<"You're not really detecting idealism.">

Darth Vader never stood a chance against...wait a minute! You're not his other son or his angelic twin are you?

Deftly, admiral, cast your fly
Into the slow deep hover,
Till the wise old trout mistake and die

to 'Deftly, admiral, cast your chum'

Typing this I also find I have emended 'trout' to the Gielgudesque 'trouty'.

The Chelovek Who Fell To Zemlya... ie, if the earth's orbit and spin, unwobbled by future Lollards, was microscopically different ... then the Tunguska 'event' would have been a thermonuclear airburst over 1908 NY state, obliterating Buffalo, evaporating Erie, largely demolishing Manhattan before it got built, and changing the 20th century beyond recognition. Later, Mr Newton - as played by David Bowie in the Nic Roeg film, The Man Who Fell to Earth - would have landed his spaceship in Lake Baikal, and built a technological empire rich and powerful enough to prop up communism and win the cold war for the soviets. America, defeated, becomes a kleptocracy run by oligarchs ...

No, that one is just *too* far out there, eh? I should stick to sci-fi, fantasy gives me too much space to cut loose. The cosmos has orderly scientific laws fior a *reason*.

Same reason chess has orderly rules, actually. Players like it that way.

Hej hej. I am now back. I have been imbibing the Sacred Sunshine of my Psychic Urheimat in Denmark.

There really should be in CG an emergency beacon or flare which one can fire - just once - into the midst of one's ignorer's forum or other discourse. Get their attention. Abuse subject to usual measures, whatever they might be.

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Be3 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 5.f4 c5 6.c3 Nc6 7.Nf3 Qb6 8.Qd2 c4 9.Be2 Na5 10.O-O f5 11.Ng5 Be7 12.g4 Bxg5 13.fxg5 Nf8 14.gxf5 exf5 15.Bf3 Be6 16.Qg2 O-O-O 17.Na3 Ng6 18.Qd2 f4 19.Bf2 Bh3 20.Rfb1 Bf5 21.Nc2 h6 22.gxh6 Rxh6 23.Nb4 Qe6 24.Qe2 Ne7 25.b3 Qg6+ 26.Kf1 Bxb1 27.bxc4 dxc4 28.Qb2 Bd3+ 29.Ke1 Be4 30.Qe2 Bxf3 31.Qxf3 Rxh2 32.d5 Qf5 33.O-O-O Rh3 34.Qe2 Rxc3+ 35.Kb2 Rh3 36.d6 Nec6 37.Nxc6 Nxc6 38.e6 Qe5+ 39.Qxe5 Nxe5 40.d7+ Nxd7 0-1

There's also a tradition of Irish players writing about the French. John Moles in the 1970s wrote the classic text on the Main Line Winawer, though it has dated now due to generations of sharp theoretic focus. Less volatile is IM Sam Collins' recent book on the Advance Variation (albeit criminally written from the white perspective, it's quite fair and objective overall). Collins does his own analysis without lifting from Psakhis etc and includes some very recent top-level games by Grischuk etc. He's also honest enough to admit that his database has 30,000 games with 3.e5, and, quote, "I'm not going to play through 30,000 games" -- so he restricts his sources to high-rated GMS, saying that important theory is either generated by them or taken up quickly by them. Debatable, maybe plausible, omits some very inventive 2380 players with specialist opening systems ... but maybe if they discover anything worthwhile others will follow.

In the French, as in baseball and adult cinema architecture, - "If you build it, they will come".

Ooh la la.

PS. That 3.Be3 is a real oddity - I can't see the point, though I think it was named after Alapin. Black should perhaps play 3...dxe4, rather than let white set up an improved version of the Advance/Steinitz structure. Not that it helps Heidenfeld much here.

In fact they haven't rated the league matches yet, so if they're included I'm *back* over 1800. Small mercies.

This makes him the first person to ever "surf the internet".

The Ancient Mariner (superpower: "he stoppeth one in three") also has a claim, however:

"We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea."

Is there by any chance a former Go champion, still much-loved despite repellent political views, who has reached the age of 361 and lives in Iceland?

The other day someone advised me to "burn my castles", but I won't fall for that one...

I'm not that easily fooled, you see.

<Dom's Irish Rating> I'm not going to repeat my sophisticated view on "ratings" as if they are an indicator of "playing strength" per se.... But WHY THE HECK does it take that long for those stupid list-people to include your League games??

Paranoid, moi?

All the more amazing when you consider that his opponent, who was of similar standard, missed the fact that the King he'd been chasing for most of the middle game castled the second time after it had moved several times, let alone already castled once. And that he'd already been thoroughly rooked on b1 and was a rook down at the time.

But if at first you do succeed, there's nothing like trying, trying again. His opponent didn't seem to find him all that trying though...