One minute there's this vaguely classical centre with pieces ranged along the 3rd rank, then Black strikes from the wing, counterpunches down the file, and it all goes *pouffe!*

<Played on for a bit, too, I see.>

Heh - that's a classic for understatement, just as the comment you left over at <WBP>'s forum just now - <though I don't think the road is really African-American> - is a classic for "throwing a softball". ;)

All gone now. Some researcher discovered that a nearby privy had once been the monkish cell of Gerard Manley Hopkins the poetic priest, exiled to Ireland as a masochistic xtian penance. So they turned it into a museum.

Speaking of which ... I met two young women trying to revive the chess club in my local university, after one of those age-long three-year hiatuses that happen in colleges. They tracked down the room where the sets and clocks had been stored, and found that builders had thrown them out.

Heh!

<"So that's what those things were">

<Jess: <I hope you are also saving the files because why not a CD?>>

I forgot that - yeah, I'm saving the files, because I save everything - see: Archivist (http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/wa...). ;)

heh- archivist-

And there I was, thinking if the vermin got too verminous chez moi I'd be welcome to hide out here for a while. Deluded, I know.

With extreme sloth and inertia, I'm sporadically trying to engage a photographer. One who could also show me how to convert a digital image to a transmittable format. I skipped that class.

Slight setback this morning, when I told the photographer he was stupid. I'll find another before the year is out, possibly.

Easiest ways to digitize a picture:

1. Take it with a digital camera to start with - you could just ask somebody with a mobile phone, most of'em have one thrown in by now.

2. Take a regular picture, and find something called a "scanner". They are fairly intuitive things - save as file type ... <bmp> is good, but "heavy". <jpg> is very good, and light, but it's optimal if you're just going to save the picture once, and only open it by pic-viewing programs henceforth - when edited, the <jpg> file type "smears", becomes blurry and loses quality in every way, like taking a photocopy of a photocopy, etc. on a copier machine.

<The Advance Variation thang. That was going well, wasn't it?>

Must be another psychological block, then.

Notes down: 'patient exhibits a fascination with natural processes...' ;)

<The "scanner" and the "mobile phone" ... I believe I have at least one of each.>

Ah, good. :D

Then the first thing is to get a photo file or twenty of the unusual suspect onto your computer, via scanning, or via downloading from the digital camera by USB cable, of by sending it to yourself by mail from the phone (or just sending directly to intended recipients, but personally I like to check a picture in full size on my computer before sending it on...).

<I's *trying*, yanno?>

Yes, dear. Sometimes even *very* trying. ;p

<Slight setback this morning, when I told the photographer he was stupid.>

Last time I did something similar it took about three years to repair the damage.

Or surfing the "nyet", in my case today.

The online Russian name audio guides vary wildly- many are spoken by Americans who obviously have Russian as a second language, and they sound TERRIBLE.

Particularly compared to your pronunciation of "Vassily Smyslov" which sounds precisely like the audio guides for Russian names actually spoken by Russian people.

It's maddening, however, that online surname guides seem to be virtually non-existent.

However, I downloaded a very large list of Russian and Tatar first names pronounced by native speakers- it is excellent, and provides etymological information as well.

Frustratingly, however, only first names are given- so the pronunciation of the Tatar chess master <Nezhmetdinov> I'm not absolutely sure of.

Mainly which syllable is stressed?

Nezh-MEHT-dee-nov

or Nezh-meht-DEE-nov

Also of interest- did you know that virtually every single Tatar name is Arabic in origin? And most have a religious meaning.

Almost every single name. This, despite the fact that the Tatars- Bulgarian and Kipchik (central Siberia) in ethnic origin- were only exposed to Islam via missionaries- not by any invading army that stuck around. The lot of them converted to Islam in 955.

So the "original" Bulgarian and Kipchik names- whatever they may have been- seem to be gone- utterly gone.

This is fascinating to me. Also, the Volga Khazaks (tatars) are to this day overwhelmingly Islamic- this includes <Nezhmetdinov>, who was schooled in an Islamic tradition and was an "observer" in terms of his dress and observance of holidays and such.

Presumably the Volga Bulgars used to be Christians- I wonder what original Kipchik religion was...

<Annie> your pronunciation of

<Vasilly Smyslov>- was correct, as I mentioned, which inclines me to trust you on further Russian pronunciations- I know you are not Russian but your "accent" very closely matches the accent of the Russian speakers I was listening to today.

So yes

"Va-SILLY"

Not "VA-silly"

Also you got the last name correct-

"Smih- slohv"

Not "Smih- Zlov" which I've heard before.

Would you be willing to try more Russian chess names for me?

