Phony Benoni Member since Feb-10-06 · Last seen Jun-11-22 Greetings, O Seeker After Knowledge! You have arrived in Dearborn, Michigan (whether you like it or not), and are reading words of wisdom from a player rated 2938--plus or minus 1000 points. However, I've retired from serious play--not that I ever took playing chess all that seriously. You only have to look at my games to see that. These days I pursue the simple pleasures of finding games that are bizarre or just plain funny. I'd rather enjoy a game than analyze it. For the record, my name is David Moody. This probably means nothing to you unless you're a longtime player from Michigan, though it's possible that if you attended any US Opens from 1975-1999 we might have crossed paths. Lucky you. If you know me at all, you'll realize that most of my remarks are meant to be humorous. I do this deliberately, so that if my analysis stinks to High Heaven I can always say that I was just joking. As you can undoubtedly tell from my sparkling wit, I'm a librarian in my spare time. Even worse, I'm a cataloger, which means I keep log books for cattle. Also, I'm not one of those extroverts who sit at the Reference Desk and help you with research. Instead, I spend all day staring at a computer screen updating and maintaining information in the library's catalog. The general public thinks Reference Librarians are dull. Reference Librarians think Catalogers are dull. My greatest achievement in chess, other than tricking you into reading this, was probably mating with king, bishop and knight against king in a tournament game. I have to admit that this happened after an adjournment, and that I booked up like crazy before resuming. By the way, the fact I have had adjourned games shows you I've been around too long. My funniest moment occurred when I finally got a chance to pull off a smothered mate in actual play. You know, 1.Nf7+ Kg8 2.Nh6+ Kh8 3.Qg8+ Rxg8 4.Nf7#. When I played the climactic queen check my opponent looked at the board in shocked disbelief and said, "But that's not mate! I can take the queen!" Finally, I must confess that I once played a positional move, back around 1982. I'll try not to let that happen again.

Phony Benoni has kibitzed 18634 times to chessgames   [more...]

Jun-11-22 M Blau vs Keres, 1959    Phony Benoni: Not a good recommendation for the DERLD. Out of 59 moves, White makes only three in Black's half of the board. And two of those conist of 3.Bb5 and 6.Bxc6.      Jun-11-22 chessgames.com chessforum    Phony Benoni: Er, it's back. Karpov vs Timman, 1988      Jun-10-22 Orlo Milo Rolo   Phony Benoni: Marco!      Jun-10-22 Lilienthal vs Bondarevsky, 1947   Phony Benoni: Another one for you King Hunters. Black's monarch travels fron g8 to b8, then takes the Great Circle Route back to h3 before calling it a day.      Jun-10-22 GrahamClayton chessforum    Phony Benoni: <GrahamClayton> I've posted a question for you at L T Magee vs J Holland, 1948      Jun-10-22 L T Magee vs E L Holland, 1948    Phony Benoni: <GrahamClayton> The source you cite, <Chess Review, May 1948, p. 24>, gives Black's name as <E Holland> "Chess Life" (June 5, 1948, p. 1) has a table of results giving <E L Holland>. That form also appears in USCF rating supplements for a player fro ...      Jun-09-22 Biographer Bistro    Phony Benoni: SkinnVer Here Among the Fold?      Jun-09-22 Flohr vs Bondarevsky, 1947    Phony Benoni: Black's bishop makes me think of Godzilla emerging from the depths of the ocean to wreak havoc. However, in the end it's his Two Little Friends who steal the show. Well, maybe not so litt.      Jun-06-22 W Ritson-Morry vs G T Crown, 1947   Phony Benoni: it was the last round. Rison-Morry was mired in last place. These things happen.      Jun-06-22 W Adams vs M Kagan, 1947   Phony Benoni: Some more informztion. The game was published in <Chess Review>, March 1948, p. 23. Black's name is given as "M Kagan", and the location as "Massachusetts". There is no other game data, but I think we can now safely assume Black is <Milton Kagan>. Earlier in the ...

