|
< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 11 OF 49 ·
Later Kibitzing> |
May-23-09
 | | keypusher: <Benzol: <keypusher> Thanks. I finally managed to read it. Good article. Interesting to see what he said about Showalter.> Unfortunately Showalter proved him wrong when he got the chance to play in European tournaments. :-) Showalter did, though, give Harry all he could handle when they played a match. Later Pillsbury had bad results against Marshall. Maybe Pillsbury found it tough to play against New World opponents for some reason? |
|
May-25-09
| | keypusher: Length of time between first and last appearance at #1 at Chessmetrics: Kasparov
22 yrs 1 month September 1982-October 2004
Karpov
10 yrs. 5 months August 1974-January 1985 (but almost continuously #2 until 1997) Fischer
10 years four months Feb. 1964-July 1974
Spassky
7 mos. January 1966-July 1966
Petrosian
3 years 8 mos. May 1961-January 1964
Tal
7 yrs 10 months October 1958-July 1966
Smyslov
6 years 8 mos. January 1952-September 1958
Botvinnik
21 years 8 mos. September 1936-May 1958
Euwe
1 year 10 mos. January 1936-November 1937
Alekhine
20 years 6 mos. January 1924-July 1944
Capablanca
23 years 2 mos. May 1914-July 1937
Lasker
36 years 5 mos. June 1890-December 1926
Steinitz
23 years 8 mos. September 1866-May 1890
Others:
Keres
17 years 0 mos. July 1943-July 1960
Rubinstein
5 years 11 mos. May 1908-April 1914
Korchnoi
3 mos. September 1965-December 1965
Maroczy
2 years 5 mos. October 1904-March 1907
Tarrasch
0 years 0 months
Chigorin
0 years 0 months
Pillsbury
1 year 3 mos. Jan. 1903-April 1904 |
|
May-30-09
| | keypusher: Sympathy to Tarrasch's Einfluess [of] Glucksfaktors. Lasker seemed wobbly at Nuremberg. The losses aren't too bad: the Pillsbury game was one for the ages, and the Janowski game was a great battle that went to the attacker. The Charousek game was meaningless. The draws, with Maroczy, Walbrodt and Schlechter, were the sort of featureless "pass" games that cropped up even in Lasker's greatest tournaments. But a lot of the wins make you wonder. The win against Blackburne was classic Lasker, as was the victory over Steinitz. Lasker managed impressive hammerings on the black side of the Lopez against tail-enders Teichmann, Porges and Winawer. The win over Tarrasch was fine but Black was busted after 18 moves -- clearly Lasker had a lot of help. After that: Lasker really did have lost positions against Schiffers, Chigorin, Albin, Showalter and maybe Schallop. He was definitely worse against Marco. He showed enormous resourcefulness and psychological strength in winning every one of those games, but still...several of these opponents are simply not of the sort that should give Lasker so much trouble. So was this normal for Lasker?
At Hastings, he won 14, lost 4, drew three.
