Think I told you this, ackshully. I was playing an all-play-all tournament, where one other guy and me were on 100% against everyone else. They weren't very good, but this one guy was. And one of our games was sharp and double-edged, while the other was an obvious draw.

I suggested calling it a draw. He replied that we might as well keep playing, since we were corresponding anyhow. I agreed, mentally ticked it off as drawn, played a few autopilot moves, blundered, lost. Then I went wrong in the sharp one too. So he got to 100%, I came in 2nd, and learned that a game ain't over until the Rubensesque Prima Donna exercises her vocals.

I dunno. It's like people who play 800 poker games online. Lots of short and meaningless events. I like a chess game to have *substance* - though not necessarily in either the narcotic or the Rubensesque sense of the word.

Academic footnote: I see that the term 'Rubenesque' is preferred to 'Rubensesque', when referring to a BBW: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Be...

Can't think why - the guy's name was Rubens. He painted female persons of the ... generous and ample ... variety.

Lowry and El Greco did stringbeans.

What a linguistic minefield. At least chess lifts its euphemisms from furriners. Although I've seen several ex-soviet chess writers who are quite unreconstructed on gender issues: when they refer to the 'weaker sex' they actually seem to mean *women*.

And I thought 'weaker sex' was what hunger strikers did for protein.

Welcome, TD, o my brother and droog. You are now officially a member of the world's most misunderstood minority. They even misunderstand themselves.

But they're like that, innerleckshuals. Always complicating the simple things in life.

Except for the things that are *too* simple. Like, uh, amoebas. And that Lemming creature.

My first guess was "Nick took a scissors to his credit card".

Or maybe "Axe, and you shall be excised".

Without doing any deeper calculation, just "blitz mode" looking the position in your line after 18...Nxe5, I think I'd simply play 19.dxe5. Yeah, sure, the Nc5 is hanging, but if the Q takes it, there's Rc1 OUCH.

So then, 19.dxe5 Qxe5...? But then I have Nf3 with tempo, and I don't even lose the B.

Seriously, you were right all along about the incredible usefulness of an Ignore List. Right about dumping trolls straight into it. Life really is too short.

It took the latest verminous infestation for me to finally learn this.

Heh - the games I post here do tend to create an unfavorable impression, I suppose... but no, if I concentrate, I don't really think I actually won *all* of my games against it. I may even have lost a few, even after switching from b3 to a3 & b4. ;)

That Reshevsky-Vaganian game is insane. :s

<Can't think why - the guy's name was Rubens.>

Amen. :) *My* pet peeve in the artists department is the way Murricans - even some of the best of them, I noted - write Michaelangelo, instead of Michelangelo.

And some *gasp* even go so far as to write it as Michael Angelo. As in, first name and last name. Aaaaarggggh.

The man's name was Michelangelo Buonarrotti, OK?! Dammit!!

19.dxe5 ... aha, Black throws in 19...Bxb5 before recapturing on e5. So that if, say, 19.dxe5 Bxb5 20.Ncxe6 Qxe5 21.f4 Qe3+ 22.Rf2 Rd7 ... and White has essentially sacked a piece for an OK attack, but Black has counterplay. And a piece.

The Black minor pieces can get annoying, if you're White. They can block the c-file to stop pins on the Queen, or hit the Rf1, and even cover various forking squares. Plus there are several ways to create the mate threat on h2 -- simple Queen recapture, clearance sacs. Messy. Not where you want to be when you had an iron grip on everything a few moves earlier.

Although I do *enjoy* games like this.

;)

I can remember seeing Reshevsky-Vaganian back in the day, in one of my first chess magazines. It may well be the reason I play the French. I've had the chance to play Nxe5 sacs a few times, but I'm still waiting for somebody to take his or her King for a Sammy-stroll.

Ite and abite to meet one's people, as one does. Have you met them? The poor? Terribly nice, but of course they haven't two brass farthings ...

Wait, no, that's Robin Hood, innit.

It takes Nec.

I predict you are safe in your current office, however, considering that the Admins themselves gave you the title "Doyen of chessgames.com."

To my knowledge, in my four years of lurking about Frogspawn this is only your second mortal enemy that I've noticed. Do you remember your first?

Your first mortal enemy was chased off the internet- literally.

His Wikipedia page even got edited down to a stub, probably by Jimmy Webb himself.

I thought Jimmy Webb was the guy who wrote all those terrible songs for poor <Art Garfunkel's> first solo record, but <Howard> seems to think he runs Wikipedia. Maybe he does it in his spare time.

The very man who temporarily had you on ignore- <Whiteshark>- is the very same man you were racing to be the first to hit 10,000 posts.

Do you remember that? Me and <Niels> had some chess analysis going in my gaff at the time, and I kept reading and then deleting your posts to keep the analysis all connected.

So then you asked me "why are you doing that" and I said "to keep the analysis on the page" and then you said "but my post count keeps going in reverse" so I said "ok then posts ahoy"!

He was too boring to play with. And was being offensive to Niels, not to mention innocent bystanders from <Patriot> (who nicely stuck up for me) to <Chancho> (who seems to have been targeted for being clever).

Hmmm. Innaresting trolling strategy. Go to a chess site, abuse the clever people. Of course, we all know that they haven't got a "life".

Rot. I've got four lives, and Annie has nine.

<chancho> of course, stout fellow that he is, was one of the leaders who spent a great deal of research time exposing his perpetration of a hoax on Bobby.

But I wrote a response on the CG forum anyhoo, just to set the record straight.

Us spinsters gotta stick together, after all. I wonder why 'big words' (like 'marmalade' and 'corrugated iron') disturb these verbally challenged types.

Mixing up a suggestion of being 'like homophobia' and 'homosexuality' is like something out of Spinal Tap.

(The Reverend Arthur Belling is Vicar of St. Loony Up-the-cream-bun-and jam).

As I may have said, it seems seriously perverse to arrive somewhere like CG and attack the inmates for being clever.

We're chess players. We know all about the tragic futility of the great game. Brains that coulda been curing cancer or running empires, memorizing Najdorfs instead.

And we really don't need illiterate and abusive oafs with chips on shoulders about, well, everything.

And lemming did this repeatedly, not just with you, but also with Jess.

So good thing you addressed that at ceegee's queery page, heh, but if you'd blown your flute, the whistle-way, they would also have had to take action.

And you couldn't possibly have made such bilious remarks about Jessica.

If he's anyone's sock, I pity their feet.