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Living in the Past

< Earlier Kibitzing  · PAGE 351 OF 914 ·  Later Kibitzing> Feb-11-12    Phony Benoni: <King Death> As it turns out, both Guillen and Griffin had a higher BABIP lifetime than their batting averages. Remember, home runs lower the BABIP, strikeouts increase it. Another example: Joe DiMaggio's lifetime batting average was .325, his lifetime BABIP only .304. Mickey Mantle's average was .298, his BABIP .328. The reason was Mantle's extra strikeouts; his additional home runs didn't compensate. Feb-11-12    King Death: <Phony Benoni> Obviously I was confused and the old time players (who were mostly contact hitters) must get hurt by BABIP especially in cases like Joe Sewell (who never struck out) and DiMaggio who didn't strike out much for a power hitter. Feb-11-12    Phony Benoni: <King Death> The whole idea of BABIP seems to be having a statistic with a constant baseline for comparison, but it turns out to have counter-intuitive and confusing implications. Feb-11-12    Jim Bartle: PB: I don't know if I expressed it poorly, but I meant to say those who strike out a lot would have a high BABIP. The higher percentage of your outs are strikeouts, the greater percentage of your balls in play are going to be hits. But I think we know some players tend to hit the ball hard on a line, and some tend to hit grounders or pop up a lot. They're not all the same. Feb-11-12    Jim Bartle: I guess another way to look at BABIP would be to calculate players' batting average if ONLY home runs and strikeouts are counted. A high BABNIP would mean a lower BABIP, probably lower than a player's batting average, right? So DiMaggio's BABNIP would be almost .500, and Ted Williams around .420. Tony Gwynn would be .230 and Carew .082. Much more interesting, in checking that I learned that the complete list of players whose names start with "GW" is Gwosdz, Gwyn, Gwynn, Gwynn and Gwynn. Feb-11-12    King Death: <Jim Bartle> Out of those 5 lucky players whose names started with "Gw" only Marcus Gwyn didn't play for the Padres sometime in his ML career. http://www.baseball-reference.com/p... Feb-11-12    Jim Bartle: Wow, that Gwyn didn't do too well. Pitched 5 innings in his career, gave up 7 runs, five walks and three homers. Feb-11-12    Phony Benoni: Gwyn's numbers may not look good, but he had a pitcher's BABIP of .300, below the league average of .303. They probably got rid of him because he was due for a bad stretch. Feb-11-12    Shams: Nixon was a true football fan: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co... Feb-12-12    keypusher: As I understand it, BABIP is a tool better employed for evaluating pitchers, not hitters. It is among pitchers that BABIP tends not to vary a lot; among hitters (as several of you have pointed out) it varies much more. According to the people who look at this stuff, if a pitcher has a very good year with a low babip, he's probably not going to be as effective next year. Quoting wikipedia: <BABIP is commonly used as a red flag in sabermetric analysis, as a consistently high or low BABIP is hard to maintain - much more so for pitchers than hitters. Therefore, BABIP can be used to spot fluky seasons by pitchers, as with other statistical measures, those pitchers whose BABIPs are extremely high can often be expected to improve in the following season, and those pitchers whose BABIPs are extremely low can often be expected to regress in the following season.> More about BABIP than you would ever want to know: http://sports.espn.go.com/fantasy/b... BABIP seems to be a number that helps you evaluate other numbers, like batting average or ERA. It's not necessarily a stand alone, especially for completely different kinds of hitters. If you're trying to compare Rod Carew and Ted Williams, BABIP is not going to tell you a lot. Feb-12-12    keypusher: A primer on the state of the art in sabermetrics in 2010 http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page... Feb-12-12    Jim Bartle: The idea that BABIP helps to evaluate pitchers makes sense. That would be because they face a great many hitters, the sample size is large and so all the different hitters get lumped together. So if a high number of the balls in play fall for hits one year, among all batters faced, it would be reasonable to think that was at least partly luck, and if a particularly large