I started, if you're interested, with a loss to Philip Short, rated about 2225. In the same line of the Kangaroo Defence (1.d4 e6 2.c4 Bb4+ 3.Nd2 Nf6) in which we drew a game 34 years ago (it's in the database). I didn't *try* to follow it - I deviated after about 8 moves, and tried something more aggressive. Which wasn't bad, but I went astray and lost in the end.

I won in R2, against a 1600-ish player whom I've always beaten in the past. A Catalan. Then, in R3, I was paired with an old friend rated about 2050 - we were on the same team in the 1980s - and we have a string of fighting draws going back to '81: neither of us has ever managed to beat the other in a tournament game. Unfortunately, he got the start time wrong, turned up 40 mins late, and was defaulted. I'd still have happily played, but they're getting stricter about such things.

So I'm on an undeserved 2/3 -- meaning I get to come home for a couple of hours and 'rest' before tonight's game, which will almost certainly be against a pretty strong player.

There are two GMs and two IMs playing, plus some FMs like P.Short. It's strong at the top, and there's very little cannon fodder at the bottom.

In fact, I'm the cannon fodder: I just happen to be on 2/3. So it goes.

No time to comment on other topics, but anyone wanting to post a game is always welcome. If it's a French, humanity might even learn something.

BTW, AJ would *never* say something as considered as "you disrespectfully lectured me...". He'd just add you to the troop and call you something nasty.

In my opinion.

Now, where did I put the little rubber stamp that says I *thought* before posting this?

Clunk. Splat. There we go -- fully thunked out. May not be *good* thinking, but it's all I got ...

Incidentally, two more of my games have appeared in the database: Quinn-McCarthy from a few months ago, and McCarthy-Brady from the 1980s. (See -- I *did* play some chess in the 80s...)

I submitted those two about three months ago, and thought they'd been rejected. Quinn is around 2100, and though Brady has been over 2300 for about 25 years, he was still a bit lower when I beat him. Or when he blundered a rook: a silly game, to be honest. I'd have understood if CG decided it didn't pass the quality test. But they're there now anyway. No troopery, pls.

he would not play F. N. with me however. he repeatedly called angslo liar and spread that actively in many forums . However, the day it was irrefutably proved that it was frogbert who lied, he stopped talking to angslo and seeking him out for conversation. before that he would seek conversation with angslo the way he is seeking conversation with <annie> he seeks such conversation with everyone and then kills them with F.N. after spending hours, the person in conversation with frogbert finds himself/herself tearing at his/her hair. ofcourse F.N would work only if someone can not give irrefutable evidence about frogbert's lies etc. (reason why frogbert does not play F.N. with angslo or me). with me other problem is that i would say, (' yes you are right . that time i was wrong . i apologize for that and promise not to do it again. you can call me to account if you catch me do it again. now, i tell you where you need to apologize and make promises.)' such conversations are strictly out of the scope of pure form of F.N. in pure F.N no one ever acknowledges 'wrong doing' so that it can be played infinitely.

In my opinion.>>

Yes, AJ's manners are somewhat worse, but it's the same general idea - "you said something critical about me, so this isn't a dialogue, it must be a personal attack". Shrug. Too bad.

Everyone else: try not to pay so much attention to *personalities*, real or imagined.

Sure, people such as Annie and me can read 'em like a book -- remember books? But they're they're not what it's all about.

now frogbert is jealous but solution is easy - he can use what i do : (' yes you are right . that time i was wrong . i apologize for that and promise not to do it again. you can call me to account if you catch me do it again.'

frogbert could say that to tpstar.

now frogbert says that all the instances which tpstar enumerates of frogbert calling names to tpstar and others (or breaking rules in some other manner) are old. i don't know about that but i say that does not matter. the recipe i gave to frogbert would work nonetheless (only problem is it would require some self-awareness , integrity and honesty and that could be a real problem for some - for some other it won't be a problem however).

