Phony Benoni Member since Feb-10-06 · Last seen Jun-11-22 Greetings, O Seeker After Knowledge! You have arrived in Dearborn, Michigan (whether you like it or not), and are reading words of wisdom from a player rated 2938--plus or minus 1000 points. However, I've retired from serious play--not that I ever took playing chess all that seriously. You only have to look at my games to see that. These days I pursue the simple pleasures of finding games that are bizarre or just plain funny. I'd rather enjoy a game than analyze it. For the record, my name is David Moody. This probably means nothing to you unless you're a longtime player from Michigan, though it's possible that if you attended any US Opens from 1975-1999 we might have crossed paths. Lucky you. If you know me at all, you'll realize that most of my remarks are meant to be humorous. I do this deliberately, so that if my analysis stinks to High Heaven I can always say that I was just joking. As you can undoubtedly tell from my sparkling wit, I'm a librarian in my spare time. Even worse, I'm a cataloger, which means I keep log books for cattle. Also, I'm not one of those extroverts who sit at the Reference Desk and help you with research. Instead, I spend all day staring at a computer screen updating and maintaining information in the library's catalog. The general public thinks Reference Librarians are dull. Reference Librarians think Catalogers are dull. My greatest achievement in chess, other than tricking you into reading this, was probably mating with king, bishop and knight against king in a tournament game. I have to admit that this happened after an adjournment, and that I booked up like crazy before resuming. By the way, the fact I have had adjourned games shows you I've been around too long. My funniest moment occurred when I finally got a chance to pull off a smothered mate in actual play. You know, 1.Nf7+ Kg8 2.Nh6+ Kh8 3.Qg8+ Rxg8 4.Nf7#. When I played the climactic queen check my opponent looked at the board in shocked disbelief and said, "But that's not mate! I can take the queen!" Finally, I must confess that I once played a positional move, back around 1982. I'll try not to let that happen again.

Phony Benoni has kibitzed 18634 times to chessgames   [more...]

Jun-11-22 M Blau vs Keres, 1959    Phony Benoni: Not a good recommendation for the DERLD. Out of 59 moves, White makes only three in Black's half of the board. And two of those conist of 3.Bb5 and 6.Bxc6.      Jun-11-22 chessgames.com chessforum    Phony Benoni: Er, it's back. Karpov vs Timman, 1988      Jun-10-22 Orlo Milo Rolo   Phony Benoni: Marco!      Jun-10-22 Lilienthal vs Bondarevsky, 1947   Phony Benoni: Another one for you King Hunters. Black's monarch travels fron g8 to b8, then takes the Great Circle Route back to h3 before calling it a day.      Jun-10-22 GrahamClayton chessforum    Phony Benoni: <GrahamClayton> I've posted a question for you at L T Magee vs J Holland, 1948      Jun-10-22 L T Magee vs E L Holland, 1948    Phony Benoni: <GrahamClayton> The source you cite, <Chess Review, May 1948, p. 24>, gives Black's name as <E Holland> "Chess Life" (June 5, 1948, p. 1) has a table of results giving <E L Holland>. That form also appears in USCF rating supplements for a player fro ...      Jun-09-22 Biographer Bistro    Phony Benoni: SkinnVer Here Among the Fold?      Jun-09-22 Flohr vs Bondarevsky, 1947    Phony Benoni: Black's bishop makes me think of Godzilla emerging from the depths of the ocean to wreak havoc. However, in the end it's his Two Little Friends who steal the show. Well, maybe not so litt.      Jun-06-22 W Ritson-Morry vs G T Crown, 1947   Phony Benoni: it was the last round. Rison-Morry was mired in last place. These things happen.      Jun-06-22 W Adams vs M Kagan, 1947   Phony Benoni: Some more informztion. The game was published in <Chess Review>, March 1948, p. 23. Black's name is given as "M Kagan", and the location as "Massachusetts". There is no other game data, but I think we can now safely assume Black is <Milton Kagan>. Earlier in the ...

