Description to follow.

< 9.c4 h6 10.cxd5 hxg5 11.dxc6 Bxc6> does indeed look better for Black, though I would still play 12.Re1 or Bc4, with a lot of play left...

<But Black has to go wrong first> is indeed the crucial sentence here -- I tried to provoke an error, but it remains an error, as h6 solves most threats, in stead of 9.Nxd4...

heh

Nice to see you are off to play at a club.

BTW a few enthusiastic posters "there", to which you responded, I have permanently on ignore... That is my own way of putting the "one shared brain cell" - "behind bars."

My engine does not dis-approve of 9...Nxd4 - and in fact follows the initial score... but decides on 15...Nxg5 in stead of the Nxf4 that was played initially, and dismisses Nc6 and h6 after reaching 14-ply, although the evals only differ ranging from minus .10 to minus .30 in the various lines...

I think it takes a top player to play either side of these lines- and indeed the immediate 9...h6 (refusing the pawn-d4) is not easily found, I think...

And you were right that 4...Be6 is not a first candidate move in the opening for Black...

All in all a very instructive challenge c4 poses.

If you get around at some point to get your thesis on paranoia through your scanner I would be delighted - I can post my email address here, but I'd prefer it to be "for your eyes only".

btw, something over *there* told me to 'get a life'. Imagine.

But I'll truck no more with stupidity of such densitude.

Could you write a melody to go with "Paranoia, Paranoia, even Goya, couldn't draw ya ..." ?

<For much more about Dali and Roussel, see Pilar Parcerisas, "Salvador Dali and Marcel Duchamp: A Game of Chess (with Raymond Roussel, Georges Hugnet, Andre Breton and Man Ray as Voyeurs)" in Dali, Elective Affinities, Barcelona, Palau Mola, 2004, pp. 111-89.>

I doubt very much whether all those bods were ever assembled in one time and place: it sounds more like a <hommage> thing.

Here is a wonderful illustration of your assessment on BOOC in a rook+pawn endgame - favouring the attacking side...

click for larger view

Position from today's game in Greece, Carlsen - Tiviakov, which appears to be quite drawish... but not so...

With Carlsen grabbing the initiative and one error by Tivi was enough for a crushing attack.

I suppose the game will be in the database soon...

10. Ra4 Rd7 -- above Diagram

(The move numbering is incorrect.. Move order IS correct)

11. g4 h6 12. f3 Kh7 13. Kf2 Ree7 14. Ra3 Bb5 15. Rac3 Rd8 16. Kg3 f6 17. f4 h5 18. g5 Kg6 19. Rb1 Rd5 20. Rc8 Be8 21. Rbc1 f5 22. Rb8 Rd6 23. Rcc8 Rde6 24. Be5 Kf7 25. Rd8 Kg6 26. Kf2 Kf7 < oops > 27. e4 Kg6 28. Bd6 Rd7 29. Rxd7 Bxd7 30. e5 Bc6 31. Rc8 Be8 32. Ra8 Bf7 33. Rxa7 Re8 34. a3 Bd5 35. Ke3 b5 36. Kd4 Bg2 37. e6 Rxe6 38. Be5 Kh7
39. Rxg7+ Kh8 40. Re7+ -- over and out 1-0

Aroooo.

you can hardly pose as a neutral observer, with the relationship you have to for instance achieve. therefore it should come as no surprise that an off topic, malapropos post on carlsen's page, where the message basically was that 'you've been a bad frog' wouldn't be taken as an open-minded invitation to dialogue.

if you could convince me that you really wanted an explanation for my anger with a couple of your friends, and if you could make it believable that you would evaluate and judge for instance achieve's reactions to "personal attacks" in the same way that you would judge my reactions to "personal attacks", then there might be a point in us having a conversation on the topic. your one-sided wittiness at the carlsen page didn't seem like any such invitation, and i therefore politely offered my view that there currently was nothing to base a fruitful exchange on.