The losses were Chigorin, Tarrasch, Bardleben and Blackburne. None were classics, though the Chigorin game in particular was interesting. The Tarrasch game was lost via an uncharacteristic blunder. The draws were to Mason, Albin and Mieses. None were quiet. Against Mason Lasker made his other serious blunder of the tournament, overlooking a win of Mason's rook in two moves. He also blew what should have been a winning ending against Albin. Against Mieses, on the other hand, he evaded sure defeat. Now for the wins: Lasker-Marco (1) was shaky. Schlechter-Lasker (3) was very imposing, one of Lasker's best of the tournament. Bird-Lasker (5) was a crush. Now Lasker started rolling. Lasker-Janowski (6) was again a little wobbly in the opening, but extremely impressive thereafter. Pollock-Lasker (7) was a crush. Lasker-Walbrodt (8) was a crush. Lasker-Steinitz was another strategic masterpiece (9). Lasker -Gunsberg (11) was a crush. Lasker-Pillsbury (12) was a swindle -- one for the Glucksfactory. Lasker-Tinsley (13) was a crush. Lasker-Teichman (14) was when Lasker started to wobble again. Schiffers-Lasker (16) was a fine ending. Lasker had now scored 10 wins and two draws in his previous 12 games. Lasker-Vergani (18) was a walkover. But now came catastrophe: consecutive losses to Tarrasch and Blackburne. Burn (21) was somewhere between a crush and a swindle. So, of the wins, Pillsbury was a clear swindle. He had a dubious position against Marco and made questionable sacrifices against Burn and Teichmann. But that's it. So, it seems like his errors just had worse consequences at Hastings. |
|
Jun-03-09
| | keypusher: Tarrasch "retirement" from tournaments after Vienna 1898 (source: London 1899 tournament book); Tarrasch re-retirement? (source: Carlsbad 1907 tournament book); Lasker "retirement" from tournament chess after Cambridge Springs 1904 (source: Carlsbad 1907 tournament book). |
|
| Jun-08-09 | | Calli: Some new clippings in the Pillsbury file. Harry tells Rhoda how he plays blindfold exhibitions. :-) |
|
| Jun-09-09 | | Calli: Yes, just added. I put it on the Pillsbury page, However. this only "inspired" one of our inveterate cut and paste members to bury my post beneath a long list of uninteresting and commonly available data. Well, I may post the link over there again later.... :-} |
|
| Jun-11-09 | | nimh: Can you help me? Do you know when adjournments were used for the first time? And in addition, do you know of a good site including all data on time controls and adjournments used in all tournaments and matches throughout the history? |
|
| Jun-12-09 | | euripides: <Do you know when adjournments were used for the first time? > Depending on one's view of cosmic time, Genesis 1 might be a good source. |
|
| Jun-12-09 | | Open Defence: hehe good one :) |
|
| Jun-12-09 | | nimh: Usually, I don't like to consider offhand games by patzers. Things of true significance is what I care about. |
|
| Jun-16-09 | | myschkin: . . .
<key> undercover message: As a trainer, he started to work with young Mikhail Tal in 1949, and coached him through his meteoric rise from the mid-1950s. Most prominently, he coached him in his World Chess Championship matches in 1960 and 1961 against Mikhail Botvinnik. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexan...) |
|
| Jun-21-09 | | Calli: New collection Game Collection: Chess Matches on Google Books Finden Sie anderen Wettkampf auf Google Bücher? Let me know! Maybe it should be "Matches at Google Books"? |
|
Jun-24-09
 | | jessicafischerqueen: Hello <keypusher>:
I just wanted to thank you for the recent post you left on the <Fischer Player Page>. I couldn't agree more with every word you wrote.
Although I fear they fell on mostly deaf ears- which is a sad commentary on the CG.com community as a whole- at least you tried to talk some sense into the community. You really have my respect-
CG.com is much, much the richer for your posts.
Your staunch admirer,
Jess |
|
| Jun-27-09 | | Jim Bartle: Hi, KP. I think a while back you posted that you worked or had worked for major financial firms in New York. I just read the book "Liar's Poker" by Michael Lewis, about the 80s at Salomon Brothers. He depicted a world of cutthroat competition, not just among banks, or with (and against) SB clients, but among individual departments and traders inside the bank itself. It focused a lot on mortgage bonds, which Salomon had invented around 1980. It paints traders as wildmen, completely without morals, dedicated only to building up profits. It was a real eye-opener, and makes me wonder what's gone on at these investment banks the past years, and now at Goldman Sachs. Have you read the book? Does it reflect what you've seen? |
|
| Jun-27-09 | | Open Defence: interesting, though an audit firm is the place where morals come to die, at least the bankers did it for the money, the audit firms do it with a total lack of competence or accountability, the only things they are supposed to be paid for |
|
| Jun-27-09 | | Jim Bartle: My impression was that the Wall Street traders were acting with a minimum of supervision, and not worried about audits at all. |
|
Jun-28-09
