R1. Black, a French Advance, Wade Variation, against IM Gavin Wall. He wins, and goes on to score 5/5, then winning the tournament with a last-round draw. I take the opposite path.

R2. I think I'm winning against a teenager who suddenly produces an inspired defence. I lose.

R3. Somehow, I lose again.

R4. Agree a draw.

R5+6. Win the last two relatively easily, with attacks in a French Winawer Swarm and a Catalan. But by that stage I was down at the, um, *not-on-form* end of the hall.

Remember that all protests are just a re-run of the Children's Crusade.

What are the three dots about?

I actually was surprised when there was no reaction to your Cork report.

I had a bunch of questions (still have) and just looking for the ...

Are you at your best with your back against the wall?

I often am.

It's all too easy. To some of us.

Been cleaning my house from top to bottom and many memorabilia passed my hands and eyes... And surely it is possible to distinguish, and preserve, in case.

Please do not do the "tra la la " again.

I guess I'm out of words, and it is my own doing.

Of course it's possible to be both transparent and solid. Like window glass.

And that's flat.

<What are the three dots about?>

About four millimeters?

<Are you at your best with your back against the wall?>

<Wall> Ahh - the Gavin guy?

Let's take him down the next time. Just give me time and place in advance, and we will see to him returning to dust. Or better yet: evaporate. (I like that word.)

"I'm not a violent man, Mr Fawlty..."

I also like the phrase coined recently: Get it down <pat>.

Pat, oddly enough, is the Dutch term for "stalemate".

heh

Action? Oh, yes. The cosmic director is on set in the White Location. Cameras and putts: roll 'em. Cloud machine running. Sky? Ist Klar.

Cut! Nein, nein, net, nej. Last thing we want is clarity. Or even Klarheit.

Speaking of 'other' sports ... did you hear about this top-level proposal to 'speed up' snooker -- seemingly the plan is for short sharp frames, with fewer red balls. Just six, I think, one for each colour.

Snooker, RIP. "It used to be a load of balls, but they found a way to ruin it".

It's ghastly. And weirdly similar to certain developments in chess in recent years. Do they really think we're all idiots?

Sigh. Probably best not to answer that. They *do* think we're idiots, and 'we' -- ie, the human race, minus you, me, Jess, mack, Deffi, and a few other people, not all of them Frogspawn readers or even (gasp) chessplayers -- keep on giving them further evidence of idiocy. To which they respond with yet more stuff-for-stupids.

It'd be a vicious circle, if only it had teeth. As it is, it's more like a vaguely unpleasant gummy loop.

But ... proof that there are pockets of beauty and intelligence in the world still ... some of them in Holland: I read a *brilliant* article by Hans Ree in New in Chess, about leadership and clocks and Kirsan/FIDE and the psychology of petty, irrelevant regulations.

It was in the 2009/#1 issue, not the very latest one -- but I only just got round to it. Ree is a wise man, a fine writer, and an essayist in the classic sense: he has a core topic (Kirsan's love of draconian rules, specifically the one that saw Olympiad players defaulted for being 5 seconds late for the start of a game) but the essay branches out brilliantly. The gently ironic title, in the English version, is "FIDE Teaches Discipline".

He cites Elias Canetti and his classic book *Crowds & Power* (Masse und Macht) which I first read as a teenager -- a rarity among those books one reads as a teenager, in that it still holds up, years later. I'm reading it again, and finding it a rich source of ideas.

There's also a story of pre-FIDE Kirsan, back in the early 1990s when he emerged as President Ilyumzhinov of Kalmykia, and an article about him appeared in a Dutch newspaper -- as an example of post-soviet leaders with 'radical' economics.

Inter alia, Kirsan said: "Five minutes late at the office? Then ... you lose your bonus, and your job if it happens again".

According to Ree, such behaviour is typical of a certain very dangerous kind of ruler.

Oddly enough, around the same time, 1992/3, I very briefly worked for a publisher who was similar in crucial ways. Inspiring both fear and loyalty. Not paying workers. Firing people randomly -- in one case I recall, she - the boss - got her tame psychic to dangle a crystal over everyone's desk to 'check their efficiency'. One person was fired because their desk gave off the wrong vibes.

I escaped: I didn't have a desk. Strange times.

I'd like to read more by Ree, as well. I've been aware of him for ages without ever fully appreciating just how good a writer he is. Such people are like gold dust in the chess world.

