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| Dec-04-02 | | ughaibu: Of players with whom he played a significant number of games Botvinnik only suffered a minus score with Petrosian and, of course, Geller. Here's a miniature to illustrate the point. |
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| Dec-04-02 | | drukenknight: He had a minus score vs Euwe winning 2 and losing 4. 9 draws. How many games do you have to play to be significant? Cant you look at the moves of an individual game and tell how well it is being played? I mean if you cant do that, what is the pt. of comparing anyone to anybody? |
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| Dec-04-02 | | ughaibu: Is that the definitive score with Euwe or is it from this database? If the latter does it include duplicate games? Or exclude decisive games? About the length of games: it's possible to argue either way depending on whether you value individual superiority over balanced ability in your judgement criteria. |
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| Dec-04-02 | | ughaibu: Drukenknight: I've just looked at the wins of Euwe in Chessgames database, of the four three are the same game so I assume the factual score was 2-2. |
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Dec-04-02
 | | Honza Cervenka: There are duplicities in the database. If I'm not missing some games not included in this database nor in the chessbase.com database, Botvinnik tied Euwe 2:2. He lost one game in Hastings 1934/35 playing as white and one game with black pieces played in famous AVRO tournament in 1938. Both Botvinnik's wins over Euwe are from WCH-tournament 1948. |
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| Dec-05-02 | | PVS: <Cant you look at the moves of an individual game and tell how well it is being played? I mean if you cant do that, what is the pt. of comparing anyone to anybody?> This is a theory of yours that I do not understand for two reasons. (1) It seems overall results head to head are more important than the less concrete judgement of the game's quality, and (2), assuming you, like me, are not of GM strength, how can you detect such subtle differences? |
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| Dec-05-02 | | drukenknight: It seems overall results head to head are more important than the less concrete judgement of the game's quality" But if you dont know how good the individuals are who are playing, then you cant compare people of different eras based on bare results. If Alek. beats Boguljobov a hundred times then would that be better than Fischer winning 19 straight? Or capablanca not losing a game in seven years? YOu cant compare any of these players records until you form some idea, however, inexact, of how good an individual game that they played was. Or you can take the opposite approach and simply conclude that based on the bare scorecard you cant know how good an individual game was. Which is kinda funny, it makes me think what is the purpose of playing through these games if we have no idea of how good the game was, or who is winning or how the game was won? What is the purpose of studying openings, then if we dont know what is going on? It would be interesting, if for example, a neutral judge could place before us all the moves to a game w/o telling us who the players were. THen we would have to guess how good the game was. So he plays out the game before us and we say, "oh that was so beautiful, that had to be Capablanca at his zenith" ANd the judge says "ah, no sorry, that was a game played on the internet last week between, Scruffy and MegaDeath." "Oh, well, yes I can see that now, just a couple of patzers really just pushing the wood around, look how they forget to castle." THen he shows us another game and we say: "NO really this is grade school stuff, look at the doubled pawns, probably the middle school tournament in Pennsylvania." ANd he says "oh no that was Spassky Fischer game 6." So yeah, I kinda see what you mean |
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| Dec-05-02 | | PVS: When I say head to head, I mean (1) a match or (2) in the same tournament. You cannot put ten games scattered over ten years together and compare that to a set match. For one thing, position in a tournament standings determine whether one plays for a draw or a win. In this case Geller made a deal to draw eight of his games in the Candidates tournament, so had a huge advantage over Fischer in two of the wins. From 1955 to 1965 Korchnoi had a great record against Tal, but no one would suggest he was stronger than Tal over that decade. |
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| Dec-05-02 | | PVS: <YOu cant compare any of these players records until you form some idea,
however, inexact, of how good an individual game that they played was.> I disagree, Elo ratings are a rough guide for one thing. If Boguljobov dominated
tournaments Alekhine were not in, then the match victories would be more impressive
than they would had Boguljobov been finishing in the middle of table. |
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| Dec-05-02 | | ughaibu: A lot has been said about the draws agreed by compatriots in candidates tournaments but as far as I know nobody has pointed out that a draw is the loss of half a point so doesn't necessarily imply any advantage. |
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| Dec-05-02 | | PVS: A free half point and a rest. The games among Keres, Petrosyan and Geller at Curacao averaged 19 moves. For those eight days off the best of them sacrificed maybe one full point. Was it worth it? Did it work? Here is the cross table: http://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/616... |
