|
< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 3 OF 3 ·
Later Kibitzing> |
| Sep-12-17 | | docbenway: Stared at this for a couple of minutes wondering why c4 till 29...Bb6 hove into view. |
|
Sep-12-17
 | | tamar: Now that is a chess pun! |
|
| Sep-12-17 | | ChessHigherCat: FSR: <playground player: I kept asking myself, "When's he gonna castle?"> <I kept asking myself "When am I going to get a move to breathe so I can castle?" After I played one or two inexact and/or greedy moves, my opponent's unreleting threats never allowed me to do so.> At least you admit it. When I read PP's post I thought, "Why castle when you can snatch pawns?" In all fairness, though, that was 20 years ago when you probably hadn't reached your current strength yet and Burris was already a master. I was trying to see when you could castle and it was always problematic. For example, as I'm sure you know, After 20. O-O Rxd5, if exd5? Bxb1, if Qxd5? Bxe4 followed by Bxb1, if Bxe4 directly you end up losing the bishop on d2. 20. Rxb7 looks complicated but I think its probably bad, too. What should you have done differently? |
|
Sep-12-17
 | | AylerKupp: <<flimflam48> Chess & computers! What's the point of using a search engine...or 2 or 3!!.. because it's a form of cheating!> As <FSR> said, it’s not cheating if they let you do it. Besides, it takes a lot of time and effort to use engines effectively. And if <FSR> thinks that it takes a long time to analyze positions without computers, it takes even longer with computers and multiple engines if you really want to get an advantage over your opponent. FWIW, I used to play correspondence chess before computers and now play on-line team games like the Chessgames Challenge with computers. You clearly don’t know very much about how to maximize the utility of chess engines and how much effort it takes to do that. But, to each its own. |
|
| Sep-12-17 | | ChessHigherCat: <AylerKupp> You seem to be overlooking the fact that <FSR> said <I gave up on serious correspondence chess after computers got super-strong>, so he obviously isn't wild about the use of computers in correspondence chess, either. The way you describe it CC becomes an IT competition to determine who can best maximize the utility of chess engines and is most willing to devote the necessary time and effort, which isn't everybody's cup of tea, especially if they're attracted by the individualistic "romantic inspiration" side of chess. That said, can you recommend a basic program to learn to analyze a position with Stockfish, for example, for an absolute beginner in chess engines (like yours truly?). I know some basic programing (like Python) if that helps. |
|
Sep-12-17
 | | FSR: <ChessHigherCat> I was already around my peak strength (which I like to think I still am) - low 2200 USCF OTB, and well over 2400 at correspondence, which made me one of the top correspondence players in the country (the Absolute Championship is open to the top 13 players who accept their invitations, and I was in the middle of the pack). I didn't realize I was playing with fire until it was too late. My intuition erroneously told me that my play wasn't very dangerous; "I'm a move away from castling. How dangerous can it be to grab a pawn?" And the line he played with 13...Bc7 intending a later ...Ba5 had always struck me as very artificial, so I thought I should have some way to get an advantage against it. I'll have to look at the game when I get home to determine where exactly I went wrong (doubtless with an engine, so I don't have to spend an hour or more on each move, as I did during the game). There were definitely positions before I started grabbing pawns when I could have just played quietly (e.g. castling) and been fine. The game most likely would have been a draw then, like most of my games in this tournament (I was +2 =8 -2). |
|
| Sep-12-17 | | Imran Iskandar: Hello, <FSR>. This is the kind of game which would make me extremely sad if I were on the losing side, so kudos to you for shrugging the loss off enough to submit a very good pun. Playing through the game, I found White's moves in the opening reasonable enough, until gradually the position he found himself in wasn't. |
|
Sep-12-17
| | FSR: <Imran Iskander> It didn't make me particularly sad (unlike most of my losses). I didn't make any obvious mistakes. It seemed that I was playing reasonably and doing all right, until as you say it became apparent that in fact (and surprisingly to me) I was totally busted. My opponent played extremely well, I only made one or two mistakes (which are apparent only in retrospect), and my opponent had to produce a series of exact moves to exploit my mistakes. One is going to lose games, especially if one is playing to win instead of draw, and there's no shame in losing a game like this one. |
|
Sep-12-17
 | | OhioChessFan: Wish I'd thought of the pun. Fred Reinfeld was a bit of a hack, but most every person who ever played surely got something of value from his books. Pretty wild correspondence game. |
|
Sep-12-17
| | OhioChessFan: <FSR: I kept asking myself "When am I going to get a move to breathe so I can castle?" > I think your 17th move is a prime suspect, although an engine at 24 plies might show that would be a disaster. |
|
| Sep-12-17 | | thegoldenband: Top-shelf pun! |
|
Sep-12-17
 | | chancho: I like Reinfeld's books.
