While being wrong about facts can be embarrassing, I consider that far less significant than displaying faulty understanding.

Particularly so, if the post is made late at night, the fact is based upon something one read years ago, and you don't bother to check the sources...

So, <frog> do you have <any> examples of really embarrassing CG mistakes (not posting late, not facts read long time ago, not a typo)??

right. or rather, the <best> local maxima (or "peaks") - the ones i considered relevant at the time. (i also mentioned that in my carlsen page posts yesterday, btw.)

<In that case, your original statement should have qualified them as such. The word 'peaked' without a qualifying statement obviously means the one,>

... or maybe it was less obvious when i gave <two> values, applying to both of them?

anyway, i agree that i could've been (much) clearer, but not that it was obvious (in its context) that i was referring to a single peak.

also, i guess you agree that it also <was> an option for you to ask why i said 4th-5th when both had been 4th at best, right? at least it would've yielded much of the debate between you and alexmagnus superfluous, if i would've explained what i meant prior to your discussion about how my statement should be interpreted, logically :o)

<please keep it simple by answering only those of my posts that are addressed to you>

well, since in this case i was the "suspect" for having done the mentioned "fact twisting", i felt it sort of applied to me, regardless. but in general i don't mind complying with your request.

Not really. You see, not being such a rating nerd as you, I don't quite remember off-hand what was Leko's rating best. So when you said in that very post that Leko was 4th at his best, naturally I believed you. Notice how you did not say anything about Svidler's best. Then you go on to say that they both peaked at 4th-5th so naturally it follows that you must have thought of Svidler being 5th at best.

We can argue about that till the end of the world if you're so inclined and still these incontrovertible facts remain cast in stone.

<so the curve is basically pointing in the right direction!>

I know everything about Svidler's progress thank you ;)

<best of luck to him. :o)>

dcp23, you of course mean "naturally" as in that was naturally the way you reasoned, right? :o)

<It's rather lopsided as you know at the moment>

make me (frogbert) your only "favourite" in your settings, make one search for "admit" and one for "correct", only searching among your favourites (that would now mean posts by me, of course). then post the 10 first links (to posts) each of those two searches yields. i don't like the way multi word searches work here.

i haven't got access to the search feature myself, and i won't bother to check without a prior search. but i can dig through the results. even faster for you (than copying those links to a post and posting it), would be simply to take the source code of the resulting html page of each search (the first page) and send to me via email.

Right. That would be the way 90% of people reason too however.

<luckily (for me), i only count classical games, hehe :o)>

Now that you mention it, wasn't Aker Chess Challenge where Svidler spanked Carlsen rapid too? That means that Carlsen has NEVER, ever, beaten Svidler at classical chess! Wow!

That must be twice as painful to you frogbert if you only count classical chess.

classical
+1 -0 =6 (+1, 7 games)

(tal 2006, corus 2007, linares 2007, ecc 2008, aerosvit 2008, baku 2008)

blitz
+2 -2 =0 (equal, 4 games)

(wc 2006, tal 2008, aker playoff 2009)

rapid
+2 -1 =4 (+1, 7 games)

(match 2006, amber 2007, aker 2009)

blindfold
+0 -0 =1 (equal, 1 game)

<That must be twice as painful to you frogbert if you only count classical chess.>

painful? :o) not at all - i think carlsen's record against svidler is entirely respectable, actually. and i'm generally not pained by results or records, no matter what people might think!

so, there's a rapid match where svidler beat carlsen with a very interesting and strong novelty in his white game, while carlsen was 16 and ranked 30th in the world, while svidler was 30 and ranked 5th in the world. doesn't pain me at all. :o) when kramnik and svidler apply some of their novelties to beat carlsen in rapid games, i'm quite happy, actually - i consider it a sign of respect.

and the only classical win svidler has over carlsen, was when carlsen had just turned 16 (january 2007) and played his (2nd ever and) so far worst super-gm event, at least in terms of results (+0 -4 =9). svidler won a nice game, and unfortunately so did a couple other opponents of carlsen too.

but i think corus 2007 was a very useful experience for carlsen, and like everybody knows, he struck back in linares 2007, with an amazing debut for a 16 year old.

so -1 +0 =6 against a quality player like svidler, when facing him the first time as early as at 16 is no problem for me as a carlsen fan, and i doubt it is for carlsen either.