1) discuss me, neither with me nor with others

2) give unwanted "advice" about something you're clearly ignorant about

i said that if you want to know me, we need to talk with eachother. so far you've made no attempt at doing that. that you keep pitting me together with aj should make a red lamp start flashing, both for you and most others.

this exchange has been revealing, though. and exercises in contempt are never pretty.

dom, good luck with your remaining games. i'm sorry that your forum has become a courtroom where the defendant is facing unclear charges and the plaintiff and the judge have morphed into one. unlike what the plaintiff claims, nobody but the plaintiff raised the case.

the judge says: we will not hear you out, but we will convict you to receiving unwanted advice, because that's what you need. and you asked for it.

but i must courteously (pun intended!) decline the entire case; i'm not interested in being "heard out" in front of a jury, and i'm only moderately interested in receiving a set of meaningful charges (currently i've only seen character attacks based on questionable "evidence" not even presented to the court), and - again - the communication expert clearly has severe problems decoding my message. interestingly she even appears to dismiss the presence of the message she writes/sends between her own lines.

heh, sq.

well, rest assured that i certainly don't expect dom to "read up" on various controversies of the past 6-7 years. for moving forwards and improving the cg.com atmosphere it's probably futile and counterproductive, too.

she writes that i have:
<the characteristic of being utterly unable to accept any criticism. Which makes advice pointless.>

she claims i said:
<"you said something critical about me, so this isn't a dialogue, it must be a personal attack". Shrug. Too bad. >

here's my actual statement about personal criticism:

<if "personal criticism" can have the slightest chance of being constructive, then it requires an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect.>

does this rule out personal criticism? of course it doesn't - it says something about when such criticism can serve any (positive) purpose.

annie, there's literally a long list of "good advice" that i could offer you, both about specifics and more generally. based on the impressions i've got of you, limited to the arena of cg.com, i've formed several hypothesis about you - some probably right, some probably wrong. i consider you to have faults, like all humans, and i'm sure you would agree, too. not necessarily about specific faults, but generally.

however, i don't consider it my duty to lecture you about those views and opinions - unlike how you seemingly think it's on you to give me (and others, like just recently <dom>) advice on how to behave and what to write (or not).

i'm happy to discuss <concrete issues>, <concrete statements> and various topics with you and anyone (chess, cg.com atmosphere, us politics, whatever) <on an equal footing> when nothing else dictates that there should be a difference in expertise.

Some people can write well, and others can't. Some people for whom English is not a first language still do pretty well with it - except for the occasional nuance. Others wouldn't know a nuance if it whacked them in their sleep.

Yes, I can comment at great length on films that I haven't seen. Or on films that haven't been made yet. Some of my better reviews were written under such conditions.

Roger Penrose - physicist, mathematician, very bright guy, brother of ten-times British chess chamion Jonathan Penrose - wrote a couple of books about his thesis that quantum phenomena within microtubules inside braincells could, by providing a source for non-deterministic action, contribute to the emergence of consciousness.

This is the *only* 'quantum consciousness' theory of any merit, and it's almost certainly wrong. The books, eg 'The Emperor's New Mind' are well worth reading - some juicy maths and a primer in neuroscience, albeit less biological than Edelman and less philosophically subtle than Dennett. But only a hardcore Platonist could love his theory.

This is why the words 'quantum conscious(ness)' make my head ache. The two things have nothing to do with one another. Anyone who believes they do hasn't begun to grasp what at least one of them is about.

On looking at the wider universe, we can observe two entities that don't appear to run like clockwork: minds, and subatomic quantum phenomena. Their non-clockworkness doesn't mean there's a significant connection between them.

Some people claim there's a third non-clockwork entity in (or near) the universe. I disagree. As a Turkish friend of mine once sprayed on a wall in Istanbul, "God is a machine".

Oh, and my old philosophy professor believed in something called 'angels', and thought that all philosophical problems had been solved by Thomas Aquinas 700 years ago. He even expected students to write essays on Angelic Epistemology: what angels know, how they come to know it (lacking eyes and ears) and how it differs from 'human' and 'divine' knowledge.

Not a cutting-edge area, even for a philosopher, but we all have our little foibles. Should Old Aquinas be Forgot? Yes, absolutely.

So should a lot of other stuff. Or if not forgotten - which, by Santayana's Rule, would be an invitation to repeat it - then filed away and *not remembered very often*.

Repetition bores me.

