And you not liking J.J.

Seeing as how I'm only 150 pages into Pynchon - just 950 to go - I won't be diving into FW just yet. At least I've got Ulysses on CD - it's palatable in 30-minute audio chunks.

Heresy! Infamy! They've all got it infamy, as Sid James - brother of Henry and Jesse - said.

**MARKER DIAGRAM**

He has played 32...Re6 to reach this position (White to play):

click for larger view

Thanks for the Trojan work. I know the movetime moment is particularly tough with your schedule.

I'm having trouble staying awake right now, and it's only 10pm here - so I might not have much input tonight.

Subtitled: 'Only when the door is ajar'

Unless that was implied of course.

What ideas does Ohio have in store for us?
Another whiff of authority and I'm out the door, ajar, with jar or without.

Some of us are sleepless too. Boomie in Seattle, me in wherever. BTW, do you reckon Paddy McNally is going to acquire some noblesse oblige in his old age? What he is doing is simply not cricket;-) I have such a nice pic, which I ought to have flogged to the Daily Mail.

I suspect it is the 'in house' game.

Ohio, if you're listening, it was your headache about unexpected moves, that made me put in an extra shift on Bf6, so I have a bit of a headstart. See forum and website. So....your guidance doesn't go unnoticed nor unheeded.

Besides, you make not counting sheep so much easier, simply by your username: I list the 51 states when I can't sleep, alphabetically. I used to forget Ohio. These days I can't forget Ohio.

(1) A system designed to organize our options in the early middlegame will need changes going into an endgame.

(2) While we can't enforce anything, it would be good to try for more consistency. Some forums get used, others don't. Some become hotbeds of debate, others just store lines. Obviously a popular move gets more analysis, but we can aim to give every move its chance of a hearing.

(3) Ohio successfully revived the tradition of persuading forum hosts to compile short reports for the main page. While he'd always been good about doing this himself, I confess I hadn't really tried to enforce it. It's a good practice.

(4) Non-premium members can participate by offering to help oversee a particular forum - collecting relevant material from elsewhere and answering queries. This is particularly useful in those cases where the forum owner has generously donated the space but lacks the time to oversee it themself.

(5) Artar1 is working on an overview of all current lines. This will be an invaluable resource. We could possibly set up a 'mainline forum' where our best projection of the game - assuming best play from GMAN too - is demonstrated.

(6) <Open Defence> took over my original Strategy Forum and did great work with it. But - aside from Deffi's recent personal good news - I'm not so sure that Strategy as such is still so important. We might need to change focus here.

(7) RandomVisitor's engine lines remain our backbone. Personally, I believe a Queen ending is winnable, and that these are maybe the only endings where engines can still outplay humans, in pre-tablebase positions.

(8) Don't get carried away because so many winning lines turn up. GMAN only needs one drawing line, and we have only to underestimate his resources in that one line to drop half a point.

(9) I would really like to see close and coordinated work on endings. Many lines have been posted, on forums and the main page - and some have been investigated deeply. But the Endgame Forum has been under-used, and work done can be overlooked. How can we remedy this?

Having read <twinlark>'s 2-part post on the same topic (main page), I agree with pretty much all of it.

It's important to encourage maximum participation - while also providing a service for players who don't post often but want to keep up with developments in the game. That was originally a key purpose of forums - though it sometimes clashes with the wishes of those who want intense debate.

Tone can also make a difference. Some people are put off by any hint of elitism - they dislike what <monad> called the 'whiff of authority'. Yet others actually ask for it - they post messages saying 'what do our forum leaders say?'.

Is it possible to steer a course between the two? Those worried by the authoritarian streak should remember that we don't actually have any authority, and are therefore just jumped-up patzers with delusions of petty grandeur and a mania for unpaid work.

'If tha do it for nowt, do it for thissen'

<themadhair> had the same idea earlier - collecting questions for GMAN. I'm not sure: avalanche-danger, as you say. And repetition. And bad questions mixed with good ones.

I'd rather wait - mainly because we don't know exactly what kind of feedback or discussion we can have with GMAN after the game. Maybe he'll just give us his thoughts and annotations, or maybe he'll answer specific questions. He might even host his own page on CG, like Keene does, and people could ask questions there.

For what it's worth, I think we've already had an impact on opening theory. The a4-a5 plan to eliminate queenside counterplay was known before but had a drawish reputation. We've shown that it's stronger than that, however the game goes from here. I'd like Arno's opinion on that - he *did* say he wanted to test the Lutz line.