<correction!>:

blitz
+3 -2 =1 (+1, 6 games)

(tal 2006, wc 2006, tal 2008, aker playoff 2009)

oh no, that's <completely devastating> - +6 -3 =11 in 20 games ...

Well, I made a search for <admit>, and browsed through it, <all> false positives as far as I could see! Then I made a search to see if I was any better... not much, just this one:

<Ouch... that K=24 look awfully familiar! I should have gone to bed... I bet this will get worse. :-(

It's some time ago I read that chessbase article of Sonas, and I must admit that it went rather quickly...>

making all kinds of excuses for suggesting Sonas said K=30 was best! lol

We both suck big time at using <admit>, but your page count of false positives was a whopping 6. Your page count on using <correct> was 16, so I didn't bother going through all that, but the two first pages was all false positives.

OK, I called your hand!

Unless, you can come up with at least 2 such examples, you are BUSTED bluffing here and now. :D

i guess this one doesn't really count:

Nope, having a wrong impression doesn't count. Try again.

Note that, you need to provide <several examples>, for this statement to be considered correct:

<there are several examples (also on cg.com) where i clearly admit to being wrong about something.>

This is where we agree -- it IS pretty much devastating, yes.

---

Jan-26-09
*[euripides]: 'As I said' is more 'correct' in written British English than 'like I said', basically because 'like' is a preposition rather than a conjunction. 'Like I said' reads colloquially to my eyes. This may be different in America, though I don't think you'd find it in formal prose there either.

In "rolfo's mix-up of don't and doesn't, shows (that) he doesn't understand english grammar", the insertion of a comma between a noun clause and the verb it controls looks ugly to me.

Jan-26-09
*frogbert: [...]

yeah, i removed the "like i said" thingy because i discovered that my intuition was wrong. some expert on business writing even strongly claimed that "like i said" is <wrong>, even if it surely is used a lot (according to google).

the comma in the mentioned example does probably also border to being "wrong", not simply "ugly". :o) thanks!

---

i corrected an english idiom in a post of slomarko, only to find out (by googling _and_ by being corrected by euripides) that slomarko was right and i was wrong.

also, i even "upgraded" euripides' judgement of a comma of mine as being "ugly" to being "wrong" myself - and thanked him for pointing out my mistakes. :o)

---

Apr-10-08
*[frogbert]: i was wrong in my assumptions about the pairings - obviously my knowledge of swiss pairings wasn't too good (i was wrong about how point groups with odd numbers were treated), but last night i got a short introduction to the most important principles by ia lahlum. :o)

---

That was over a year ago! lol.. digging deep now!

Normally, for the rest of us mortals, I wouldn't approve e.g. a typo. Even so, you got the first example bagged because of your extraordinary pedantic nature and that you tried correcting <slo>. I remember thinking to myself at the time, what a <red face> you must have! :)

But this last example??

c'mon, who the heck know how <Swiss pairings> work? Yeah, exactly someone like Lahlum! If I am gonna approve that one too, you must admit getting a serious <red face> at the time, but still, why should you have a clue about how Swiss pairings work, unless having looked into it?

Making wrong assumptions lead to flawed software indeed, but crappy software is nothing new. If you guys had been making nuclear plants, buildings and bridges instead, the mob would have finished off most programmers years ago! I can't think of any branch of engineering, where so bad quality can pass, and it's a bottomless pile of it!!

To my mind, this last example of yours -- was just doing a wrong guess, and that is something we (except you) do all the time. However, strictly speaking you are home free on this statement:

<there are several examples (also on cg.com) where i clearly admit to being wrong about something.>

but <not> by the intent of it, i.e. providing an example of the impression you deliberately tried to give!

And what about the incident you tried to correct Me on a probability assumption <zarg>? That should be very easy for you to remember..

You wrote this:

Magnus Carlsen

That I corrected you with this:

Magnus Carlsen

And judging from your answer here:

Magnus Carlsen

My guess is that your face did change colors, but maybe it wasn't just Red, I don't know.. I suspect your sleep was a bit uncomfortable then as well, I mean being such a pedant on science topics and all..