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1) I played 43...Nh4+, but 43...Ne1+ also wins. How?

After 43...Ne1+
44.Kf1

Any other legal move is MATE IN ONE.

44...Qh1+ and King is flushed to second rank and Rook comes to check it

ROOK TO C2 CHECK.

White only has suicide chess to prevent mate which is also forced here- there's no perpetual for White no escape.

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If

43...Nh4+
44.Kh3

Then

44...Qg2+
45.Kx4 Qxh2+
46.f5+

And this has to be forced mate too, since King is out in open and Rook can play too now.

Do I win a bun?

White only has suicide chess to prevent mate which is also forced here- there's no perpetual for White no escape.>

This is also mate. After 46...Rc2+ 47. Rd2:

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Then 47...d3+ 48. Ke3 Qf3+ 49. Kd4 e5#!

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<If

43...Nh4+
44.Kh3

Then

44...Qg2+>

That's what I'd planned, although stockfish prefers 44...Qf5+, which also wins. Many roads lead to Rome at this point.

<45.Kxh4 Qxh2+
46.f5+

And this has to be forced mate too, since King is out in open and Rook can play too now.>

This wins as well, but I had planned 45. Kxh4 g5+ 46. Kg4 h5+ 47. Kxh5 Qh3+ 48. Kg6 Qf5+:

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and now 49. Kh6 Qh7# or 49. Kh5 g4+ with mate on the next move.

<Do I win a bun?>

Absolutely.

<How excellent a position to get <Big Tuna>- this is living proof that correspondence chess is a lot of fun, contrary to what I say about it all the time.>

But there are scads of forced wins here, no escape or counterplay for white unless Black plays a howler or three.

Thanks for the bun <Big>! A tuna bun, I'm assuming. With pepper and mayo.

Yes it was the becoming obsessed with the positions that wore me down- that's why I quit.

It rattled my nerves too much- with a hefty time control of three hours etc. there's always going to be that release of tension one way or another, but with correspondence it just goes on and on.

I don't know how you and <Deffi> do it.

WOMEN/MEN OF IRON BOARDS OF PIXILS.

Btw on the topic of buying stuff from Amazon- did you know that there is no "high end" anything for sale in Korea?

There's no market for high end goods here because the middle class doesn't have the buying power.

So you get <samsung> selling their high end gear solely to North American and European markets.

Literally- they don't sell it here.

Luckily, the Amazon rain forest of goods and services has no boundaries.

Except I don't trust any of the sellers to get my school's address right with English letters for Korean words, so I have to get my Mom to re-mail it.

She knows how to write the address properly.

I don't trust strangers.

Or foreigners!

Which is why I went to a place where *I* am the foreigner.

However you like it.

<Yes it was the becoming obsessed with the positions that wore me down- that's why I quit.

It rattled my nerves too much- with a hefty time control of three hours etc. there's always going to be that release of tension one way or another, but with correspondence it just goes on and on.

I don't know how you and <Deffi> do it.>

I think one key in CC is finding out what gameload works for you. Too few games and you obsess over them. Too many and your play suffers. I do have the occasional game that grabs my imagination and sucks up time, but mostly I have to fight against making inattentive moves when I come back to games because I've been off dealing with all the other stuff going on.

<Btw on the topic of buying stuff from Amazon- did you know that there is no "high end" anything for sale in Korea?

There's no market for high end goods here because the middle class doesn't have the buying power.

So you get <samsung> selling their high end gear solely to North American and European markets.>

Not Japan, or do they only want domestic brands there?

<Except I don't trust any of the sellers to get my school's address right with English letters for Korean words, so I have to get my Mom to re-mail it.>

It's always good to have another set of fingerprints on suspicious packages.

<I don't trust strangers.

Or foreigners!

Which is why I went to a place where *I* am the foreigner.

It was all part of the plan...>

I got one of those "Viagra" e-mails this morning. (Its 06:47 AM right now in Pensacola.)

From me, to me.

Only problem is that I did not send it.

I'd give money to know how these spammers accomplish such a trick. (I wish the police would put people like that in jail. Several friends got this e-mail as well.)

They've become very sophisticated. Note how they can even get AJ - of all people - to send viagra emails to himself and then *erase his memory* of having done so.

It was a secret message - an anagram of 'do sixteen nines'. According to the wikitionary:

(computing) Used to specify a system's expected uptime or availability as a proportion of total time, such as five nines for 99.999%

so I expect your assigment is 99.99999999999999% in something

Anyhow ... I'm sure you've noticed how 99.99% of people who talk about "99.99% of people" have no idea that they're allowing an exception per every ten thousand cases. Or a thousand exceptions each in London and New York ...

Or Graham's number, probably one of the few numbers so big you first need to read-up on the notation - let alone the application :D

<"no sex inside net" (sign found at Wimbledon in tiny spider-writing?)>

Also odd: having two distinct and more-or-less simultaneous conversations with the same person in almost-real time in two different 'places' ... I wonder how many such channels a person could keep open? Five? Ten? 64?

Prob'ly depends on one's Temporal Bandwidth.

Which reminds me:

<Proverbs for Paranoids:
1. You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures. 2. The innocence of the creatures is in inverse proportion to the immorality of the Master. 3. If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers. 4. You hide, they seek.
5. Paranoids are not paranoid because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, @#$%* idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.>