I've been playing through some of her OTB games and she's the real deal- fantastic, exciting play.

Even an amateur can produce a strong Correspondence game without an engine- so how much more, then, could a Master do the same?

Much more is the answer.

Do you remember that (thankfully brief) kerfluffle when someone accused <Topalov> of cheating OTB because he "matched" Rybka first choice over 70 percent of the time?

LOL!

There is no transparency, and no actual science, behind chess.com's policy towards cheating at their site.

I say "no science" because we are not allowed to test their method or result.

It really made my morning to see your posts.

This is just ridiculous. And shameful. :s

You know that there may be a precedent in the offing on a couple of fronts- including the legal one, if <WGM and IM Dembo> indeed goes through with her lawsuit.

Because she is a public figure, I think a lawsuit based on defamation of character might have enough merit to garner an actual hearing.

Also, as you well know, the other correspondence sites are not nearly so pushy about "cheating" than chess.com has become.

I'm thinking that their admittedly bold step might backfire.

Since there really is no way to prevent Correspondence Chess cheating, the "don't ask don't tell" policy may be the only one available.

After all, everyone knows that <Mr. Oosterman> isn't even a real person. Ok he is a real person, but "he" is not responsible for "his" moves in ICCF games.

And "he" was World Champion, if I'm not mistaken.

<Jess> yes, it will be interesting if she does sue - although it would be a lot of hassle for her, so she may let it go.

And yeah, I heard some stories from Tryfon too. He just tends to assume anybody over 2500-2600 is probably a cheater, <unless they are also known OTB players>. But it's hard to prove anything, unless people actually admit it - and in those cases I'm against punishing that (if they promise to stop), since then you'd be basically punishing, not the cheating, but the honesty. :s

I'm sure we all know "when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail" - likewise, apparently when you have a nice automatic "cheater-recognition" algorithm, every good move looks like a cheat. Not a good idea, methinks. Maybe correspondence sites that want to take an automatic hard line against cheating should simply say they don't want professional players around - just us patzers plz. :\

The only reason (I'm assuming) they don't have a lot more trouble along these lines is that most professional players don't play there at all, not being interested in no-comp corr, as they can't learn much from it. Yelena probably does this to get in touch with players who might take lessons from her, since teaching chess is a part of her livelihood.

Oh well, change of subject - hopefully my bloody federation will get around to publishing the <September> rating list sometime before the end of September (I suppose they have a point - nobody said "the September list" has to mean the FIRST of the month, did they? And if they did?!) :p Heh... but it's the holiday season, so I'll cut them some slack I guess. I see on the site that they are uploading tournaments - S.L.O.W.L.Y - but only one of mine is in, the other three not yet. I'll have a rating one of these days... I can't wait to feel underrated already. ;)

Aaand, here's one of my recent games with a nice tactic (what else?) ;p

[Event "FICS rated blitz game"]
[Date "2010.09.21"]
[White "AnnieK"]
[Black "NN"]
[WhiteElo "1478"]
[BlackElo "1311"]
[TimeControl "600+0"]
[Mode "ICS"]
[Result "1-0"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 Nf6 5. d3 d5 6. exd5 Nxd5 7. O-O O-O 8. h3 Kh8 9. Bb3 f5 10. d4 exd4 11. cxd4 Bb6 12. Bg5 Nf6 13. Nc3 h6 14. Bh4 Nxd4 15. Nxd4 Qxd4 16. Bxf6 Rxf6 17. Qh5 c6 18. Rad1 Qc5 19. Na4 Qf8 20. Nxb6 axb6 21. Rfe1 g6 22. Qh4 b5 23. Re8 Qxe8 24. Qxf6+ Kh7 25. Rd8 1-0

click for larger view

23.Re8!

Btw, <Jess> - <Yes I'm going to top up <Mal's> account for two years. The deed will be completed by tomorrow.>

She's a Russian chess assassin with the IM title and a GM norm.

Why on earth would she ever cheat on a cheesy correspondence website full of fish?