Ree has been my favourite (guest) commentator at all the GM tourneys here in Holland. Usually he is placed in between the "Big Shots" like Sosonko, Bohm, Ligterink, another fancy IM newspaper guy, but I always was mesmerized by the style, the ease, the slowish, contemplative tempo that Ree used when commenting the games Live in the explication room. Of course, in Amsterdam, there were always a few IMs in the room, but Ree just went about the analysis in his own, deceptively languid, manner.

His mind was not slow, though, and his feel for the endgame has always been an inspiration to me. Then he'd really start humming. And become frighteningly accurate.

More dieses Wochenende, wenn Ich wirde wieder kommen.

ChessOK, should be "ChessCafe" (dot com)

Well you've done it. You've got him talking again.

MIRACLE ELEPHANT CURE

<Dom> What's up with the lurking?

You know how it is on the Internet. People give a lot of space- mainly because it's easy to do I suppose.

When you can only "see" your friends- or rather the little typed leters- out of sight out of mind is "easy."

But, wierdly, not so easy.

I was pining for you and <Eyal> to the point of tears last week to tell you the truth.

He's been scarpering for a week at a time, but he's just busy with his career.

Please EMU me with a Hi Ho

GET IT?

Hi! Ho...

HAHAHAHAHAAH

And let me know what's going on.

If you have time.

I may EMOLE you first so you can just hit the <return button>.

I have to second <Niels> on the value of your <REAL TOURNAMENT REAL CHESS NO CRAP> reports.

I reserve my highest chess respect for those who still do battle in the actual arena.

With a clock.

A clock that DOESN'T SAY "FIVE MINUTES" ON IT.

I love <Ree>. I've read every <Ree> Column, or <Reeum>, as we call them here, at <chess cafe archive>.

But I pronounce his name <Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee>.

It's "20 years older", innit? Obvious, rilly. As "20 years younger" leads to certain classic ontological problems, such as nonexistence.

Of course, we're talking counterfactuals here, so technically everything in sight has the attribute of nonexistence, including the invisible things that aren't there.

- Hmmm. And when did you first encounter these, ah, "invisible things that aren't there", Dr Domdaniel?

- Tuesday, I guess. Round the same time I gave myself a virtual doctorate. Am I mad yet? Does Catch-23 apply? May I be excused from the mayhem ahead on grounds of sanity, (absence of)?

- No.

[seethes quietly]

I'm imagining you too, doc, you know. Plus, you're invisible. And Carlsen (born 20 years later) might not have made it into A-Ha ... but wasn't there a guy named Jim Fetus with a contemporaneous avant-punk outfit named something like Scraping Fetus Off the Wheel?

Strangely, they never broke Middle America. In any sense.

That requires a user-friendly name (Beatles, U2, rodent/orgasm/structure).

OK, so I made the last one up. Sue me. Its imaginary members were called Sean Rodent, Sean Orgasm, and Attila the Structure. But the band broke up, citing 'musical similarities' and Sean Orgasm issued a press release saying that he was going solo 'like all the best Orgasms'.

There's no other way of saying this: he was a flop.

<Next Post>: the *actual* observation which "Aha" was intended to introduce. Before I got, like, distracted.

" ... and I was like 'distracted? my middle name' and she was like 'I know for a positive fact your middle name is Janet' and I was like 'hello? ever hear of deed polls' and she was like 'nope, knock-off Blahniks from East Korea, are they' and I was like 'I dunno, I was told to say that' and she was like 'why' and I was like 'to change my name, I mean, Janet?' and she was like 'Dom Janet Daniel sounds like a cheap bottle of Mexican stand-off plonk' and I'm like 'it's French, Jannay, not Janette, more Pierre Janet than Planet Janet' and she's like 'that's cool then innit -- who does Pierre Janet play for? Garry Saint Germain?' and I'm like 'Doh! Garry Saint Germain is a *chess* club not football' and that shut her up.

There just isn't. And I don't care if people think I'm a pervert. ("Know what his favorite things are? *Words*! And he doesn't just collect them in big fat books, sometimes he *makes his own*" ... "Yeuch, that is seriously disgusting not to mention sick, can we get him thrown out of CG for UnEarthlike activities or whatever" ...

------->

<Jess> And it's *sooooo* good to hear from you too. This place is springing back to life. Eire is in the Spring. It's Resurrection Weekend in the dogmatic universe and I am by god coming back from the dead, whatever the living think of it, and *sauve qui peut*.

