Very true. But even years earlier my innate sense of danger kept me far away from the ... what apple? What dark side? Never heard of it, me. Can I go now?

I think it's safe to assume it's a winning position.> Yes. At 17 PLY my beast wants to play 21. Ne8 <Qa1>?? -- purely out of desp(e)aration...

And now it's me who is knackered -- G'night.

<The Suttles>--Ta

DOM

<the Game>-- Ta

brilliant! However, my <Shredder> disagrees with <Fritz> on this last point.

at 66,000 ply <Shredder> says "Only a Flesh Wound" for Black, and Play On!

<Dom> the sensation of winning a daring attacking game is in "real time" OTB.

What a computer, or Bobby "you spent 20 hours on THAT?" Fischer, says <post mortem>, is exactly that.

POST mortem.

If an Engine finds a refutation to a <Tal> positional sac, does that mean Tal's game was not "good," or not "bloody magnificent"?

Of course not.

And more-- Patzers (IE- everybody save a sainted few)--

If they are playing "in their range" they will experience sensations of playing a great game, but they know that "objectively" they really aren't.

However, "subjective feelings" also enjoy an "objective ontological status"-- VIZ- they "exist".

I take a dim view of what an Engine says after a game between humans.

Except for checking blunders, improving lines, learning how one went wrong, and for the purposes of subsequent litigation.

I hope that's cleared things up!!

(PS I don't know what I'm talking about- but that's not going to stop me from enjoying the Suttles links <mack> posted for me, and then going in to Yahoo to do Chess battle on this, my "day off.")

Stupid engines.

Steady on, steady on--

<Enough is enough. How many better moves must I be shown before I learn my lesson?>

There is only one lesson about "better" that means anything at all.

In a OTB situation, a "better" move is only ever one that results in you winning that game. Period.

You won. Ipso Fatso, you were better than him on this ocassion and all your moves were better.

ALL OTB GAMES results are

<post hoc, ergo propter hoc>.

Good Grief man take credit for constructing a beatiful and artful game and forget about what the Engines say.

Engines are clinical- they should NEVER affect your emotions or pride.

Mr. Spock would be upset if an Engine told him he was Illogical or "wrong".

But I wouldn't be.

Nor should you.

Definitely!

<After my game last night I said to somebody in the club that I thought I'd pulled a fast one by transposing into a Pirc. Oh no, I was told, he plays the Pirc regularly, especially this "anti-Flank-Opening" system with ...e5 and ...f5.>

I said here recently that the really impressive thing about Tal was, not so much the godlike combinations, but the ability to reach positions where such options are possible. And, somehow, I'm getting that bit right, whatever about the subsequent moves.

And "finding a mate" was never my strong point anyway. Heh.

Another thing: I took my opponent seriously all the way through, despite his lower rating. I must avoid the "anything will win" trap which leads to "crap, I resign".

As for Mr Spock ... yes, it's true, I aspired to be like him when I was younger. But his suspiciously close friendship with that platinum-coated idiot, James Tiberius Kirk, put me off ... as did those weird emotionally charged sexual episodes that Vulcans endure every seven years. I suspect that Vulcans were thought up by a Freudian deep in the coils of Repression Theory, the return of the Repressed, beneath the escape from the return to planet of the apes (part 7), etc.

Oops. Wrong sci-fi metaphor. But it's all the same, innit? Dick is Asimov on drugs, Lem is a commie Ballard, Dickens is a Victorian Pynchon [how did they get in here? - ed.], Gibson is, um, Chandler meets Kafka in Vancouver while listening to John Cale ...

Speaking of, um, putting things in their box ... have you heard about the new gizmo from Japan? Probably last year's fad in Korea. It's an electronic device that apparently reproduces the "pleasurable sensation of popping bubble wrap".

Hmm. It sounds suspiciously like <Telebilbonics> to me. These bubble wrap fetishists (cover your ears, children!) are moving into cyberspace, just like chessplayers did. They may even meet up there and spawn even stranger mutants.

I would advise against this. Coca-cola causes a sugar rush which leads to irrational decisions, and the "diet" variety is worse (a non-alcoholic drink named after a parliament - an oxymoron, surely?).

Cocaine, on the other hand, may have its uses ...

... but chess is not one of them. It turns people into Americans. If they happen to be Americans already, I'm not sure what they turn into, but it ain't pretty.

In fact the only *worse* drug where chess 'thinking' is concerned is LSD in large doses. Maybe other strong hallucinogens like Mescalin are similar. If you find yourself giggling and throwing your pawns at an invisible man-eating dartboard on the wall, you'll know you're in this general territory.

Most opponents take it as a resignation when you throw your pieces at the wall. Maybe Canadians are different, though.

[Yes, it's <Ethnic & Corporate Insult Day> here among the bullrushes. But these Nordamericanos are tough - they can handle it. One hopes.]

Bobby is speaking post mortem? Er, just to you, or has he gone on radio yet? Has he said anything about the communist bureaucracy on the Other Side, and which ethnic group might be in charge of running it?