The project is <Nezhmetdinov> and almost everyone in his story is Russian.

My take: 'first' names are simply *older*, and in many (most?) cultures were, at some point, the *only* names.

'Surnames' were added as identifiers, sometimes by government fiat, as populations rose. And there remain great differences in usage around the world: some people suspected in the West for using 'aliases' are just using different versions: son of father, son of mother, father of child, descendant of the prophet's camel's cousin.

In many places, everyone has the same family name, so other identifiers are needed. Lineage ('Dan Paddy Andy') or location - I had a neighbour once named Dick the River.

Don't try this at home.

BTW, I've watched hours of commentary footage from Gibraltar - great stuff, especially when they got Short and Ivanchuk on. Yet Simon Williams - whom I admire as a player - had real trouble with names. Not 'normal' names like Nigel, of course, just those tricky foreigners.

F'rinstance, he referred to Ivanchuk as 'Ivanchuk' even when talking to him. "Thanks, ah, Ivanchuk", and so on. Weird. Even weirder was when Salome Melia from Georgia arrived. Admittedly, her (last) name has varying pronunciations in different places -- it's mel-eye-ah in Georgia and Meel-yah in Ireland. But Simon W is going "I dunno, I just call her Mel ..."

Aha. It's as if chess is split between database culture (surname-vs-surname) and a parallel universe where personal names are used. But it's not *that* simple, methinks.

Aha- thanks for that historical insight on the naming phenomenon.

Who knew?

You may be pleased- or horrified, for all I know- to know that I found a question on "Yahoo Ask" today about how to say <Salome Melia>!

Weird jinx eh?

Ok <Choucky>-

Proper would be-

EE- vahn ee-WAHN-chook?

But, god, what a genius. What a nice man. What a chess brain.

He arrives, diffidently, having just won the tournament, with Williams going "Ah, we're joined by Ivanchuk now, welcome, uh, Ivanchuk, would you like to show us a game?"

"Yes, of course, anything" sez Chuk. Then a position on screen catches his eye. "Ah, this is game of Melia. Did she win? Yes? And Adams is draw, yes?" ... and he's studying these other games, oblivious to his own zillion carat star quality.

When he did his own game, it's "Of course there is g4 here, then this, this, this, this, this, and Rd7 and I am winning simply. Or also this tactical idea, this, this, and I take Rook. Oh. In fact I am losing here. Not so good a tactic idea ...."

Yes I also love EE Vahn der Graaf Generator.

Did you read the long interview with him that <Niels> posted in my forum?

Seeing people like Ivanchuk and Short mop up 'ordinary' GMs is great - and a counterbalance to the tribe of retards (found, sadly, even on this sterling site) who go 'lol- wot a fool lol' when a genius mis-steps in time pressure and their engine tells them.

Short suggested that there should be a new annotation symbol in chessbase, informator, PGN etc -- a tiny coffee cup, indicating that the player was suffering from acute lack of caffeine. In one game, he said, his brain just stopped and he couldn't calculate - he desperately needed coffee to kickstart it.

One of these days, the top vegetables in FIDE will call that 'drug abuse', and it will be banned just like cigarette smoking and shooting up speedballs at the board in time trouble.

Heh. Well, I suppose my Russian pronunciation may be somewhere in the ballpark, if I concentrate, since we've got Russians all over the place around here - I suspect we've been conquered a while back, but they forgot to announce it in Hebrew. About the Tatars, I haven't the faintest clue, rilly.

Nezhmetdinov, by a completely and utterly unsubstantiated guess, might be pronounced as Nyezh-MEHT-dee-nov (note, I suspect Nyezh, rather than Nezh), but I'll repeat that any similarity between my guess, and the actual pronunciation, is entirely coincidental.

I'm pretty sure <Dom> is right about the last name thingy, plus the -ich and -ovich endings mean 'son of', so the "last name" was, at some point at least, actually the name of the person's father - in which case, one's first name might be a more immediately relevant info than "who's your daddy". ;)

<So yes

"Va-SILLY"

Not "VA-silly">

Yup, but if you were trying to call him by his nickname, it would be VAS-ya. Just don't ask me why. ;p

<Would you be willing to try more Russian chess names for me?>

Sure. :)

I think it's EE-VAHN-chook, btw, equally stressed, maybe a little more on the VAHN. And yeah, Chucky is an utterly adorable fuzzy oddball of a genius ;) - count me in on that. :) I'm not a great fan of Short, on the other hand, although he admittedly has a good sense of humor.

PS - <Dom> Much grass, in fact, a whole lawn, and a bonus shrubbery! ;)

I just got home, but you should probably check your mail later tonight, or tomorrow. :)