There will be a backlog of insanity and men overboard and cabbages and rhinoceroses and incessant quotations and botched invasions and stock options in companies that make 'Belly Wellies -- the spare tire warmer for the overweight slob in your life' ... just when everyone embraces lean, ectomorphic, slim as Obama on speed ...

The President of the USA "may have dabbled" with "weed" and "maybe a little blow" (wasn't that Bill Clinton's weakness too? It all depends what you mean by 'blow', not to mention 'weakness').

But POTUS is not a speedfreak, even if he was born outside CONUS. By my calculations, the last Leader of the Free World born outside the Continental United States was either Marcus Aurelius or Napoleon I.

So what follows here is a chess-specific bundle of ideas that I stupidly added to a dead game. Where it would be lost forever. In my vanity, and needing a chessy angle, I thought I'd repost it chez Frogspawne.

So mote it be ...

<muralman> -- <I am in awe of the fellows here who can read and write chess like it was their primary language.>

Nicely put. The similarities between chess and language -- along with some crucial differences -- have obsessed me for years.

It started 30-odd years ago, as a teenager. I'd started to play relatively late, aged 15 or 16. Despite the fact that my rating shot up to 2000 in 3 quick spurts -- 1650, 1850, 1980, and voila -- I could already see that, for example, I had almost zero chance of title norms, wins in strong tournaments, making a national team, etc. There were at least 4 or 5 other teens who were stronger, whose ratings stayed ahead of mine, and who tended to beat me more often than not. And the common factor is that they'd all begun playing at an earlier age.

Maybe this is an excuse: a story I've been telling myself for 30 years to explain away failure. But even then I suspected, dimly, that chess was like language -- and fluency is achieved if you start young enough. Start late and you'll always have an accent.

My chess accent must be pretty horrendous to a GM. I've gradually picked up a basic vocabulary: but I still have to *think* about it, to mentally translate into English, to get idioms wrong ...

OK - the analogy breaks down in places. But the central idea -- that brains are wired for language acquisition at an early age (the feat of the average child's brain in picking up Arabic or Danish or Guarani or Ijo is truly incredible). A few other human activities (chess, music, math -- the ones where you find child prodigies -- and which have formal structures, combinatorial depth, but little need for extensive life experience) are able to piggyback on (a part of) the language acquisition machinery.

Ijo, btw, is an African language with a very rare feature: it uses some implosive sounds, made by sucking in air rather than expelling it. The chess equivalent? I've no idea ... maybe some endgame maneuver that is rare, beautiful and downright weird ...?

But there's no need for awe. I don't believe that chess is anyone's *first* language -- maybe somebody like Sultan Khan came closest. So everyone has a chess accent, however slight.

Meanwhile, my chess 'fluency' seems to have improved -- I find better combinations, and I 'understand' the openings I play without having to memorize long lines. But I blunder more too, so results are worse and my rating has dropped. Is there any linguistic equivalent of this, I wonder?

I made a hilariously horrible - and totally unprintable - language blunder once (aka a faux pas?) while trying to speak French. At least chess blunders aren't met with torrents of laughter from everyone in the room.

Not yet, anyhow. Maybe I need to find better (or worser) blunders.

[note to Frogspawners, Sundowners, Hoedowners, Horsepersons, Longshorepersons, etc -- feel free to comment on this chess/language nexus thing -- I could have lots more to say if I push myself a little, or somebody else does the pushing.]

Swallow my pride. I've hit 50: dare I exploit it. And not just that ... this seniors event is seemingly divided into two sections, over-1800 and under-1800.

As of the last Irish rating list, I'm, gulp, under 1800. Absurd, of course, just one bad week and 100 points down the toilet, bound to get 'em back soon ... or not.

Orr-Knott. It occurs to me, rather wickedly, that in a tournament for persons rated under 1800 and aged 50 or more, I'd have every right to consider myself a favorite. Having spent most of my chessic existence over 1800, and having spent most of my RL existence under 50.

I'm sure I mentioned this to you. It's just like Writer's Block, but it has a guy frozen in the middle of the roadway unable to shift his broom.

Then there's Executioner's Block, but I haven't actually killed anyone recently. And, as they say in those circles: if you don't keep your hand in, your hand has to sit it out.