For a hack, he had a decent head to head record against Sammy Reshevsky, and even drew Alekhine in a game when he was World Champ. The hack could play.
😉 |
|
| Sep-12-17 | | The Kings Domain: A featured game by a prominent member of the site and it had to be a loss (lol). Gotta love Chessgames' humor. Good pun too. :-) |
|
| Sep-12-17 | | thegoodanarchist: White's greedy play was punished with extreme prejudice. Good! No offense, <FSR>, but Black deserved to win. |
|
Sep-12-17
 | | Richard Taylor: Looking at the game quickly it is hard tos see where White went wrong. I thought the pun was around Fred Reinfeld whose books were very useful to me as a teenager. He was an enormous enthusiast for chess and writing about problems etc and other subjects. Not just chess. This was a nice finish by Burris who died early due it seems to the effects of Polio, I recall seeing boys I knew in the 50s affected by Polio. It was a terrible disease until they were able to immunize against it. I don't understand the pun...Did you play as Fred Rhine at one stage? I don't like puns they confuse and frighten me. <FSR> Have you had any other games as the game of the day. Some of my most interesting and exciting games were losses or draws. It seems you did very well overall at chess. Re correspondence chess, in the days prior to computers, I had some complex games. I once won a best game prize and a more complex game I played was from an Alekhines. I also played some interesting games more recently on Red Hot Pawn...which is a real site and quite good for slow or other games. Correspondence, especially if you are playing a lot of games can feel as if it is happening more quickly that people might imagine but you do have more time to analyse. Keres, Alekhine and many other GMs played a lot of correspondence chess. |
|
Sep-12-17
| | Richard Taylor: This was more interesting to play than games at the World Cup which often involve too convoluted analysis to ascertain what is going on...Carlsen's loss was analysed in depth (with a lot of tedious variations of what might have happened) but I suspect his opponent thought: "The best policy against such a strong player is to keep things complex. Oh, here's a pawn [which Carlsen stupidly left tempting Black to take it, there was no need for that]...A pawn in front of his K. I'll do what I do in Blitz on the internet or Tal did and hit him with an attack, let's see what will happen. With any luck he'll go wrong and I have nothing to lose. I noticed that Carlsen didn't handle a vaguely similar sac facing Aronian a little bit back. Yes, here I go..." And the rest is or was silence. |
|
Sep-12-17
| | FSR: <Richard Taylor: . . . I thought the pun was around Fred Reinfeld . . . . I don't understand the pun...Did you play as Fred Rhine at one stage?> Your first thought was right. Although my name is "Frederick Rhine," a lot of people call me "Fred Rhine," although I'm not particularly fond of it. <<FSR> Have you had any other games as the game of the day.> Yes. K Thompson vs F Rhine, 1992 ("Like A Rhinestone Cowboy," the first pun I submitted) and R K Delaune vs F Rhine, 1997 ("Red Red Rhine," which I certainly did <not> submit - a game where I played fine until I played an absurd blunder in time pressure, ending the game immediately). I've submitted puns for some of my other games, but CG.com hasn't used any of them (yet?). |
|
Sep-13-17
| | Richard Taylor: <FSR> Thanks. I do use puns myself but when I see them they annoy me. I mean there are those more subtle puns that Shakespeare uses (in fact if his protagonists actually used all that figurative and witty speech it would leave most people absolutely baffled even in his own time as it is very artificial, but somehow it works: although it was a kind of "one off"). But there is that groan people make at one of those deliberately bad puns... So of which are you more proud, your pun making or your games!!? I could have played in the Asian Seniors but for me I feel it is just not too expensive. Persuade me to play...no not sure. But Torre is playing in the over 65s for which I qualify. I suppose I could change my mind. But re Torre, I see of course that his games get some groanable puns...one is "Torre de Force" looking at the example games there are ones where he ties his opponents up more and more until they cannot move! Perhaps I should play. Be good I suppose to