Botvinnik and Smyslov each had 20+ victories against the other.

+29-24=53 to Botvinnik, although they played dead even with each other from 1946 onwards. Botvinnik's +5 comes entirely from games before that time.

Well, someone just spoiled this question for me. Some of those Botvinnik-Smyslov games were training games. And if we count Classical training games, then Botvinnik has 39 known classical wins against Ragozin, becaues of all the training games they played.

I'm thinking that for this question to mean anything, it should be limited to games played in public.

LabBourdonnais won, what? Something like 45 games against McDonnell in one match, so I was also thinking of counting games from 1851 onwards, when international play really began.

This is so massively uncool:

Actress Doris Singleton Isaacs dies -
Recurred on 'I Love Lucy' as Carolyn Appleby

What's even uncooler is that every time I think of some old personality and how at least they're still around, they drop dead within like two days. That's happened three times this year, to Jonathan Frid, Ray Bradbury, and now Doris Singleton. I must have the Evil Eye or something.

Oh well, at least Jerry Sandusky is still around. (Let's see if we can put this to some good use!)

I have always sort of blamed you for Leslie Nielson's death. For goodness sakes though, don't think about Leonard Nimoy.

Leonard who? I don't believe I'm familiar with that name.

Phew, dodged a bullet there.

Great. Petro's killed Andy Griffith now.

I wasn't even thinking of him! I was thinking about... er... Joran van der Sloot! That's who I was thinking of!

Good. Wouldn't want you to think of Abe Vigoda or Wilford Brimley. Or Larry Hagman. Or Al Molinaro. Jack Klugman. Kirk Douglas. Phylis Diller.

Chess motives are used in commercials quite frequently, but I've been wondering, does anyone know TV commercials that actually feature famous chess players? I've noticed this Renault car commercial that includes very brief footage of a 9-year old Garry Kasparov (I could only find a Slovakian version on YouTube - curiously, some other versions don't include Kasparov). Quite nice, and he's in good company with Bruce Lee, Steffi Graf, Salvador Dali and Carl Lewis.