Talk to the cuticle -- the palm's all fronded out since Palm Sunday, and the knuckle is doing the dusting as its contribution to spring cleaning. But who cleans springs anymore?

Boyle 'em in Olive Oyl, I say. Isn't there a secondary Boyle's Law about extensions in a spiral spring?

Gotta be better than a case of springcleaner's Roadsweeper's Block halfway up a spiral staircase.

The Jesuits, those intellectual soldier-monks, Christ's Manhattan Project, are always being quoted with a line to the effect "Give me the child at seven and I'll give you the man".

Hmm. Sounds dodgy. There's another version that goes back to the glory days of Victorian chimney capitalism. It may well contain more truth:

Speaking of ,er,'rections' - is that your cell-phone, or were you just happy to see <Jess>?

She's been around though, including chez Le Centre d'Euwe, and a new-ishy gang has gathered around her Mr Silly Man Pajamas, aka The Legacy of BF, forum.

Well, that's the latest 'buzz' - Í've been told.

So where will this 'Tourney' be held?

Is there also a 'normal' section, like the 'Barely Forties'?

These are important details if I am to prepare and pack my sewit case.

< But I blunder more too, so results are worse and my rating has dropped. Is there any linguistic equivalent of this, I wonder?> There is... But I dare not type it, let alone say it out loud, for I would risk 'losing it all'. I'm sure you'll understand my 'mum' on ce sujet.

Caution advised, dear Dom. A man of your distinguished age should know better than to engage in such wild experiments. Hmmm... we always did it "our" way, didn't we? I even sang along with one one of my dad's <Miriam Makeba> records.

In all his loquacity, the kind that makes reading an adventure.

By that, I mean you need your Thesaurus and Bartlett's handy just to follow one sentence.

Good times!

No worries <Dom>. I'm going to send you an EMU, and also include YOUR REPLY in the EMU.

That way you can just hit "reply" and Bob's your uncle it's all done.

On a rare serious note, I just posted a game at <Niels'> forum-

And I would dearly love it if you had time to look at it.

It's on page 315, in case you read this post here a week from now or something.

It's an <English> game I played against the <Battle of Agincourt> defence featuring the <Notorious FAWN PAWN> that <Niels> and I recently found out doesn't even exist.

However, we refuse to change the name of it.

It took me around 3 hours to play this game, but I just spent 5 hours analyzing it, so any feedback would be adored.

Also, to be more precise- I know this was not a "great chess game."

Lord knows I know that.

But what I'm looking for is feedback on the WAY I ANALZYED it, not just the actual moves I made in the game.

I'm trying to learn how best to analyze my games in order to learn how to play chess better.

< ... did you hear about this top-level proposal to 'speed up' snooker -- seemingly the plan is for short sharp frames, with fewer red balls. Just six, I think, one for each colour.>

First, Kudos for being so uncannily uptodate with the latest Sporting events (indeed there has been an increase re "Ball Traffic" in Agusta Masters' Air Space 'Return of the Tiger' Project, since a few days) ... But are you serious about the Speed Up Six Ball proposals for Snooker??

We all know the World's is coming up in a week and I did watch a fair bit of the recently held 'China Open' (whaddaya mean: "Open" ... bit of a paradox there... Open for *money* yes...) - but I overheard no talk of the said plans you mention, neither from the Eurosport commentators, nor from the BBC Sport/Snooker website I frequented.

No more Centuries?? No more 147's??

Ronnie doing a Total Clearance in 37 seconds flat??

Of course, knowing what journalists are like, I suspect some April Fool press release sat around unopened for a week and then some callow shallow trainee type -- yet to reach Module 102: How to Be Suspicious of Stuff -- started the ball, as it were, rolling.

If it's true, I think it might present a few problems. If the colours go on their standard spots, plus a mini-triangle of six reds (3+2+1, yup, that works) then - like you say - one splatter-break from Ronnie and a quick cleanup (a minimax?) is likely. So they'd have to make it harder -- colours on the cushions, or each red clinging to a colour ... which would just lead to a different kind of safety play. A more boring kind, without the frisson of a possible 147.

Some ideas seem too crap to be true. But look what they did to chess -- super-GMs play endgames at blitz speed, while petty jobsworth officialdom frets about irrelevant stuff (defaults for being 5 seconds late, doping controls, etc) -- as H. Ree said about the Ivanchuk 'incident', "If a complete unknown would propose to join me in the toilet to study my urine, I wouldn't listen to him either".

