I folded and got a heater! Give my regards to Peter!

Croad is a strong player. Garbett beat Ben Hague who is rapidly becoming NZs highest rated player...(I missed a way to put a lot of pressure on him in a game we had.) It'll be good for Luke and the others. Puchen Wang was or is a good player but I think he is probably not so interested in chess as a main career now. We will do well for a small country (where chess is not very significant to say the least!).

I haven't played serious chess for about three weeks now!

I have about 4000 very good books on all kinds of subjects (excluding my own on literature, art, history science and of course chess etc) and I intend to get rid of them some way -Trade Me, to other booksellers, auctions etc etc as I need more room in this house... I do have a few chess books I don't want that are quite good.

I am toying with playing in the NI. Not sure.

Some interesting thinkers in politics, poetics, literature etc, such as Terry Eagleton have gained a lot of their "moral force" etc from their religious back ground but it can just as easily lead to "evil" or "wrongness"...In Miss Lonely Hearts by Nathanael West "Lonelyhearts" struggles to believe in Jesus Christ but in the end there are too many questions and contradictions. Nor is "art" a solution (Adorno's question (or cri de coeur?) as to whether we can have art after Auschwitz can be mentioned here)...I am afraid we can be sure of nothing Comrade Cormier.

I used to read stories (Father Brown stories - a gift from my sister who is a card carrying Christian) by Chesterton and I read the introductions he gave to Dickens' novels when I was a boy. Victor Hugo (not a Christin I don't think, but certainly a socialist of some kind) is almost a "progressive" in his novels, and his poetry is very great also.

Dr. Wayne Dyer (popular psychologist etc) talks of "existential aloneness...hence he is perhaps looking back to Sartre.

But I am not a "hard atheist" like Dawkins...I share the darkness and doubt sometimes of Shakespeare..of Titus Andronicus! and Hamlet and Macbeth....you can see the influence of Ovid and the deep contradictions and brilliance of the inventor the essay form - Michel Montaigne.

Which is not to mention his descendents such as Foucault, Barthes and Derrida etc!! or Heidegger (Influenced by Hegel and Husserl) (talking of Nazis!)who influenced Sartre. I also read The Ethics by Spinoza (which is modeled on Euclid's method of Geometry with axioms and so on...(but of course his parallel line theorem was disproved and we now have Riemennian space etc, which Einstein utilized).

Or the pre-Socratic Greeks such as Heraclitus who believed War or struggle was good and Fire and in the constant change or flux of all things...

Science hasn't wiped out religion, that is simplistic [science is great but it can never get to the quidditas, which I believe Kant maintained also] but it was certainly pivotal in causing human beings to rethink their world view. We have to accept The Divinia Commedia as allegorical as indeed Dorothy Parker does (I read her version of that book or epic poem...

I went in on Monday but Hans Gao wasn't there so I played a fast game vs. Judy as Ewen wanted her to practice. The trouble was I thought we were playing a more or less Standard time control and it wasn't until I looked at the clock and saw I had only minute or so that I started playing too quickly and lost, meanwhile I was writing down my moves as that (supposedly) was part of the practice. Really stupid by Ewen. I missed a main game, and lost a relatively trivial game...

Ewen is obsessed with chess "progress" but he forgets that we are all paying members no matter what our rating or our status - and many of our representatives only get there because their parents have plenty the cash or they can get time off work.

His attitude constitutes a form of "Ageism" which I consider to be a form of discrimination as bad as that say against women or those of another race. I am going to raise the issue with Paul Spiller and the Race Relations Commissioner.

Why is it that players such as myself and Pat Young and others are neglected in favour of young players? These young players will all grow old and die - some of them might even die before I do...a lot of our higher rated players are really getting quite old and we don't have much to replace them as the "juniors" leave to work or study. Or like Luke Li and Bobby Cheng they shoot over to Australia... So we don't need to be concerned about who "achieves" in NZ - achievement in chess in NZ is an oxymoron.

<drik> You mouth the most awesome crapulous and viscous drivel since God deigned to shovel guts up inside Homo Wankus...Nunn is a hopeless slobbering Pommy bastard who since his stroke and his galloping dotage cant even remember how to move the chess pieces. To put it kindly: "You and he are full of crap.">

The George Trundle is starting tomorrow and Ewen is playing so I'm doing a coaching session he does on Saturdays at Onehunga. I did it last year when he was in hospital.

The paradox is that I still greatly prefer seeing games in a book. I have a book of Karpov's games which are very good. But I reckon you and Phony etc could write some books of those tournaments (for Gambit or?): I like the idea of going through those games. I played through all (or most of Tarrasch's games (Vic and I enjoyed that book the most) and all of Alekhine's and those of Keres.

But you are all doing a good job of collating and recording. I still come across games referred to in Opening books that are not on here though, while the GM is.

I might stop OTB chess...and just study games and problems. Or I might coach chess...not sure. I still do quite well in Blitz games on FICS if I'm not tired.

The games - top 5 or so are live each day from about 2 pm...Ewen Green missed winning against Luke Li in the complex Botvinnik var of the Slav...Luke played a good game to beat both Steadman and ex Aussie Champ Gary Lane. Ewen in time trouble blew a good game versus Johansen today while Bruce Watson wisely took a draw versus Luke. Hague, who also beat Ewen (and me, at the ACC! (Winter Cup last round), Hague is doing well and had a draw versus GM Johansen.

Hans and I were so tired Hans nearly missed that the rook was en prise!

I played a brilliant sacrificial game against Roy Seabrook. He threatened to fork my Q and R so I decided to continue with my attack and sacrifice it. Now the exchange sac was sound but then I sacrificed a B (I thought I was winning and I almost was an neither I nor Roy found the right defence for him): he defended as I thought and then he went wrong so now I sacrificed another rook!!

Now I was then all but winning. The computer finds a defence for Roy but I couldn't see it the next day. He found the only move and I then missed the only move that was either winning or if he was very artful it was a draw.... but I miscalculated and had to resign!

[Bob certainly outplayed me in the opening and indeed most of the game I was bad]

I noted I played better (mostly) after Saturday as I got more sleep...but Friday I only slept 3 hours.