| Sep-07-11 | | solskytz: Patient defense, especially against stronger but quite arrogant players, pays... can't count how many times I won, doing absolutely nothing (or even less) against someone 200 to 300 points higher - winning exactly because the other guy was 200 to 300 points higher, and wouldn't be happy with a draw, which would be the natural result of anemic play by both of us. He couldn't accept it that at least for this game he was my equal! It's funny - you sit there, absolutely calm, watching a position that carries absolutely no risk, which you understand perfectly, and then, from a point of stoic calm, you watch the other guy. he squirms, he leans over the table, he holds his head in his hands, he concentrates deeply - must find a way to beat this opponent! (you)... seconds pass on his clock, then minutes... he thinks and thinks...
then he says - you know what, I'll create a little weakness in my camp... this patzer won't know how to use it, but at least I get something to move here... you keep a poker face, but inside you say "thank you, master...". Then you think - "one day, when I become a master, guys like him will just quietly take the draw, not offer themselves like this on a platter..." later, well the story is well known... they guy gets into time trouble, gets nervous, gets stressed, gets disappointment, another inaccuracy or two slip into his game... you gracefully shake his hand, offer a few words of consolation, and then go on to boast at CG.com... |
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| Sep-07-11 | | solskytz: I got the proof that Solskytz is no sock puppet!
What other CG user finishes six consecutive paragraph with [...] ? Need to get over this... but I'm in no hurry |
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| Sep-07-11 | | solskytz: not to mention omitting the plural 's' when it is needed, and including it when he means the singular? Not a native speaker, that's right, but still... |
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Sep-07-11
 | | perfidious: <solskytz> You may not use English as your first language, but you're better at it than some who have written and spoken it all their lives. |
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| Sep-07-11 | | solskytz: thx <perfidious> that's too sweet for words :-] |
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| Sep-21-11 | | Jaques: Reshevsky's opponent's name in this game is Ronald Nichols, not Robert. I know because I was there in Newburgh, NY, when it was played and manned the wallboard for this particular game. I was also in the tournament but had a first round bye. Resevsky claimed the clock was defective and said that if the result wasn't reversed, he wouldn't continue in the tournament! It wasn't, and he didn't. |
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| Sep-22-11 | | Shams: <Jaques> Was there demonstrably no merit to Reshevsky's claim? Thanks for sharing. |
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Sep-22-11
| | perfidious: <Jaques> Ron Nichols is a player whom I remember from tournaments in New England back then, but he must have improved-I thought he got up to Expert level by the late 1980s. Wasn't Ron from Connecticut?
A while back, I knew a Robert Nichols who was about 1850 strength; while we played in the same club at intervals now and again in the 1990s, the only time we ever met was in a six-board blindfold display I gave at Montpelier, Vermont in June 1994, a Nimzo-Indian won by Bob. |
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| Sep-22-11 | | Jaques: Ron was an Expert at the time of this win, not 1750. That was more like my rating. :) I distinctly remember Resheveky in his little cap standing up afterwards and saying he "would not lose to an Expert". The clock was perfectly all right, and there was no legitimacy to his claim that it was defective. He just wasn't watching it, and Ron had to point out that his (Reshevsky's) flag had fallen (it was an analog clock). I have a copy of the USCF print-out of the tournament results which I'll try to find to show both my participation and Nichol's rating. Ron may very well have lived in Conn., since that wasn't that far from Newburgh. The USCF headquarters was in Newburgh then. I'm sure his name was Ron since I wrote a brief newsletter for the Newburgh club right after the victory giving the moves as well as his name, which I still have a copy of. (He was a regular member of the Newburgh club. I remember him dsitinctly since he used a Cavalier chess set, which I always liked.) |
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| Sep-22-11 | | Marmot PFL: What a shame - Reshevsky was almost certainly the only player there who could actually remember Rubinstein. Maybe they should call it the Reshevsky memorial. |
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| Sep-22-11 | | Jaques: Reshevsky was just a few weeks short of his 72nd birthday in this tournament, and in fact in 1984 at the age of 72 he took first place in a grandmaster tournament in Reykjavik, Iceland. |
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| Sep-24-11 | | Jaques: I was finally able to find the crosstable for this tournament, which confirms that Nichols' rating was 2087 at the time of this game. Reshevsky's rating was 2500. |
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Sep-24-11
| | perfidious: <Jaques> That makes more sense, anyway-about the only event someone of Reshevsky's stature might have played in where he conceivably have met a player rated 1750 in a first-round matchup would have been a US Open, and I doubt even that would have happened. |
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| Sep-26-11 | | Jaques: (perfidious) Forgot to add that the score sheet gave NY as Ron's place of residence. But as I had mentioned, Newburgh isn't far from the CT border.
Another irony here is that Reshevsky had rejected the use of Ron's digital clock at the beginning of the game, preferring the analog one, which is of course harder to see. |
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| Sep-30-11 | | Jaques: I see where "Chessgames" has just made the first name correction. Good for them! I have the crosstable proof. Ron deserves the recognition. |
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Sep-30-11
 | | chancho: <Samuel Reshevsky: A Compendium of 1768 Games With Diagrams, Crosstables, Some Annotations, and Indexes > has the above game.
(and his opponent listed as Ronald Nichols.)
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images... |
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| Sep-30-11 | | AnalyzeThis: Did Reshevsky lose this game on time? I don't see anything resignable about the final position. |
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| Oct-01-11 | | Jaques: Yes. As I had mentioned in my posting of 9/22, Reshevsky's flag had fallen when he overstepped the time limit (it was an analog clock). Nichols had to point this out to him. I was manning the wallboard for this game and saw it happen. Nichols said to him very politely, "I believe your flag is down, Sir" |
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| Oct-03-11 | | Jaques: (chanco) I believe I may be the source of the game in the compendium, since I had sent it to a gentleman collecting Reshevsky's little known games for a book he was writing some years back. He had placed an ad in the "Chess Life" classifieds requesting same. I'll have to check out the book for the "credits". |
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| Aug-21-12 | | Helios727: If Reshevsky's flag had not really fallen was he really going to make 14 moves in less than a minute? Is the proper procedure to stop the clock when your opponent has lost on time and then tell the director? |
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Aug-21-12
| | perfidious: < Helios727: If Reshevsky's flag had not really fallen was he really going to make 14 moves in less than a minute?> Long ago, when I could play strong rapid chess, there were a number of times when I managed this: in my only encounter with Arthur Feuerstein, I made twenty moves in under a minute. |
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| Aug-21-12 | | Helios727: How does one update their score-sheet after making 20 moves in less than a minute? |
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Apr-20-23
 | | FSR: <Helios727> One borrows the opponent's scoresheet. |
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Kibitzing