Got a knack for understatement, hasn't he?

The whole idea of 'spicing up' chess is R-O-N-G. Ditto snooker.

Meanwhile the *real* problem in chess -- cheating with engines in OTB games, which gets easier all the time and seems to be on the rise, especially in lower-level sub-2000 tourneys -- is ignored.

The drugs don't work, so they test for them. Why? Cos they want to join the Olympic circus, get in there with hammer throwers and those guys who race down ski slopes on inverted dinner plates with their eyes shut, and who *have* to be on drugs, or they just wouldn't attempt it.

The engines, though, work very well, and provide a nice little earner for the unscrupulous. If computer guys can outwit casinos at blackjack and roulette -- where complex probabilities and extrapolations are involved, versus heavy security -- then the average chess tourney/opponent is a pushover.

I'd say that's the goal of the *writer*, Your Deference. The language just wants to be used before it goes extinct.

- Yes, doctor, after this Easter weekend is done we can maybe start him gently on liquids.

- Uhh, liquids?

- Yeah, you know -- the wet ones?

- Ohhh, *those*. Why, sure. His humour has been a bit dry lately.

- Aqueous humour? What's this, the Dark Ages? They didn't get that name because it was *dark*, you know.

- They didn't? You have a better explanation?

- Yup. History's first typo. Old Jonny Gooseflesh -- aka Hans Gensfleisch, alias Johannes Gutenberg -- had this major mead hangover. Sweeter than the sting of the bee is the honey-hooch hangover, they say.

- So Mr Printing had a sore head. What then?

- Well, like any businessman, he's racking his brains -- putting the thumbscrews on his frontal lobes, as it were -- trying to find a way to turn a profit.

- And?

- And he suddenly had the idea of turning a *prophet* instead. Knocking out versions of the Bible, anyone could do that. But Bibles with *misprints*, there was an angle for the masses.

- There was?

- There most certainly was. Think of it as 15th century bloopers. Like that so-called Wicked Bible, where Commandment #7 read "Thou shalt commit Adultery".

- But wouldn't the Inquisition be, like, pissed? Kicking your door down in a holy flash at 3am, and building a special bonfire just for you? I saw that in Goya, y'know.

- Paranoia, paranoia, even Goya couldn't draw ya. They'd be miffed, sure. But that's the beauty of it -- you blind 'em with tech speak. Oh, fiddlesticks, you say, this is what we in the trade call a typo. Like when a scribe goes gaga, only it's machinery? You tell them you'll fix it in the next edition, and you toss a few groats into the Inquisition Widows & Orphans' fund, and meanwhile your Wicked Bibles are selling like paparazzi theologies -- which in a way they are.

- The Inquisition had widows and orphans? What about, like, celibacy?

- A detail. They were flexible on the celibate thing -- celibate, buy a bit, give a bit away for free ...

- And the Dark Ages?

- Never happened. But I could tell you stories about the *Nark Ages* ... curdle your entrails, they would.

- So Gutenberg got rich with deliberate misprints?

- Nah, it failed. Only ten people in the city could read, nine of them were clerics, and none had a sense of humour. His marketing plan was hopeless.

- Awkward, I imagine.

- It got worse. He tried to use his Inquisition contacts, sell them that idea for Frontal Lobe Thumbscrews -- apply the pain straight to the brain, bypass the thumbs, make torture properly efficient. They liked efficiency.

- And?

- And it turns out that the brain has no nerve endings. Zillions of neurons, but nothing that feels pain. You're better off with thumbs. Or genitals. They hacked his off and boiled them in oil, just for smite.

- Smite?

As for IQ, I don't recognize the concept. Pseudoscience, numerology, and misunderestimated stats, if you want to know.

"Let me be rated, and fated and sated, but Lord -- don't let me be misunderestimated."

Measurements are pretty subjective. I don't have a big *anything*, if you use kilometers for your baseline.

Or do I mean centimeters? Frogspawn went metric, and I haven't had a decent yard of ale since.

As for Eysenck ... I sink he was over-compensating. IQ buffs are mostly men, and they tend to care about outsized automobiles and the linear dimensions of the membrum virile.

That's trisyllabic, that last word. Count 'em and see. Big stonking syllables, every one: supersize your Latin vocabulary here in Frogspawn.

And keep those Commandments. I suggest this one in particular:

<But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work — you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.>