Also of course opening the g-file, conceding the bishop pair (for them as likes 'em ... I'm not totally comfortable with the two-bish privilege myself) and giving black *two* h-pawns which can be successively lashed forward to their doom.

In practice, the bluff seems to work (or else my opponents read opening tomes that advise against Bxh6). Nobody has taken the knight against me yet, and it soon pops out to f5. Or, indeed, back to f7.

I think this might be post #9000 ... should I make a speech?

Definitely not just an openings thing, our man's mysterious method.

Hmm. I just realised that the last two games I posted here -- the other being that discussion of 12.Nf5!? in a King's Indian -- involved opponents playing ...Nf6 and promptly moving it again to play ...f5. And they both handed White the initiative in the process. Your theory is a good one.

There is one great musical hero who has remained unsung around these parts. We've given the nod to Dylan, Cale, Zappa, Beefheart, Cohen, Mitchell, The Fall and countless others. But please, believe me when I tell you that you need Will Oldham in your life. When I was a wee young thing my mother had a mysterious album on an ultra-crackly cassette simply entitled 'Palace Brothers'. No credits, no album name, no lyric sheet, nothing. Just a very blurry photo on the front and a tracklisting. I can remember it off by heart:

1. You Will Miss Me When I Burn
2. Pushkin
3. Come A Little Dog
4. I Send My Love To You
5. Meaulines
6. No More Workhorse Blues
7. All Is Grace
8. Wither Thou Goest
9. (Thou Without) Partner
10. I Am A Cinematographer

The album was a formative influence; it was not the sort of thing children to which children should be listening. 'Meaulines', for example, contains the lines:

'And he came by the way of a half-million murderers
And he came by the way of a long list of ironies
And he came by the way of the road to Sioux City
And he came by the way of the half-breeds and lesbians'

I still knew nothing about who was behind it though. I wasn't particularly convinced that there were any 'Brothers' involved, either: it seemed to be just one bloke with a guitar who really struggled hitting the simplest of notes.

Years later, The Internet was invented, and so I investigated. Turns out that the album is called 'Days In The Wake', but that Mr. Palace Brothers, a certain Will Oldham, had only thought of the title after it was released. I also discovered that, just like all my favourite bloody artists, he writes billions of songs under various different names. He went through a 'Palace' phase early on, recording as Palace Brothers, Palace Music, Palace Songs and just plain old Palace, as well as using his birth name. He's now settled upon Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, and he's still absolutely brilliant. Here are four samplers (all legit mp3s, by the way):

I Am A Cinematographer (Occasionally I tell myself that this is my favourite song of all time. The imagery, man!): http://hypem.com/track/349157

I See A Darkness (Probably Will's most famous song, seeing as it was covered by Johnny Cash on one of his American albums): http://hypem.com/track/496025

Little Boy Blue: http://hypem.com/track/380168

Death To Everyone: http://hypem.com/track/406738

In recent years he's done some incredible covers, too. Amazingly, each of the following is far, far better than the original:

The World's Greatest (R. Kelly) http://www.whokilledthemixtape.com/...

Senor (Dylan) http://www.thankscaptainobvious-mus...

Daniel (Elton John) http://goodvibrato.org/media/04%20D...

Puff The Magic Dragon http://www.foeweel.com/compilations...

Oh, I had expansions plans too. There's a 'Misery Hill' for Leonard Cohen fans, and a 'Lower Road' for members of the lower classes. But without direct marketing I was lost -- and I don't know *that* many miserable lower-class lesbians personally.

Right, um, <Meaulines> ... not got anything to do with that Frog novel, Le Grand Meaulnes, has it? I've never quite managed to finish it, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the eponym hadn't stuck an extra 'i' into his name, for sheer devilment.

Incidentally, isn't it fun to watch a whole generation of political leaders vanish more or less simultaneously? Blair, Howard and Chirac already gone, Bush and Putin next in line, while here on the island both Paisley (Irl, North) and Ahern (Irl, Rep of) have been persuaded to hand in their notice. Ahern's successor is one Brian Cowen, and I'm waiting for a scandal so I can call it Cowengate.

Also a get with a gat in his gut.

'Hamburger stands, but no @#$%ing hamburgers...'

<"Tomcat engine is down" was the message I got on screen when I clicked one of your 'musical' links. Where *have* you been hanging out? And *what* have you been hanging out?>

Oi, what's with the sarcastic quotation marks around 'musical'? Sure, he can't sing, or play guitar, and his songs make you want to kill yourself... but hey, it gives me hope that there's still a market for that sort of thing. Either way, I'm glad 'Tomcat engine is down' wasn't in fact the ultimate in-joke, one that nobody, not even yourself, properly understood. Tomcat engine is up-and-running just fine my end, I'll have you know.

Huzzah, 'Tomcat' - have I finally got myself a 'cool' nickname? It ain't no dino-nick, but it's a start.

<mack: I want good incest men>