yrs or so &
> it works or maybe I'm just getting old..
Not exactly a "dictum"; that was just a
comment he made... quite unproven by
science. A lot of folks say the darnedest
things to the press, hoping to mold the
way in which they will be perceived by
the public (and often succeeding). When
I read of, say, a Mr. Important, spewing
some fancy prose indication how it is
more important to be creative than to win,
I interpret this as indicating that the
talking-head wishes to be thought of as
"creative", whether he was inordinately
so or not.
> Now with regards to helpbot who is quite famous here on rgc. Over the
> past few weeks I've noticed him tossing ad homin around with gay abandon
> - raisin bran, buffoon, knowitall, idiotti etc etc
That is not ad hominem, you nitwit!
It is simple name-calling, as informed by
careful observation. You are too dumb
for me to try and explain what ad hom.
is, for it is a technical subject far beyond
your meager grasp.
Look, try to find one of those Google
search boxes, and after several hours of
searching, when you stumble across one,
type this in: ad hominem. Now, click the
left button on your computer's mouse on
the first link that come up-- the one at the
top of your screen.
Hopefully, after looking up the definition
of terms such as "logic" and "fallacy",
you may just *begin* to grasp what ad
hominem is, and how it differs from what
I do here.
-----------------------------------------------
Here's a quickie lesson.
1. Larry Parr is a nincompoop;
2. Nincompoops are /often/ wrong;
3. Therefore, Larry Parr /must be/ wrong.
That was a non sequitur... very poor
reasoning, such as we see at top by
tom thumb-ody himself.
--------------------------------------------
Now, look at this one:
1. You are butt-ugly!
Notice how no "conclusion" was drawn
from prior statements; the comment
stands on its own, and in fact is nothing
more than /an observation/.
Think about the difference between
crafting /an argument/ based on the
idea of premises and a valid (or invalid)
conclusion, as opposed to making
insightful observations, which stand on
their own or which can be contrasted
with the observations of others.
Here is a typical example of one of my
"observations":
Nick Bourbaki believed he could speak
for hundreds (if not thousands) of what
he described as "highly respected
academicians", who quite amazingly,
so he told us, always agreed with his
every whim".
Simple observation, kid.
-- help bot
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Date: 04 Aug 2008 19:18:34
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Aug 4, 9:27=A0pm, Mike Murray <[email protected] > wrote:
> > =A0One article I recall having read addressed
> >the issue of the correctness of calling this
> >chap "Richard the Fifth", in recognition of
> >his many fifth-place finishes in tourneys.
> That would have had the undesirable consequence of confusing him with
> Teichmann.
Indeed, I realized this already and pulled
that post.
So then, where did Richard Reti stand
relative to those other players I told you
about? Here's a handy link:
http://db.chessmetrics.com/CM2/PlayerProfile.asp?Params=3D199510SSSSS3S1081=
10000000111000000000025810100
See any blue, red, yellow or violet dots?
Nope. A small cluster of orange dots in
1920-21 indicate his best world ranking
was #5 according to these folks, though
he was normally ranked 6-10 or lower.
The folks I was referring to earlier were
the sort who would show up here with
blue and red galore-- there is simply no
comparison. So, now -- provided you can
think rationally -- you know why I was less
than impressed by the games of RR, for
they /are/ fairly represented by his results
(which can be assessed objectively).
Perhaps the author of that Dover book
did not do him justice? What a strange
thing that would be, for in the vast
majority of cases I've seen, they tend to
make deliberate omissions (or worse) in
the pursuit of sales, or for the simple fact
that the authors themselves are writing
such a book due to feelings of intense
hero-worship.
In retrospect, although I was lucky in
confusing a player whose best ranking
was in fact "5th", Mr. Reti was in
general not even that good-- as I noted
in discussing his games. If I have
missed something not included in the
Dover book, please let me know; that
book was, years ago, the "standard"
work which any player would be likely
to run across at, say, a chess
tournament's book store.
