Congrats to winners Akselborg and to our surprise entry Petro on his first contest??!!!

I know I'm tardy, but I add my congrats to Akselborg and Petrosianic for winning this Ninja Prediction Contest.

PA, I do love Masha. She is beautiful like her mom and has that 'killer look' like her dad. She is just a tad younger than my youngest granddaughter


photo by Peter Doggers - a really great photographer!

inky, she is charming and gotto be smart as his father is smart, and most importantly the look you best described it! Will be away for a week so later.

Speaking of Tal, I'm doing something I've dreaded doing for a while, but finally decided to do anyway: Taking all the games from Selected Chess Games of Mikhail Tal, and running them through a full analysis in Fritz. They are great games, but I'm seeing a disturbing number of ?? moves on the winner's side already. I can hardly wait to compare this analysis with the stuff in the book.

The moves should be evaluated against the backdrop of the clock situations of both the players, as well as the rating differences. Let's see if even Fritz refutes them in the time available during the game. Even Tal may never have played them if he had the privilege of doing overnight analysis, even if left to his own resources, or against a known stronger player.

That's why I think computers are just destroying chess. There is this sense of "absolute truth" that computer analysis brings to the game. Now everyone fires up their computer and goes "They were flawed ... "

It's kind of like the effect photography had on painting.

It's not a comment about you Petro - you have a deep interest in chess, you are a great fan and amazingly knowledgeable and appreciative of the history of the game. It's more of a general whining about the philosophy/attitude towards judging a game. Is it a game or a science? If it is a game then there must be an element of gamesmanship. If it is a "science" - then why do we even have matches and tournaments?

Just thinking out loud. I didn't even mention boxing

Yeah, but even in Tal's lifetime, this was known. For example:



The books just don't emphasize the negative part. In a book about Tal, the author isn't going to say "Tal was lost here, but here's how he gets out of it", even if the best players knew it at the time. Even Tal himself said that the difference between Lasker and himself is that while people said Lasker was lost in about half of his games, that Tal was lost in all of his.

So I'm ambivalent on the whole computer thing. As a spectator, you don't want to know how the trick is done, but as a player, if Tal wins with unsound attacks, you want to learn how to meet those kind of attacks if you play against them yourself.

This gives me an idea for a thread called Tal's Unsound Attacks, featuring games where he played unsound attacks that worked, and figure out why they worked. The quote above tries to explain how it worked on Smyslov by creating certain types of positions that he didn't play at 100% in. Geller racked up his score against Fischer in a similar way.

What's really funny about Fritz analysis is the way they try to throw in conversational-sounding annotations to games, but they keep using the same phrases over and over again. "Doesn't get the bull off the ice". "Doesn't get the cat out of the tree". Et cetera.

I'm just having Fritz annotate the famous Round 27 Fischer-Tal game, the one where Tal endured the Fischer attack and came back to win. Of Fischer's move 45. P-QR3?, Fritz gives one of its 'stock' annotations: "White has lost his nerve... understandable when you consider his position.", which is just hilarious because of its one-size-fits-all nature. What does a computer know about Fischer's nerves anyway?

Reminds me of the Emacs Psychotherapist.
(Emacs is a text editor, if you don't know it.)

I am the psychotherapist. Please, describe your problems. Each time you are finished talking, type RET twice.

I just wonder why I visited the Chess Ninja site again

Can you elaborate on that?

Not really

Why do you say?

It doesn't make much sense to do so

Is it because of your plans that you say?

...

You get the idea.