<I kinda HATE American spelling, and especially pronunciation, let alone their inconsistency.>

Pronunciation and spelling are actually two separate, though related, pain points with me.

<HOWARD> I forgot the other day to thank you for the brilliant NYT article you linked!

VERY interesting read, and I wished I could agree on all the writer's points.

The marriage between socialism and capitalism has had some very good times, yet I feel I have to share some of the pessimism as conveyed by the anti shallow myth preachers, critical utopianists.

"Utopianism can't be eradicated from western culture. It's transferred into secular thought.

So the process of eliminating Utopianism from western culture and politics, is a Utopian project."

Interesting hour long interview on this.

So I was just lashing out. America does what it can and knows.

Interesting though,

progress = utopian

realism = utopian

utopianism = ...

Combovers and chemistry are your only men? Not yet, not while I still have hairs to tease.

Hmm. Sounds like the middle book of a 3-volume encyclopedia: Hairs to Tease.

For example: Combover to my place for a sleepover where we can hug while teasing the curlies aside...

Unfortunately, I can only come up with puns that about four people will get, so I haven't a chance.

I presume you've looked *into* that encyclopedia just to make sure it isn't <reticulation> or <retirement homes>?

But the Ree book, a collection of some 50 columns and short stories, is a delight.

He also pays tribute to several people in Chess who had recently (prior to 1996) passed away; one on Poloe.

Your account of the lost notebook at the trainstation was spot on, and there is a remarkable anecdote re the depth with which Poloe (Polu) could analyse... He had found an improvement on an improvement by Petrosian v Spassky (Queen's Gambit Declined: Semi-Tarrasch Defense. Exchange Variation), and showed it to Geller, the night before the entire line upto move #25 appeared on the board against Tal: Polugaevsky vs Tal, 1969

When Geller saw the position arise, the next day, his jaw fell to the ground... Poor Tal had fallen into an exquisely prepared dish, and was devoured not too long after.

Ree too considers Poloe as one of the four or five greats, of that Soviet era.

Delightful book; I am a Fan of Ree's authentic, very personal, style.

Really a collection of one gem after the other.

well I dont like to play the Winawer too often as they might stop playing 1.e4 against me :)

In a word, no. First of all, a guy who has figured out what's going on is usually known as a psychotic (Ballard-Burroughs Theorem) or a paranoid (Pynchon's lemma) - not a grandmaster. Though I suppose the categories are not mutually exclusive.

Secondly (sic), the second is the basic unit of time, currently defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom (at absolute zero).

Roughly 142,006,284,000,000,000 seconds have passed since the planet Earth began falling into the sun (but moving sufficiently fast as to keep missing the target - a useful lifesaving technique known as 'orbit', usually elliptical in shape and frequently used by astronauts who don't want to be remembered as the man who fell to Earth (or The Chelovek who fell to Zemlya).

Unlike David Bowie, who does.

While look at me (metaphorically, pls). I've played the French in about 98% of my 'serious' 1.e4 games as black, and yet there are several French lines I've never tried at all.

My idol in some seemingly effortless action.

You'll be pleased to know perhaps that my previous post was transferred to the <bookyforum>, surgically, so it landed on its feet once again.

There actually *is* a translation of the Ree book. I know you appreciate Ree's writing style very much, so sneak a pre-peek at the CBF.

"Our" Arik Braun, Caruana?

He came in in the top 15 of the lates U15 Worlds, but that Space seems to be currently occupied and domiated by India and Asia.

His name: Robin van Kampen

Odd how some people say 'no pun intended' as if (1) they hadn't spent hours polishing the said pun, and (2) there was something *wrong* with puns ... like they were a bit illegal or a bit tacky. Speaking of things that are illegal (here, anyway, and in other deeply progressive and enlightened societies like the USA):

True story. I arrive chez my 80-year-old mother. She's been ill and I've been temporarily out of town...

She: Somebody brought me a cake. It's got a drug in it that'll help with my pain.

Me: Uh, a drug? You mean, like some herb?

She: No, no, a proper *drug* drug. I haven't tried it yet. I forget the name. Tell me some drug names.

Me: Uh, poppy seeds?

She: Nooooo! A drug.

Me: Well, I doubt if anyone makes Largactil Eclairs or Hot Cross Valium Buns. So, like, is it cannabis? Marijuana?

She: That's it. I've got a cannabis cake. D'you want some?

Me: No, actually, it doesn't agree with me ... but if it works for you we can forget past disagreements ...

[so my dear old Mum has turned hash peddler ("do you want some?" counts as dealing in a law court, as defined in the act, blah blah) ... there's also, I recall, an offence of 'allowing your premises to be used' -- so they can bust you even if you're *not* partaking of whatever.

"I believe in all the science fiction that I remember, but it's getting harder to remember science fiction..."

And what's this about my 'intense look'? Like Tal, but with optical verbals. I'll take that as a compliment.

Actually, together with the, erm, mostly inaccurate sci-fi cynicism qualification, those two were my feeble attempts at *not* being so "nice" to you, although all in good spirit.

Mission accompli?

But here we go: sorry to hear about your mother being in pain. the anecdote you told is priceless though... Once tried a tiny chunk of Hash cake, but didn't pursue any further... Good boy.