| | keypusher: <Jim Bartle> I am a lawyer (second career; I was a foreign service officer for almost a decade) and I worked at a couple of the very large corporate law firms in the late 90s and early 2000s. (Now I am at a small firm, which is much more pleasant.) At my first firm we did an enormous amount of work for Goldman Sachs, and I was extremely impressed by their intelligence, their hard work and, for the most part, their ethics too. But I was dealing mostly with traditional investment banking services (mergers and acquisitions, offerings of big blocks of stocks and bonds) and proprietary commercial real estate investing rather than traders. I think traders everywhere on Wall Street are "wild men" for the most part. Maybe everywhere on earth (Open Defence, what do you say?). In Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe described the bond markets as "heaving crapshoots" and so of course it attracted people who liked playing in heaving crapshoots. The key thing is that you don't give the wildmen the power to bring the whole edifice of the bank where they work (or the entire edifice of international high finance) crashing down around their ears. But in 2008, that is pretty much what happened. I have various theories about why, but not enough knowledge to make my thoughts worth sharing. (I will say that it was not crazy investment bankers, but government irresponsibility, and in particular the irresponsibility of the Johnson and Nixon administrations, that turned the bond and currency markets into heaving crapshoots.) |
|
| Jun-28-09 | | Jim Bartle: Foreign service? Never posted to Peru, were you? I was a consular agent for the mountain climbing region for a number of years. Thanks. Yes, "Bonfire of the Vanities" dramatized a lot of what was in "Liar's Poker," though LP was wilder. The case of the "Giscard" was lifted straight from Salomon Brothers, apparently. In LP, the traders sneered at the investment bankers as wimps and posers in fancy suits. They thought the trading floor was where real men worked. Liar's Poker pointed to a decision by Paul Volcker at the Federal Reserve in 1979 as the key to making the bond market take off. Something about letting interest rates float rather than setting them, leading to bond prices fluctuating constantly. Can't remember the details. |
|
Jun-29-09
| | keypusher: Never Peru. I was posted in the D.R. back in the late 80s. The i-bankers I knew certainly weren't stuffed shirts or spoiled brats. They were driven, hard-working guys. I'll have to look at Liar's Poker. Volcker is generally revered by the sound-money types, so I would be amazed if he were the progenitor of the current madness. But maybe he is...Michael Lewis knows a lot more than I do. |
|
| Jun-29-09 | | Jim Bartle: Did you ever run into Roman Waselewski or Harry Thomas in the Foreign Service? Two of my closest friends from the US Embassy here, and Roman liked to play chess. |
|
Jul-01-09
| | keypusher: <JimBartle> Sorry, no. |
|
| Jul-06-09 | | Jim Bartle: Quote from "Liars Poker" about Paul Volcker's action in 1979: "...on October 6, 1979, Volcker announced that the money supply would cease to fluctuate with the business cycle; money supply would be fixed, and interest rates would float. The event, I think, marks the beginning of the golden age of the bond man...For in practice, the shift in the focus of monetary policy meant that iinterest rates would swing wildly...Before Volcker's speech, bonds had been conservative investments...After the speech, bonds became objects of speculation, a means of creating wealth rather than merely storing it. Overnight the bond market was transformed from a backwater into a casino." Lewis writes that Volcker was a big critic of the excesses of the 80s, and probably did not realize the impact his decision would have. |
|
Jul-10-09
| | keypusher: <Jim Bartle> thanks, I will have to look into that further. |
|
| Jul-14-09 | | Jim Bartle: I continue to read about the damage that short-selling causes. We discussed that a few weeks ago, and really, I still don't understand.
There are many really smart guys on Wall Street, right? Let's stretch a little and say I'm one of them. I see a company, one I believe to be strong and able to generate profits for the foreseeable future, being attacked by short-sellers trying to drive the stock price down and keep the company from getting credit and being able to function. It hits the company hard. Why don't I, as a junior Warren Buffett, wait for the right moment and buy up a large chunk of stock at a price well below what I think it's worth? And then build it up again while not selling any stock? |
|
| Jul-15-09 | | suenteus po 147: <keypusher> Re: Game Collection: Phillips & Drew Kings Chess Tournament 1982 I know this is long overdue, but I finally got around to checking out this tournament collection. The historical information is not only exemplary, but presented in a very entertaining and informative manner. Were you unable to find a crosstable to include, or are those not your style? Anyway, it looks great and now all three tournaments are completed! |
|
 |
|
|
< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 11 OF 49 ·
Later Kibitzing> |
Kibitzing