-- help bot
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| |
Date: 31 Jul 2008 14:46:08
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Jul 31, 12:46=A0pm, [email protected] wrote:
> > I always thought that would be a great idea - to annotate classic
> > books such as The Art of Sacrifice to make it more comprehensive,
> > without changing the original text, which always seems to be dodgy.
>
> =A0 We did such a thing with Russell Enterprises' 2007 edition of
> Lasker's "Common Sense in Chess" (http://uscfsales.com/item.asp?
> PID=3D865). Bruce Alberston put it into algebraic notation, and I
> provided computer-assisted analytical endnotes to point out mistakes
> and possible improvements.
Once upon a time, I read (or at least, tried
to read) books by Em. Lasker and Jose
Capablanca. I was not impressed. Yes, it
may well be true that their analysis is far
superior to many lesser players, but great
writers of prose they were not. (I do think
that JC had looked into a clear lake, seen his
own reflection and fallen madly in love... .)
The writing style of Mr. Nimzowitch was
much more to my liking; but of course, he
simply could not play proper chess.
-- help bot
|
| | |
Date: 01 Aug 2008 02:19:07
From: Frisco Del Rosario
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been reprinted today
|
In article
<[email protected] >,
help bot <[email protected] > wrote:
> Once upon a time, I read (or at least, tried
> to read) books by Em. Lasker and Jose
> Capablanca. I was not impressed. Yes, it
> may well be true that their analysis is far
> superior to many lesser players, but great
> writers of prose they were not.
Capablanca didn't like to write.
> The writing style of Mr. Nimzowitch was
> much more to my liking; but of course, he
> simply could not play proper chess.
I think of Nimzovich the writer as a clown, and I mean that in the big
floppy shoes and pancake makeup way. Some of his notes in the Carlsbad
1929 book cracked me up.
|
| |
Date: 31 Jul 2008 14:40:49
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Jul 31, 12:05=A0pm, The Historian <[email protected] >
wrote:
> There should be no legal issues provided you are legally able to
> publish the book you are 'annotating'. I've seen such republications
> done for books in other fields - in the early seventies Rachel
> Carson's Silent Spring was reprinted with supplementary essays, in the
> 1990s E. B. White's Charlotte's Web was reprinted with notes added to
> the novel and an essay on White's writing of the children's classic,
> etc....
Yes, well it is one thing to "supplement" a
book by appending materials at the end, and
it is quite another to "psychoanalyze" Mr.
Fine or blunder-check his chess analysis
using Fritz. What I have in mind is a careful,
/critical/ look at his writings, and I know of
no famous writer who can stand the glare of
bright sunlight shining upon them.
Look at what happened in the case of
chess author Larry Evans when he was
sent a couple of minor spelling and date
corrections, for instance: the poor chap
"had a cow", a virtual psychological melt-
down, and lashed out violently at the
hapless pedant who himself felt somehow
compelled to try and correct the errors
("egregious errors", he might say).
That was nothing; try throwing some
Fritz analysis into the mix; shake, don't
stir. We're talking potential explosive
forces not unlike those unleashed in
WWII! These writers -- especially the
grandmasters -- are so entwined with
their own delusions of grandeur, that
nobody stands a chance of candidly
analyzing their work, except it be done
without the author's consent or approval.
This is why I brought up the question of
legal issues.
------------------------------------------------------
I was scanning over some material on
Edward Winter's Web site and ran into
a chess diagram where, by golly, it
looked like "curtains" for White. Some
old time player (not well-known) found
an amazing save by tossing away his
Rook, then advancing a pawn to block
the enemy's Bishop. "Wow", I thought;
but then, there really were no other
moves that did not quickly get mated.
Entering this into Rybka, I watched
as "she" *instantaneously* found the
Rook giveaway, but just a tad further
on the given "solution" was flawed, for
instead of obvious moves which in the
game led to a quick resignation, White
had better; indeed, it is still something
of a fight after correct play-- a Queen
ending, which as we know, is one of
the types of endings where humans
can really muck things up, without
even trying.