if you, contrary to what i currently believe, still would be interested in getting additional perspectives on recent "history" on the carlsen page, i might consider spending yet more time on the issue(s).

on a closing note, i'll try to give a small explanation to the reaction you (and one of your friends have) recently got on the carlsen page (not from me, but from others). honestly, i assume that you are well aware of most of the things i'm going to say now, but i'll say it anyway:

all humans have "flaws", smaller and greater, including you and me. everybody knows that, but sometimes it's harder to admit it, and some people have a harder time doing it than others. telling other people to change is hard, and doing it successfully is an artform. there are, however, some "guidelines" that almost always are useful if you want to be successful in this "art":

- do your work from the "inside"

you need to be on the "same team" as the one you want to change, and you have to be sincere about it.

- be a good example yourself

shouting at someone because they are shouting, doesn't make a good example.

- give your good advice in private

publicly accusing and attacking someone for some flaw, usually serves no other purpose than temporarily satisfying your own irritation.

if one breaks the "rules" outlined above, one very easily comes through as someone who thinks he/she is better than the ones that are talked _to_. the message will then seem condescending and aimed at belittling the receiver(s), instead of an honest effort at changing things for the better. if the one who delivers such a message also is perceived as coming from "the outside", he/she has effectively paved the way for the kind of reaction that you (and one of your friends) have experienced on the carlsen page recently.

Are you a motivational speaker, by any chance?

I liked <Chris Farley> when he was a "motivational speaker" on <Saturday Night Live>.

It's one of my favorite books.

We have a book club going over in <Holden>'s forum. This month we are discussing <heart of darkness>.

We could use some more members. Interested?

If so, drop by <User: holden> forum and leave your comments/analysis.

when I look for my last post here at my forum it just says <.....>

Cool man.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/am...

They're out to get us all I tell ya. There are rumours that sales of baseball bats to pit-bulls and rottweillers are at an all time high!

No idiots to refute....

Only Darwin's skyyyyyyyy....

Dum, dum, dum,

Can't help but agree with some of this:

<Chess is hand-to-hand combat between two labyrinths.

An integral weakness of chess is that it does not lend itself to divination (there is no checkomancy).

The Christian Church has never banned the game of chess, though it did ban dice and cards.

In oder to be a good chess player, one should not be overtly intelligent – Jean Jacques Rousseau: Diderot did not play very well and readily acknowledge the superiority of Rousseau, who never failed to beat him.

Modern warfare is an advanced form of chess, but most of its pieces are obsolete.

The “queen” in chess is a suspicious character. (cf. Marcel Duchamp, Joueurs d'echecs, 1911.) The real Queen, which we still await – in chess as in elsewhere – is one foreseen by Barthelemy Prosper Enfantin, the head of the Saint-Simonian religion (1796-1864).

The only legitimate game is on that would never allow, for either player, only those combinations of moves that have never been played before.

Philosophical freedom is an illusion. In chess as in all other games, each move is loaded with the indefinite past of the universe.

So as to eschew any sense of greatness in competition, one would do well to acknowledge being a part of a pyramid of monkey heads.

One element of ancient wisdom me might hold in mind is that deprecatory voice that the triumphant general in his chariot kept hearing.

Only inspiration is in control, day and night: All in all, not every calculation is an analysis: a chess player, for instance, does the one very well without doing the other. - Baudelaire

The real Napoleon (the killer) was a mediocre chess player. In Lenin's tomb on the Red Square, you will find a chessboard (is it the beginning of a game or one left unfinished?) and fishing floats. On the other hand (it is only fair to mention it), two great artistic innovators – Marcel Duchamp and Raymond Roussel – brought new solutions to chess problems.

The game of chess is not enough of a game; it is too serious an entertainment – Montaigne.

What must be changed is the game itself, not the pieces.>

http://www.socialfiction.org/?n=504

First problem: the concept of the 'flaw' is itself deeply problematic. We're not talking about, say, diamonds -- where there's a standard of purity and it's obvious to everyone what constitutes a flaw. Humans are more complex.