If you look a few pages back she's called me all the name's under the sun, *clearly* violating the posting guidelines about no "personal" attacks against other users... I could go on, but this is Dom's place so i won't!

Just do what i do and ignore her, because she doesn't like that!

Hell, i was attacked just because iv'e never attacked her!!!

She says i hate her guts, yet she just doesn't affect me, so i find that laughable.. She says i'd be "in big trouble mentally" if i didn't hate her, so i guess i should be worried about the men in white coats coming for me (again) LOL...

Obviously. Any other result would have been mentioned earlier.

As far as ratings go, 2150 - in my experience - covers a multitude. Some players have this kind of rating without being significantly stronger than a 'typical' 1800 - in fact, I know some people with FIDE ratings around 2150 and national ratings around 1800. I could even, in theory, be one of them later this year.

On the other hand, *some* 2150 types are actually very strong: master strength, maybe slightly erratic or in decline, but capable of giving *anyone* a game.

This guy was one of the better ones. Beat me with a Reversed Dutch -- not simply Bird's Opening, but an actual Iljin-Zhenevsky with colors reversed. For once, I kept wishing I was White, even at the stage where I was still making 'good' moves and maybe even had a nominal advantage.

Of course, if *I* played 1.f4 people would reply 1...e5, and I'd get From's Gambit or a King's Gambit. Worth considering, even so.

At the sharp end of the tournament, Philip Short - who beat me in round 1 - then won his 2nd and game and drew with GM Baburin in R3. His reward? A *downfloat* to play legendary US IM John Donaldson.

Now *there* is an innaresting idea. Disease as a hobby, hobby as a disease...

The first is amateur nosology. Not particularly strange: I've heard of people who are into *albatross* nosology, and who collect data on instances of the placebo effect among aquatic seabirds in the southern hemisphere.

I'm also reminded a little of Hannibal Lecter, who collected church collapses recreationally. During earthquakes in Christian countries, the population would often rush to their best cathedral after the first tremors, thinking of god's house as a place of safety. Despite contrary evidence.

Indeed, cathedrals, being better-built than most houses, often survived that first shock. So even more people would crowd in to pray and give thanks. Then an aftershock brought the whole weakened edifice down on their heads.

The subject's permission is not required, nor can it be withheld or revoked. The only requirement is to stay within the rules. The relevant rule is the one saying 'no personal attacks'.

This is a grey area, because some people (we all know at least one example) will construe *anything* short of total brown-nosed grovelling as a personal attack. And that level of sensitivity just won't hold up as a practical norm: it could never work. So we have to be robust about this, and allow some tweezering.

That said, it's better not to accuse people of 'being' something nasty. Say that they have *acted* badly instead.

A Polish count, Korzybski, wrote an influential book - General Semantics - about this in the 1940s. His argument was that it's better to say 'as' rather than 'is' -- not "Einstein is a moron" but instead "Einstein can be seen as a moron".

Or, as my old chum Peter Greenaway used to put it, "There is a sense in which ..."

There's practically always a sense in which. And it doesn't accuse anyone of *being* anything.

<As far as ratings go, 2150 - in my experience - covers a multitude. Some players have this kind of rating without being significantly stronger than a 'typical' 1800 - in fact, I know some people with FIDE ratings around 2150 and national ratings around 1800.>

there are nearly no fide 2150-players with low national ratings in norway, but the few it applies to are typically men in their 50s and 60s who obtained that rating 20+ years ago and have hardly played fide-rated games ever since. they possibly even got their fide rating by some exceptional performance back when 2200 was the lower fide limit, making the rating unrepresentative even back then - and kept it only due to the limit being lowered to 2000 a few years later.

so i agree with the general notion - players in the fide 1900-2100 range are usually rather unpredictable, partly due to geographical differences, but mostly (i think) due to very low activity (in terms of fide games) for the majority of the players in this rating band. players with 2200+ ratings are more predictably strong and statistically they are also more active.

agreed. and regarding the latter, i think one should be <very specific> too, if one thinks it appropriate to point out any nastiness.

here's an example of a useless accusation that can never be anything but futile: "you always attack other people."

actually, any claim about anyone else which starts out "you always do ..." is both a) guaranteed to be false, and b) impossible to respond to in any meaningful way, both for obvious reasons.

