Are there? I've never really looked.

But my limericks have got cleaner (and less metrical).

Because the outbreaks of Limerickitis in Deffi's forum (and travels) are *funny* and we were talking specifically about the dirty ones. And the incident.

Not that some of the dirty ones aren't funny. I'm tying myself in knots here, Your Majesty. Your *other* Majesty, that is. Oops.

The first leg of the M. Daniels Club Chess Decathlon was completed last night. It ended in a scabby draw. The opening was what I like to call a 'Dirty Rat' -- that's to say, any ...g6 system where I find I have to play the wimpy ...Nf6 at some point. We began like so:

1.d4 g6. 2.c4 d6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 Nc6 5.d5 Nd4 6.Be3 c5 7.Nge2 Nxe2 8.Bxe2. At which point my sense of humour got the better of me, as Mondo once wrote of Nimzo's ...Qh8, and I could not resist playing 8...h5:

click for larger view

This is why almost all my wins come with violent combinative finishes or opposition blunders inside 30 moves. Sometimes they drag it out hopelessly for a while, like the guy in last summer's IRL ch'ship that you commented on at the time. But I haven't played and won an ending in yonks: just drawn and lost some that were heading that way anyway.

I *must* stop being so polite. The way things are heading, I'd need to be a Queen up to turn down a draw offer. And to think I once turned down Tony Miles -- or at least got him to wait a few minutes while I thought about it.

Have you tried The <Rat Fink Baftard>? The Ng8 goes to f6 as in the Dirty Rat, but it's just a feint. At the earliest opportunity it springs back to g8, then redeploys to h6 or e7. No? Me neither.

I got the idea from the French, where ...Ng8 can be playable. And even Karpov used to do it against the English (Korchnoi's pet line in the Flohr-Mikenas Attack: something like 1.c4 Nf6 2.Nc3 e6 3.e4 c5 4.e5 Ng8, I think).

BTW, Bill Hook -- Captain Hook of the British Virgin Islands in 7 or 8 Olympiads, has written a memoir, and it's excellent stuff. He describes New York encounters in the 50s with Marcel Duchamp, Stanley Kubrick, and Bobby Fischer. Lots of Hook's photos and paintings, which are very good, and just a handful of chess games (but including a 1951 win against Duchamp).

I think some of the witless types who flit thru CG without learning anything were sneering at Hook for being a patzer, and losing to Fischer in the 1970 olympiad. But even at 82 he's still going strong.

Hooked on Chess: a Memoir, by Bill Hook -- best chess book without those "cryptic squiggles and matrices", ie diagrams. Best of all, he writes as interestingly about characters like Kai-Kai the chess-playing wrestler than the many superstars he's met.

Imagine a biblical fundamentalist with a failing memory. Drives into his local 'gas' station. Pauses for thought.

I posted it in <Niels'> forum.

I played Black and it went

1.e4 c5
2.f4!!!????

I found the game FASCINATING to play since I never seen this before, plus it had a very Curious ending...

Leaving me <most dissatisified>!!!

Like preparing a great dinner and then the phone rings and it gets cold or something.

anyways, if/when you get time, will you give me your opinion at <Niels's house>?

Thanks tons.

Yuck. Two Dirty Rats in a row; King Duncan would not be impressed. This one came with a win, though, and a surprisingly competent endgame performance. 'Dead, for a ducat, dead!'

click for larger view

God I love antagonising the classically-minded. Chatting about the game afterwards over a pint, my opponent said something that made me very happy: 'How on earth did I lose that game? By move 16 you had lost the right to castle, developed precisely two pieces (both just one square), and had two backward pawns. How on earth did I lose?'

Good times.

I'll have a look at your game, and see if anything Roman says is relevant. BTW, the name comes from its popularity on the weekend tournament circuit in England in the 70s and 80s -- there was a 'grand prix' prize for most points accumulated over a year, and some of the stronger players started using 2.f4 against the Sicilian -- initially to avoid pet lines, but it later developed into a system of its own.

I had similar comments recently when I moved my queen twice and a knight three times before developing anything else. But the moves were designed to stop him castling, which was more urgent than rote development. His king was duly mated in the centre.

I rarely agreed with him, always respected him. He still thought "manners" matter.

Rare in these times.

Well, I'm sure he'd disapprove of THIS headline- straight off the "front page" of <Yahoo>:

<Mysteries of Venus solved
A new theory could explain Venus' thick atmosphere, lack of water, and backwards spin. »'Head-on blow'>

Imagine our relief!!

They just don't have a clue, do they?

<William F. Buckley> is an "old school" aritstocratic conservative political writer and journalist in America.

His column is, and has been syndicated everywhere in North America for decades.

He had a hit TV show for a while, <FIRING LINE>, which some called <Firing Squad> because he would often riddle them with his "rifling" wit...

I believe the poor old sod has died, unless I've misread <Joe's> post.

Actually if he's dead I'm sorry.

I admired his brain, but not his politics.

An appalling organ, really.

Hang on, doesn't that mean ... *glows with pride* ... why thank *you*, <Mr Wms>, it's an honor. I left the 'u' out on purpose, as is proper with American honors.

As for left and right in everyday parlance, don't get me started. I can't tell 'em apart - I think it's a little-known minor second cousin of dyslexia, once removed. My main strategy - really - involves visualizing a chessboard, noting the colour of the a1-square, remembering 'white on the right' and 'The Left Hand of Darkness' and then returning to the situation at hand.

Which is fine as long as the situation at hand isn't a driver needing a quick decision.

Reminds me of a remark I overheard waaaay back... It went, roughly, like this:

"...You gotta *feel* your way around; like a blind man at an orgy."

Where does a *myopic voyeur* fit in? As it were...

Since it was impossible to get it back clearly I did a search for movie-quotes- and FOUND IT!!

'Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult' (1994)

Frank Drebin: Like a blind man at an orgy, I was going to have to feel my way through.

Bingo!! Almost 14 years have passed and I was pretty close, I think...

Of course there have been replays every other year, I suppose...

Funny how the brain works, these clustered/stored memory bits that can pop up from nowhere.

10 minutes to the games, -- I also remembered to have practised with a new racket/bat for weeks, and just as the first official match comes up, you feel the old one, with that customed grip, and BINGO, switch back to the old one, just for missing one odd shot with the new....