And even here I must contradict myself: it's easy to imagine a diamond dissident who sees beauty in what others think of as flaws, and vice versa. Even in the seemingly simple zones, relativism intrudes. And I no longer consider myself a relativist.

My point about 'human flaws', as you call them, is that they're invariably ideological. You're far too smart for me to have to list examples: but there are cultures where failing to beat one's wife, or letting the grandson of your traditional enemy go unmutilated (etc) would be seen as serious flaws. The road to heresy, apostasy, social chaos and the collapse of all that is decent.

However: thankfully, our specific problem is simpler. A 'model' problem, not as complex as real life. In here, we need only concern ourselves with basic etiquette, some agreed norms of behavior, and some kind of rule-set -- more or less enforcable from above, but ideally self-adjudicated by the participants -- which keep things flowing smoothly and civilly.

I don't know about your experience: but my contacts with the CG folk in various contexts -- including a few disagreements and guideline breaches of different sorts -- have left me with an enormous respect for Daniel Freeman and the rest of them.

Consider. They do great work keeping this place going. Their user base necessarily includes people with vastly different outlooks on practically everything. The creatures in the zoo really will eat each other, given half a chance.

I know perfectly well that there are CG users who think what I do is flippant, arrogant, whimsical, incessantly off-topic, infuriatingly high-handed, and full of incomprehensible megalomania. On the other hand, some folk seem to appreciate it.

I try to avoid arguments, flame wars, crazy stuff, usw. Life's too short, and it makes unnecessary work for Mr Freeman & co. I genuinely don't want to get involved in such things. This site is too good for petty vendettas.

My original comment chez Magnus was whimsical: based more on the <Frog> connection (coincidence, I presume) than any idea of 'defending my friends'. It was also amicably worded.

Then, it seems, some of those people whose thought-processes really do baffle me got all upset. Wouldn't be the first time I'd blundered into a row, but now I try to back out gracefully. But I still got bitten by some amoebas who think they're piranha fish. I should 'cut the crap' and 'get a life', and somebody was going to blow the proverbial whistle.

Hence my comment that whoever invented the whistle must regret it now. Like nuclear bombs and mad cow disease.

Ironically, I'd gone there to check out a Carlsen game: a French Winawer he lost when he was very young, one of the first games in his database collection. I wasn't charging in to join a punch-up on behalf of <achieve> or anyone else. He is most certainly a good friend of mine, but I think that kind of fightin' behaviour is futile, tribal.

I gather the disagreement had gone on for some time, and I really don't understand what it was about.

I have never put anyone on 'ignore' and you're welcome to post here. So are those other Carlsenoids, but I don't think we have much in common, and I'd probably just insult them again. So we'll all stay in our respective houses and try not to cause trouble at CG -- and complaining to the man about my off-topic tendencies has to be the CG equivalent of vexatious litigation. It's just silly.

Is that all? Nearly. To loop back to your original point, the concept of 'flaws' is riddled with ideology. Your version, I think, is one I disagree with, mostly, but is certainly debatable.

I agree that shouting is unpleasant and counter-productive. Out here in the world, if somebody shouts then I devalue what they say. Netlife isn't too different.

And yes, I can be condescending. I don't think you're plugged into that one-braincell circuit, but some of those others... oh, boy. But - as you've reminded me - that's not your responsibility.

Much of the time, I don't enjoy the discourse on GM pages like Carlsen's. Of course people are free to discuss his games and progress: but it does not convey ownership of the page, nor the right to decide who should post there and in what tone.

And, if I remember rightly, the one-braincell line came up in the context of me saying I'd had enough and wasn't going back. Nor responding to any other feeble efforts to insult me (again, this isn't you).

Long posts, argh. I try to avoid -- unsuccessfully, clearly -- these detailed scrutinies of every angle in some minor topic. But, just this once, to clear the air.

And a Frog is entitled to some respect from Frogspawn.