markfinan, i'm not aware of much having gone on between us at all, actually. i've posted a couple of innocent comments in her forum and talked very briefly with her here, in dom's forum, on a few occasions, but other than that, not much.

i enjoy her pronunciation project, and i think i've mentioned that at least in the cg.com forum.

unlike what to seems to be annie's impression, i usually only start ignoring people <after numerous, failed attempts> of leading meaningful conversations with them - with "numerous" typically meaning a couple dozen or more. when i eventually choose that line of action, it has two primary effects:

1) peace of mind for myself, which i consider a good thing

2) the site is relieved of futile, non-constructive debates that nobody wants to read

i'm able to speak with most people about almost anything, and i don't easily give up on attempts to communicate. hence, i don't have any intention of starting to ignore annie simply due to the list of general, derogatory things she's managed to say about me today, either. she'll get several more chances to convince me that we can talk to eachother in an appropriate manner.

of course, people who don't want to talk to me at all, lose all credibility when it comes to accusing others of *ignoring* other people. "i'm going to tell you what you are and explain your mistakes, but i'm not going to listen to a word you say" is obviously <much worse than ignoring>. it's condescension and contempt too, which are both rather futile. in particular if one pretends to want to make a positive change of any kind.

<Everyone else: try not to pay so much attention to *personalities*, real or imagined.

Sure, people such as Annie and me can <<<read 'em like a book>>> -- remember books? But they're they're not what it's all about.>

<dom> in addition to a self-congratulatory tone here which doesn't look good on you, in the case at hand, your pronouncement is demonstrably false.

To be more precise- <Annie> had to elaborate again and again, using me as an example (which flew right over your head the first time), to get you to admit her point about <Mark's> "personality."

So no, you didn't read a personality like a book in this case. You did admit that <Annie> was right, after a painstaking (and painful to me) process of elaboration. If you had taken <Annie's> original post on this more seriously, and given it much, much more thought than you did, I doubt <Annie> would have found it necessary to use me as a counter-example. Which you *still* didn't understand.

This is an example suggesting that you "can't" read "personalities" like a book. Not <Mark's>, not <Annie's>. Like the rest of us, <dom>, you're at best making educated guesses. One of the reasons some of your recent guesses have been appallingly inaccurate is that you all too often neglect to consider another person's point seriously. All too often you reply "on the fly" with some artfully written gem that comes across as superficial or flip. In addition, recently it appears you don't do enough research or remember enough site history in order to "read" a "personality" with even passing accuracy.

Yesterday, your brief recapitulation of your friendship with <AJ> was imprecise to the point of disingenuousness. I remember the exact moment, the exact post, that set you against your new friend- someone posted the link to AJ's web page where he spews hatred against homosexuality. You then ostentatiously professed that you couldn't be friends with someone with such horrible opinions. This, despite the fact that you have repeatedly termed the teaching of religion to children as "child abuse," and yet continue to enjoy close, friendly relations with several witnessing biblical Christians, many of whom hold opinions on homosexuality very similar to AJ's.

More, AJ's opinions on homosexuality have been widely known, and widely distributed on site, for years now. You know what I think? I suspect you were already sick to death of <AJ> and used his hatred of homosexuals as a handy excuse to jettison him publicly, in a fashion that would forestall any accusations of you being a "fair weather friend."

jfq, in my opinion <anyone's claim> to be able to "read someone's personality like a book" only tells something about an error of judgement by the person making the claim.

<if you intended your bragging about being able to "read people like a book," here to be ironic, my apologies, but I don't find it that funny.>

This could be taken as an "ironic" pronouncement by me, but one that nonetheless retains the "ironic" self-praise.

Intact.

This "double game" becomes particularly obnoxious in the case of <self-referential> irony.

An episode of <30 Rock> features a narrative centered around criticizing "product placement" in TV shows.

As part of the narrative, the characters broadly flash <Snapple> products and praise them.

Get it?

anyway, i only made a guess about the possible use of irony - i didn't say that i considered his statement to be funny. maybe it wasn't even intended to be? given that the relevant "field expert" might be preparing for his next games by getting some rest & sleep, i guess that's about how far we get today.