Even the collection of brilliant games
we discussed at some length, in which
GM Andy Soltis included a horrible
blunderfest as a "brilliant" game, shows
what I'm talking about. So many of the
old books relied heavily upon the (false)
idea that if a grandmaster says it, it
must then be right. With modern
computers, we are no longer bound to
any "authority" arguments; no longer
forced to just guess about what was
going on, or who stood better or what
is really an "easy draw". Best of all, the
authors' /heavy bias/ toward games'
ultimate winners is nonexistent in Fritz
analysis. Computers are the more
"rational" beings in this respect.
-- help bot
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Date: 31 Jul 2008 09:46:34
From:
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Jul 31, 10:23=A0am, SBD <[email protected] > wrote:
> On Jul 30, 6:13 pm, help bot <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > =A0 Perhaps there are legal issues here, which
> > make such a work difficult if not impossible
> > to produce-- I don't know.
>
> > =A0 -- help bot
>
> I always thought that would be a great idea - to annotate classic
> books such as The Art of Sacrifice to make it more comprehensive,
> without changing the original text, which always seems to be dodgy.
We did such a thing with Russell Enterprises' 2007 edition of
Lasker's "Common Sense in Chess" (http://uscfsales.com/item.asp?
PID=3D865). Bruce Alberston put it into algebraic notation, and I
provided computer-assisted analytical endnotes to point out mistakes
and possible improvements.
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Date: 31 Jul 2008 09:05:11
From: The Historian
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Jul 30, 6:13 pm, help bot <[email protected] > wrote:
> On Jul 30, 1:00 pm, samsloan <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship by Dr. Reuben
> > Fine has been reprinted and published today.
>
> What I think would be more interesting than
> these numerous re-printings, is something
> like a thorough reassessment of each work,
> with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.
>
> For instance, what do modern psychoanal-
> ists think about Mr. Fine's thinking? Did he
> make any predictions, and if so, how did
> they turn out in the real world? And what
> about Mr. Fine's purely chess analysis? Has
> it withstood the test of time, or has some of
> his analysis since been refuted? Did he try
> to predict the outcome of the match? If so,
> how did that work out?
>
> Perhaps there are legal issues here, which
> make such a work difficult if not impossible
> to produce-- I don't know.
>
> -- help bot
There should be no legal issues provided you are legally able to
publish the book you are 'annotating'. I've seen such republications
done for books in other fields - in the early seventies Rachel
Carson's Silent Spring was reprinted with supplementary essays, in the
1990s E. B. White's Charlotte's Web was reprinted with notes added to
the novel and an essay on White's writing of the children's classic,
etc....
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Date: 31 Jul 2008 07:23:42
From: SBD
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Jul 30, 6:13 pm, help bot <[email protected] > wrote:
> Perhaps there are legal issues here, which
> make such a work difficult if not impossible
> to produce-- I don't know.
>
> -- help bot
I always thought that would be a great idea - to annotate classic
books such as The Art of Sacrifice to make it more comprehensive,
without changing the original text, which always seems to be dodgy.
Duckstein's Meister.... Turmendspiele always seemed like another good
book that you could update by including modern examples and newer
analysis in a notes section.
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Date: 30 Jul 2008 16:13:43
From: help bot
Subject: Re: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship has been
|
On Jul 30, 1:00=A0pm, samsloan <[email protected] > wrote:
> Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship by Dr. Reuben
> Fine has been reprinted and published today.
What I think would be more interesting than
these numerous re-printings, is something
like a thorough reassessment of each work,
with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.
For instance, what do modern psychoanal-
ists think about Mr. Fine's thinking? Did he
make any predictions, and if so, how did
they turn out in the real world? And what
about Mr. Fine's purely chess analysis? Has
it withstood the test of time, or has some of
his analysis since been refuted? Did he try
to predict the outcome of the match? If so,
how did that work out?
Perhaps there are legal issues here, which
make such a work difficult if not impossible
to produce-- I don't know.
-- help bot
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