Of course she's not going to lose a game to that crowd when she's got 3-5-7 days to make her moves.

How can we stop them pesky bumblebees from chess.com polluting our website I wonder.

I suppose it's not worth starting a war over.

I'm just making friends with a few of the folks over there on the chess history forum and I got a warmer welcome there than I did at the cheating forum.

<Bill Wall> and <Sarah Beth> have put up a lot of excellent information and rare photos. Plus "Batgirl" has answered every single PM I've ever sent her within 24 hours. That's very polite, not to mention helpful, since I only contact her to ask about history "bidness."

She's a real mensch. Or she would be. Is there a comparable Yiddish term for us girls?

I think she can take care of herself just fine. She could just nuke all those socks if she felt like it. But she's taking the high road.

I was thinking your last post here on the topic would have looked good in her forum, but I think there's no longer much point-

What's that law you were talking about where the "go and read the back posts" factor comes in to play, and an internet argument becomes futile?

I think everything pertinent has already been posted there.

Inside of every self-pitying, jealous patzer there's a vicious bully just dying to get out.

Doesn't take much "provocation" either. They especially like putting the boot in when they think some <actually strong chessplayer> is down.

<Sehok ha-Shak>

"Shak" is chess, but what are the other parts? It's the title of an obscure chess manual which was only published in Hebrew.

Also, how do you write this in Hebrew letters?

If you can help me, I'd appreciate it very much.

Yes, but it's top secret! ;s

<How can we stop them pesky bumblebees from chess.com polluting our website I wonder.>

It's probably best to just let the yapping pack at Yelena's forum run out of steam and not feed them further. I completely agree with what you said re. "everything pertinent has already been posted there", and the - I think we collectively named it "debate entropy amplification"? ;) issue (and the rest...) - and besides, when Yelena is done with the Olympiad and has time to clean up here (should she want to), she'd have to leave more of the garbage if it's interspersed with posts by people defending her - as she probably wouldn't want to offend her "defenders" by making their posts lose their context.

But if they show no sign of intending to move on eventually, perhaps it will be time to call in the admins to clean up a bit, based on "#3".

I'm generally opposed to removing incriminating evidence - IME it mainly serves to turn offenders into martyrs of "censure" - but once it gets repetitious, I don't have anything against cleaning up the duplicate trash. Why should the website pay to host that?

<<Bill Wall> and <Sarah Beth> have put up a lot of excellent information and rare photos. >

Heh - I'm not going over to chess.com, mainly because I don't like their interface, but also a little because Tryfon would be jealous. ;p

<Bill Wall> seems like a nice guy - just from what I've seen in random chess-related searches and here - and <Sarah Beth> is definitely very nice. :) I used to run into her sometimes when I still played blitz at GameKnot, with the autopairing system there. Neither of us likes chatting during a game, but we usually exchanged greetings and some comments after the games. I like her.

But I don't know Yiddish. ;p

<Sehok ha-Shak>

Hmm, tough one. It would really help if I could see that in Hebrew alphabet, since it vaguely resembles several different words, but none of them are a particularly good match.

It could be "laughter" - 'The Laughter of Chess' - umm??

Or it could be - at an extreme stretch, "playing" - 'The Playing of Chess' - this would of course make a lot more sense, but the inflection is all wrong - a Hebrew speaker would say "Mischak", not "Sehok - so unlikely. Unless it's a very old article, pre-Modern-Hebrew... maybe. Or maybe dating from back in the era when some Hebrew purists were still trying to artificially introduce verb forms that eventually did not take off.

Lastly, it could be "erosion" (or "fatigue") - but that's both a wrong inflection (a modern Hebrew speaker would say "shchika") AND doesn't make much sense.

And the spelling in Hebrew would depend on the interpretation we choose... :s

http://www.invaluable.com/auction-l...

From 1879 - yup, genuine pre-Modern-Hebrew! The greatest individual influence on the creation of Modern Hebrew, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, only immigrated to Israel (at the time Palestine) in 1881.

Even shach (chess) isn't written this way now, but with a different 'ch' character and without the 'aleph'.