I already have a game collection 'Theriomorphic French Games' with about 32 games -- but they're more oddities than examples of the best ever.

Quinn was my opponent in round three of the Galway Masters 2008 -- the round after my defeat at the hands to Sam Osborne. I was so demoralised I dropped a piece for two pawns after, I think, twelve moves.

So I thought I'd try club league matches again, especially as the local Munster league is now FIDE-rated. Mercenary that I am, I found yet another club to play for -- my 8th, I think. Two games in a day, then a few weeks before the next round ... it seems to work for me.

I lost just four games this year. Three were to players rated more than 100 points above me. The other was to a chap rated 1025, which I think is the lowest-rated opponent I've ever played, not counting unrated ones.

Should I swallow my pride and include a White win or two? Or is the idea to show the French strutting its stuff? The Fischer-Tal draw would merit inclusion either way.

BTW, do you have the 'Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games' by Burgess, Nunn and Emms? It's a great collection, 120 games in the later edition, all superbly annotated ... but its packaging makes it look like the kind of 'starter' material that a good player wouldn't bother with.

I almost skipped it -- I saw it in a general bookstore with a small chess section, and bought a copy for my nephew. When I saw how good it was, I got another for myself.

It works on multiple levels -- verbal explanation of plans and ideas, combined with plenty of hard variations and analysis, both human and engine.

Will a few raunchy hip-jerks do it anno 2011? It's an open question.

Nice to see in many ways, <dom>, you hitting it off with AJ like you are; vintage stuff and underestimated for sure. Chess does unite, despite Ehlvest just temporarily heading FIDE. Untenable. (Pronunciation: Fee- day- unlike AJ's Fied, we don't call him Agee either.)

The story was pretty bad, though it won 3rd prize in a competition -- I usually get 2nd ("Too weird to win, but...").

I envisaged a world where the American revolution failed, and North America was divided into petty statelets and colonies, with Russians fighting Native Americans and Mexicans in California, and the French controlling the Louisiana route upriver from New Orleans to the Great Lakes. In Europe, Lavoisier escaped the guillotine and discovered electricity, Napoleon invaded Ireland instead of Egypt, and the French <Republique Electronique> dominates, with electric railways linking the French cities of Cork, Nantes, Paris, Bruxelles ... and Londres.

Not much steam. Maybe it was electro-steampunk.

After all that background, there wasn't much actual plot or narrative. A common mistake when one invents alternative histories.

I've been rereading a couple of the good ones: Pavane, by Keith Roberts, and Terraplane by Jack Womack. Fine stuff.

Since I think hypocrisy is a virtue and I've never been very authentic, I can't really comment. But does it mean that a *Bad Bishop* is 'un mauvais Fou' ...?

It fits, somehow.

An alternative history timeline: for various complicated reasons, Christianity gets going 100 years earlier than in our world, and spreads rapidly to Rome. Julius Caesar discovers a Christian conspiracy aiming to stage a coup, with Brutus as first Bishop of Rome.

OhioChessFan: < The SF crowd are like the Bilderbergers, but less evil.> Much like the NeoNazi crowd.

<Colonel Mortimer> - <Kindred fruitloops>

... and sour grapes.

Where's <I...Like...Fruits> when we need him?