say I played the great Torre. I might be gored! Talk me into playing....Someone. I said the reason was a plumbers bill and other expenses that suddenly arose... I'm like this, there's an election coming up in NZ. Now there are Labour, National, and the Maori Party as well as a party called NZ First and The Greens. All maybe significant. But I started out not wanting to know, then I said I couldn't trust Labour, but my daughter is very keen on the new woman labour leader, so i swung to labour, then I published Labour's policies and then I read about the National leader and the Labour etc and found there were good things about him as well as the youngish woman. And indeed having launched into a tirade aagainst another chess player over here I felt ashamed of it and started thinking he had some good points re Labour. The point of all this, I seem to swing from moment to moment. I seem almost to have no fixed opinions on anything. So if I was the President and there was suddenly a decision needed whether to go to war (say after Pearl Harbor) I would be endlessly conflicted by endless arguments for and against. I would be the President who never made a decision. It would seem to me a terrible thing to even make a decision either way, as if I was interfering with Fate. I don't know how to explain this. How does the human mind come to decisions? I think it is linked to survival, and will be found to be similar to the way animals "decide" on things. I think that, in a sense, animals think. |
|
Sep-13-17
| | FSR: <Richard Taylor: . . . So of which are you more proud, your pun making or your games!!?> I am certainly prouder of a few of my games than I am of my puns, either individually or collectively. My two games that were published in Chess Informant will be remembered for decades to come, which obviously cannot be said of my puns. |
|
Sep-14-17
| | Richard Taylor: <FSR> Good! Yes. It is good you were in Chess Informant. Even now it could be argued that that is a valuable resource and it is still quoted in opening books. I'm pleased by some of my games but many are not so good of course. Some are abysmal! I wouldn't want chess to be my main interest, but it is certainly a fascinating game. I don't spend too much time. But I do spend a lot. Even when I lose a game I look on here to see what moves I was supposed to make (I almost always forget opening lines or mix them up) and then use a computer to look more closely. Then I print out my games. I liked watching the Sinquefield Cup but this present tournament I am finding a bit tedious...it may be me. I am waiting for a tournament when I can see clearly who is where. There is a huge amount of stuff about it and I can understand people having that sort of stuff as their hobby but I have other things to do! All that aside you seem to have a good collection here. Re puns, what to do you think Joyce (or Stephen Dedalus) meant when (he is for a time a school teacher in 'Ulysses') when he says of a pier that it is "a disappointed bridge"? It has puzzled me. I can see one meaning, that the pier is not "finished" and is peering out wanting to get to where are bridge is....I suppose perhaps also it lost it's "point". Perhaps Joyce was satirizing himself as he seems to do in the whole book? The serious young, and bright intellectual saying what is essentially something rather stupid contrasting with Bloom (who is both 'the wandering Jew' and Ulysses/Odysseus ...although he may also be Dedalus's father...I wonder if Joyce is also satirising Shakespeare when they debate the "fatherness etc" of Shakespeare Hamlet and mix in Shakespeare's son's name "Hamnet"?) who is basically a good man with fewer pretensions.....Something like that. But for puns (or wonderful nonsense round words) and "portmanteau words" Lewis Caroll and Joyce of say F's Wake are the ones... And eventually it all can get a bit too much, all this clever stuff, or who is the greatest and so on as, caught in these games and cleverness we forget that we are human. Of course in moderation it is as Tarrasch said of Chess...something very beautiful also which helps us forget those other irritations or woes. |
|
Sep-14-17
| | FSR: <Richard Taylor: ... Re puns, what to do you think Joyce (or Stephen Dedalus) meant when (he is for a time a school teacher in 'Ulysses') when he says of a pier that it is "a disappointed bridge"?> A pier is similar to a bridge that was never completed, sort of like someone who drops out of (or is kicked out of) law school before finishing it could be called a "disappointed attorney." |