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| Dec-05-02 | | ughaibu: Most players haven't the resources to play every game to win, particularly in a protracted tournament held in the tropics. It is natural that the strongest players would rather beat the rabbits. Are you suggesting that there was something suspect in Keres coming second on this occasion? At this time Fischer was not strong enough to win a tournament of this strength, his complaints after the tournament about the draws show his immaturity in being unable to accept this. That FIDE subsequently changed the candidates format to Fischer's advantage is another point we dont hear much about among conspiracy theorists. |
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| Dec-05-02 | | drukenknight: "I disagree, Elo ratings are a rough guide for one thing. " I am not talking career w/l records here, in fact I am not talking about a players record at all. I am talking about the ability to evaluate a game played 100 years ago and say "this was a great game" "this was a pretty good game" "this was a bad game." Do you believe that we can at least attempt to do this, or is it an impossible task? ****
I think Fischer had a good pt about the round robin tournament and it was better to make it knockout. On the other hand, I would love to see a round robin format where the players dont know who they are playing! We can do that today with the chess servers. Four players could play each other at once, not knowing who they are facing. "Is this that prepared line that Kasparov alwasy uses or did we just stumble into this one?" |
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| Dec-05-02 | | PVS: I cannot keep making the same points over and over again. The human mind is such that it can choose to believe anything it chooses, even Pv~P. |
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| Dec-06-02 | | Kulla Tierchen: Many chess champions are controversial and quite a few are crazy. But Fischer is the most compelling by far, provoking passionate responses. To those of us playing at the time, his departure was extremely depressing. When he ended his anchortic existence in 1992, it was too little, too late. However, after reading material from the Soviet chess archives recently, my contempt is directed at Botvinnik (avec cette morgue), Petrosian (faire du bruit autour de son nom), and Karpov (le comme il faut tout pur). |
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| Dec-06-02 | | Kulla Tierchen: History has proven that Fischer was correct about the draw conspiracy. At the time he wrote an article called How the Russians Have Fixed World Chess. That effectuated a rules change to the matches, and Fischer being Fischer, still did not play in the cycle. |
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| Dec-06-02 | | ughaibu: I imagine that Tal had an equally passionate contemporaneous following. As has been pointed out, the strength of feeling aroused by Fischer finds it's roots in his retirement. Compare Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, etc. Had Fischer played with and lost to Karpov the views expressed would be far more sober. I'm not saying Karpov would have beaten Fischer, I dont believe the question even arises. |
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| Dec-06-02 | | PVS: In the wake of this scandal, Fischer also got a rule set for the minimum number of moves before a draw was permitted. He was the first one to violate it, and when an official called him on it, he retorted, "That rule is for Commie cheats, not for me." Great stuff! |
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| Dec-06-02 | | ughaibu: I have still to see how sacrificing half a point is an advantage. If Fischer was the strongest player his opponents would have been happy to take draws with him too. |
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| Dec-06-02 | | PVS: The point is not who was the strongest player but that three Soviets cheated, they cheated Tal and Korchnoi too. Fischer was not the strongest player there in my opinion. The draws let you rest, a tournament like that is incredibly grueling. The fact they agreed to it demonstrates that they thought it was an advantage, and that they finished one, two, three seems to indicate it was. They could freeze out non-Soviets and Soviets who were not their friends. |
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| Dec-06-02 | | ughaibu: Fischer and Tal started very badly, naturally they had to try to catch up. Korchnoi fell away later in the tournament after which the top three put pressure on him as well. It is quite natural to husband your strength and for the leading players to fight harder (and to win) against those lower in the table. As you say this was a very tough event, particularly for the older players. If Fischer or Tal had got off to a flying start the eventual top three would not have had the luxury of being able to sacrifice half-points. This is tournament tactics and happens all the time. The USSR didn't become champion as a consequence, Petrosian did, and I doubt very much that either Geller or Keres was over the moon about that. |
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| Dec-06-02 | | PVS: Tal of course was ill and had to forego the final round. Interestingly, the idea of the three men drawing was proposed by Petroysan. |
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| Dec-06-02 | | ughaibu: I can imagine, Petrosian wasn't much of a tournament player compared with most world champions. |
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| Dec-06-02 | | Kulla Tierchen: Petrosian wasn't much of a player compared with most world champions. |
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| Jul-12-08 | | M.D. Wilson: <Kulla Tierchen: Petrosian wasn't much of a player compared with most world champions.> It also appears that Kulla Tierchen wasn't much of a kibitzer compared with most kibitzers. |
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