number of hit balls were turned into outs, it seems likely more would fall in for hits the next year. Feb-12-12    Jim Bartle: Oh man, is there a room somewhere where Bill Simmons has locked in every editor ever sent to look at what he's written, sort of like the Monty Python milkmen? I don't think he's ever written one sentence when two or three could serve just as well. (A written version of Rachel Maddow.) Having written that, his story on the baseball stat world is just great! At least the opening section before he gets to analyzing each individual new stat (like OPS and WAR), which is all I've read so far. He gets right at the good and the bad of this stat revolution. I've liked Bill James since a friend showed me the 1984 abstract, I think largely because he combined analysis of statistics with actually watching and enjoying the games. Plus he was a fun writer. But he sure did encourage a lot of pedantic, insufferable followers. They're everywhere. Now I'm going to print out the whole thing, and the next time I can't sleep during a long night in the mountains, I'll read it by headlamp, or maybe pull it out on a long bus ride. Feb-12-12    keypusher: <Shams: Nixon was a true football fan: > Shams, thanks, what a fascinating article! Lot of surprising things in there, but the strangest thing to me is that the NFL used to black out sold-out playoff games. Maybe Pete Rozelle was less of a genius than I thought. <Jim> Now that he's got Grantland, I guess Simmons is his own non-editor. I guess he would say the old word limits were an artifact of limited space in newspapers and magazines. Feb-13-12    WannaBe: How about this for upside-down world, UNLV and San Diego State are in the top 25, so is WCC powerhouses St. Mary and Gonzaga. Pac-12, not a single team, nil, nada, zilch! Feb-13-12    Jim Bartle: I grew up about two miles from St. Mary's, a tiny college with a small gym, seats only on one side. We used to play there three or four nights a week, pickup games. To think they have a team in the top 25 now. (Though when we were in high school the Warriors starting forward Tom Meschery was a St. Mary's alum. An excellent player, though not quite as good as the other forward.) Feb-13-12    Phony Benoni: A list of players who homered in their last major league at bat: http://www.retrosheet.org/Research/... Ted Williams is surely the most famous, of course. Mickey Cochrane appears to be the only other Hall-of-Famer on the list; his career-ending beaning came on his next trip to the plate. The only grand slam is the notorious Kendry Morales walk-off incident, when he broke his leg jumping into the celebratory pile at home plate. One of the more interesting ones is Gregg Olson. Yes, the relief pitcher. He appeared in another 160 games after his home run, but never got another chance to hit. Feb-13-12    Jim Bartle: Maybe not Hall of Famers, but some very good players on that list: Joe Rudi, Albert Belle, Willie Aikens, Todd Zeile, Ray Lankford, Jim Edmonds. Feb-13-12    WannaBe: Isn't Willie Aikens on American Idol? Or am I thinking of that QB that played for Oklahoma/UCLA and the Cowboys?? Won a few SuperBalls, so I heard. Feb-14-12    WannaBe: Another athelete gone broke. http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/dis... Feb-14-12    playground player: <WannaBe> Is that Willie Mays Aikens, who played for the Angels 25 or 30 years ago? The same Willie Aikens who came out of rehab and told reporters, "I still like drugs"? Give the man an A for candor. Feb-14-12    Jim Bartle: Bill James always wrote more than usual about KC players, and year after year he seemed to write what a great hitter Aiken was, then go into detail about his horrendous fielding. Feb-14-12    Jim Bartle: How can a guy like Iverson blow $150 million? Plenty of other cases as well, such as Jack Clark (I think) plus of course lots of boxers. Feb-14-12    WannaBe: <JB> Iverson kept on investing $20 in <technical draw>'s ponzi scheme. Feb-14-12    technical draw: <<JB> Iverson kept on investing $20 in <technical draw>'s ponzi scheme.> Har-dee-har-har-har, <WannaBe>,.....Be advised my investment portfolio has increased in value 670% during my time at chessgames. Ponzi schmonzi, I own Wall st.. Jump to page #   (enter # from 1 to 914) search thread:    < Earlier Kibitzing  · PAGE 351 OF 914 ·  Later Kibitzing>

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