|
| Sep-14-17 | | ChessHigherCat: FSR: <Richard Taylor: ... Re puns, what to do you think Joyce (or Stephen Dedalus) meant when (he is for a time a school teacher in 'Ulysses') when he says of a pier that it is "a disappointed bridge"?> <A pier is similar to a bridge that was never completed, sort of like someone who drops out of (or is kicked out of) law school before finishing it could be called a "disappointed attorney."> Yes, indeed. According to the "Encyclopedia of Dubious Etymologies", drop-outs from medieval law schools were tried by a "jury of piers", meaning that they had to jump off the end of a series of piers into shark-infested waters: if they were eaten, they were deemed innocent; if the sharks ignored them, it was considered proof of their venomous nature and they were harpooned. |
|
Sep-14-17
| | FSR: <ChessHigherCat> I used to have a superior who was a lawyer with the last name Piers. |
|
Sep-15-17
| | Richard Taylor: <FSR> Yes. But with your first point which is good re Joyce's joke it remains, I think deliberately (I think) lame (indeed none of the boys laughed probably in his fictional class they were either not impressed or it baffled them, I think that, hearing that as a teenager, I would wonder about the teacher, I would simply be annoyed and puzzled)....I actually started looked for the encyclopedia mentioned by <ChessHigherCat> in his witty comment above! Actually I dropped out of Law. I had done well in a BA I was doing as an adult student and got enthusiastic with dreams of being a lawyer as well as possibly a writer. But various events made me feel I should concentrate on literature. Law might have meant a carreer (and some did get into it in middle-ish age...but I had lost the impetus...I was a disappointed pier. But with Joyce there are so many things going on with his language...Now when he wrote his Ulysses he sent it to various people. Even people such as H G Wells,who was completely baffled by it but as he was a friend he gave Joyce the thumbs up. Even as subtle a thinker as Yeats had no idea nor did Shaw but I think he pretended to like it. Eliot did like it. In fact it came out almost the same time as his The Waste Land. Some of the ideas in both books were similar...Joyce avoided Stein as he didn't like "bluestockings".... Perhaps re the "pier" pun I was getting over-suspicious, searching for etymology. Zukofsky in his huge book length poem 'A' and his '80 Flowers' had poetry that often is based for meaning on obscure etymology which for most people is almost impossible to find out...but if you just pick up Joyce's Finnegan's Wake the puns or neologisms are every where. I never really tackled it...But it might be a source of puns for you. "Quark" was a word he came up with. 'The quarks for Muster Mark.' and a physicist reading FW then adopted the term for the particles. |
|
Sep-15-17
| | Richard Taylor: <ChessHigherCat> Very clever story re the piers! I thought it was a real encyclopedia of dubious puns! (Is it?, he asks with a moment of near-fear...> As a boy we used to hear the BBC and there was 'My Word' with Frank Muir and Dennis Norden. They each took a phrase and came up with these very clever (but amusingly unlikely) explanations leading to a complete pun of the (famous saying or phrase)...I was quite young but I enjoyed it. This was in the 50s. We had no TV and in fact my father decided not to get a TV when it came out. His reason was that it was 'unsociable'. Which was strange as he was a rather nervous, introverted (somewhat) man, and not very social and nor were we as a family: although we did (sometimes) sing around the piano etc My father was perhaps the English (living in NZ) equivalent of a "relative" in a story by Thurber...although he wasn't quite so eccentric as some of Thurber's relatives. But I used to enjoy the programs from the BBC. At the movies it was mostly American stuff, but we watched everything regardless...None of us were bothered that others watched television. Perhaps the name <Piers>, as FSR mentioned his superior was named, is not coincidental? There is a story there... |
|
 |
|
|
< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 3 OF 3 ·
Later Kibitzing> |
|
|
|
Kibitzing