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Living in the Past

< Earlier Kibitzing  · PAGE 581 OF 914 ·  Later Kibitzing> May-07-14    hangingenprise: phony: tomorrow the lions finally get the c.b. they have needed for the past 4 years. reggie will trade down and take the qb from pitt! May-07-14    WannaBe: Good homes for sale, may need a little work. http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/07/rea... May-07-14    WannaBe: Interesting read... http://espn.go.com/nfl/draft2014/st... May-09-14    hangingenprise: Phony: is the lions tight end that bad they needed to take one in the draft? May-09-14    WannaBe: Funny story at the bottom of this article, regarding the fastest professional baseball game: http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/1... Not sure if it's the construction of the base that is at fault, or people just don't know how to slide anymore... http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/1... May-09-14    Phony Benoni: Here's the quickest nine-inning major league game, at 51 minutes: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archiv... Apparently, there was no hanky-panky. The time of the second game was not recorded. May-09-14    WannaBe: Apparently there was a close no-no tonight... I didn't even need to jinx it! May-10-14    Phony Benoni: Seems that Yu Darvish was one out away f rom a no-hittier again, With David Ortiz of the Red Sox up, the Rangers shifted the entire team, including the batboy to the right side of the infield. Didn't work. Ortiz managed to hit a single through the shift. http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?c... May-10-14    playground player: <Esteemed Baseball Mavens> I have a baseball question to which I don't know the answer. The best I can manage is, I think, a good guess--which I will reveal after I see what some of your guesses are. Who has the biggest gap in quantity between the most home runs he ever hit in one season, and the second-most? May-10-14    Phony Benoni: Off the top of my head, I'd guess Brady Anderson: he hit 50 one year, but never came close to that again. Let's look him up: OK, his second best was 24, so that's a gap of 26. Luis Gonzalez is another candidate: Best 57, second best 31, also a gap of 26. Roger Maris sprang to mind, but he had 39 in 1960 so that's only a gap of 22. Davey Johnson? No, his two best were 43 and 18, a difference of 25. Perhaps that's the non-steroid record. May-11-14    playground player: Any other takers for this question? May-11-14    Jim Bartle: No idea. Barry Bonds' second highest was 49. Probably would have been higher if he hadn't been walked so much, or he swung more often or at bad balls. May-11-14    OhioChessFan: Brady Anderson was the first to come to my mind. I have some suspicions about the year with 50, which interestingly enough was the last year of a contract. A jerk I can't stand happened to win a Fantasy Baseball League I was in that year, helped greatly by Anderson's ridiculous HR totals. May-12-14    playground player: Brady Anderson was my guess, after I ruled out Roger Maris. <But Pho knows baseball!> I had completely forgotten about Davy Johnson in 1973, in his first year at the Launching Pad. The Steroid Era, plus bullpen by committee, quality starts, and stadiums named for sponsors, drove me out of contemporary baseball. But my passion for baseball history has, I think, increased. The deeper I advance into the present, the better the past looks. May-12-14    Phony Benoni: Another change: The Barry Bonds Treatment. Had it been around, Wally Berger would have gotten in in 1935. That year, Berger hit 34 home runs and knocked in 130. Excellent numbers, but not eye-popping--until you look at the rest of the team. Second in home runs was Babe Ruth with 6--and he retired at the end of May. The second best RBI total was 60. http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/... Were Berger around today, he would probably be known at "Four-Pitch Wally", May-13-14    Phony Benoni: Here's an example of a catcher being forced to block the plate in order to catch a throw. Whether it is legal is apparently a judgment call: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article/chc... May-13-14    Jim Bartle: That's a really close one. But Molina clearly did block the plate without the ball. What choice did he have? Let the throw go to the backstop? May-13-14    Phony Benoni: I think it's a good example of why the exemption is in the rule. At first, Molina is in proper position; he does not move into the baseline until it is clear that the throw is offline. Even then, he's not blocking the line in the traditional manner. May-14-14    playground player: <Phony Benoni> Wally Berger hit 38 home runs in 1930, his rookie season. He kept up that pace until he was traded midway through the decade, and never came close to those power numbers with any other team. As for why he didn't get unlimited intentional walks--well, maybe pitchers in that era didn't like intentional walks. Certainly they weren't afraid of anybody else in the Boston Braves' lineup. I've always wondered how Babe Ruth could have drawn so many walks with Lou Gehrig batting next. Then there was Yogi Berra, who swung at a lot of bad balls. In 1950, in 597 at bats, Yogi hit .322 <<and struck out only 12 times>>. Can you imagine that? May-14-14    Jim Bartle: This is just a guess, but maybe Berra and DiMaggio struck out so little because there were no knee-high pitches which dove to the dirt as they approached the plate back then, the split-fingered fastball and similar pitches. May-14-14    WannaBe: More NCAA Compliance... http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf... May-14-14    perfidious: Braves Field was known as a park which clearly favoured the pitcher--though somewhat less so than usual in '35--making Berger's numbers in Boston even more impressive. Trouble was, the 1923 model of Ruth and the 1927 line of Gehrig could not have saved that team from disaster, so putrid was their pitching. Their, ah, ace was Fred Frankhouse with eleven wins and an ERA of 4.76, while Bob Smith managed eight wins and 3.94 (ERA+ of 96, clearly the best of the regulars) as a swing man. Four other pitchers got nineteen or more starts and only Ben Cantwell (4-25) managed a sub-5.00 ERA. The 1935 Braves have made every list I have ever seen for worst teams of all time, along with the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, '62 Mets and 1916 A's. May-14-14    Phony Benoni: Which makes it even more surprising that Berger's numbers went down once he left the team. You'd expect them to go up, facing the Braves' staff 22 times a year. I think I've mentioned before that Berger was the only starter in the 1934 All-Star Game not to make it to the Hall of Fame. And, speaking of events in that game, here's Babe Ruth's first home run as a member of the Braves, on Opening Day: http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/... That must have felt so good... May-14-14    perfidious: Off Hubbell at the zenith of his career, no less. That was one tough lefty. Just realised that even Ruth's three-homer swan song in Pittsburgh was not enough: they were 2-20 vs Bucs, including 0-11 at Forbes against a team which was one game over .500 when facing everyone else. http://www.baseball-reference.com/b... May-15-14    playground player: <perfidious> Was that the best day Tommy Thevenow ever had in his whole career--a double, triple, and 5 RBI? I mean, Babe Ruth hits 3 homers and he's trumped by Tommy Thevenow??? People must have wondered what the world was coming to. <Jim Bartle> They didn't have to bat against Stan Covaleski's spitball, either. Then again, Bob Feller posted some wow strikeout numbers in that era with none of those pitches at his disposal. Jump to page #   (enter # from 1 to 914) search thread:    < Earlier Kibitzing  · PAGE 581 OF 914 ·  Later Kibitzing>

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