I had, as I told, a pretty good Mephisto for so many years, all through the eighties and nineties, but not the very pricy top models like the WCCC like Amsterdam, or Roma, which, as I recall, *were* quite strong, at about 2250+ . I also remember going over to the Max Euwe Center, then located at the Paleisstraat, just off <Dam Square>, where they would sit, lined up, and young <van Wely> beating the crap out of those machines in Blitz, at the time that he was clearly Holland's most promising young Top Model...

But it's a true story; he musta been 12 or 13 at the time, some twenty odd years ago.

I loved my Mephisto machine, and thought I had busted the CLOSED Ruy with White against it in the countless games in all the closed variations I sparred against, notating and analysing every single game at the time. I hated losing.

Mine were the Rebel 5.0, and the MMIV modules; slightly weaker at an estimated 2050 level.

Indeed just keep mounting the pressure like that monumental <Kamsky> game, earlier this year against Toppy in Sofia. Not that refined though, although at the time I thought it was nearly perfect, the way I played it.

The second part should have come out like this:

<I loved my Mephisto machine, (mine were the Rebel 5.0, and the MMIV modules; slightly weaker at an estimated 2050 level), and thought I had busted the CLOSED RUY with White against it following the countless games in all the closed variations I sparred against it, notating and analysing every single game at the time.

I hated losing.

Indeed just keep mounting the pressure like that monumental <Kamsky> game, earlier this year against Toppy in Sofia. Not that I played it *nearly* as refined though, although at the time I thought it was nearly perfect chess...

But young van Wely was reported to magically crush the then fabled machine. I accidentally witnessed it once. He was a little monster, the VW kid.>

Hope it now reads a bit more fluent, and a tiny bit understandible. I was obviously a bit "late" to edit.

My guess is you were, if at all, using a PC Chess program, early nineties?

I could murder it at speed chess -- it must've been about zero ply if given less than ten seconds per move, and it fell into obvious traps. There was even a mate in less than ten moves that I found, which it always fell into -- a tendency to grab pawns.

But it was quite OK if given time, and you could save and replay games -- a primitive archive function.

Aha. *If* I can find certain ancient floppy discs, *and* if their former content has not turned to magnetic mush, *and* if I can find a way to emulate the operating system of a 1987 MacPlus ... then I *might* find copies of some of my lost gamescores.

How very like life (lifelike?) that is -- time spent running is proportional to level of difficulty.

Anyway, the Mac version that I had *looked* much better. I still have it on disc, somewhere, though I don't anymore have a working computer running pre-6.1 versions of the Mac OS.

It was the first engine I encountered that could actually be used for analysis rather than just playing human-vs-machine games. You could set up positions, play engine-vs-engine, change sides at any point, and display a line showing the comp's best analysis so far.

I recall inputting a load of games by different GMs to see which ones were more computerlike, ie regularly chose the same move as Psion. Karpov 'won' easily -- though I suppose the real test was how good Psion was at finding Karpov-level moves. It found them much more easily than Korchnoi or young Kasparov.

My first PC is the one I'm using now; bought it 5-6 years ago.

How about that? Oh - and I did have an even stronger Chess program on an AMIGA gamecomputer! Very strong, I was without a chance most of the time. About 1993.

I wish I still had the scores of the RUY games I played... Some were real beauties. Positional squeezes mostly, with the inevitable Knight sac, "launched" from <f5>.

OK - I'll stop about the RUY, sorry.

Yeah - I'd love to see some of your Psion encounters, really. As I said I do regret not having my scores anymore. Many pages that also fit in the said suitcase.

Crumple. Toss paper towards bin. "Oh, just another alien chap, old boy, we average about one per week. Funny, they usually solve Fermat first ..."

Right, yes, indeed, those games ... I should, I suppose, quash the belief that I have some objection to the Spanish. I don't, not really -- it just never featured even on the fringes of my repertoire in any way. In serious 'games' I sometimes played 1.e4 as white, and if 1...e5 then the Vienna or King's Gambit. Or even 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.c3 or 3.d4 or 3.Bc4 -- I've tried Ponziani, Scotch, Italian -- but never, ever 3.Bb5. I don't think I even tried it in blitz. And I never had a book that covered it: I had Pachman on semi-open defences but nowt on t'Spaniard. It is simply beyond my ken.

I quite like some of Tal's games with it in his later years, right up to the masterpiece against Hjartarson. The pre-tactical maneuvering is almost English-like.

One line I played vs Psion began as Bird's Opening and involved letting black - the beast - play ...b6, ...Bc8-a6, ...Ba6xBe2, ...Be2xRf1, and I think ...Bf1xg2. While it was taking everything on the light squares, I was teeing up a second set of sacs starting Nf6+ that ended with mate.

Years later, using a modern brute, I discovered that the whole concept was unsound. First, black had to make a quite silly wrong pawn recapture to open lines for me; and, more damagingly, if it stopped taking the sacs halfway through and played the right defensive move, it could survive. Leaving me at least a rook down.

Sigh. Bad enough when Fritz-era engines suck all the beauty out of old-fashioned chess ... but when the old-fashioned chess in question was inflicted on a fellow engine, perhaps the retribution is just.

Just, as in fair. Some people still believe that the world is, or 'ought to be' just and fair. A belief that ends in tears, in my opinion.

Or perhaps not. As Mr Dylan sings (Angelina): "When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?"