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 18637 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 411 OF 914 ·  Later Kibitzing> Aug-28-12    Jim Bartle: Oops, here's the Philadelphia-Chicago game, top of the first: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df5B... Aug-28-12    Phony Benoni: Dept. of "Well, OK, If You Say So": http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/2... If this keeps up, Penn State might not be allowed to score touchdowns this year. Aug-28-12    WannaBe: Breakin' News! Penn State's new fight song will be "Can't Touch This" by MC Hamma!! Aug-28-12    perfidious: <WannaBe> That'll go over right well, especially when it's played as part of orientation for employees of the athletic department. Aug-28-12    perfidious: <Phony Benoni> 'Scoring' will also have to be euphemised in some fashion or other-there are plenty of imaginative types out there who could come up with something. Maybe Jessica Dorrell can give us a bright idea, now that she's no longer employed by her paramour Bobby Petrino at Arkansas. Aug-28-12    Travis Bickle: Hey Phony no wonder Al Capone turned to a life of crime he was a Cubs fan! ; P Check out at 3:38 of this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?featur... Aug-28-12    WannaBe: KC Chefs [sic] 7, Detroit Lions 3, 2nd inning. (I went to a baseball game and a football game broke out!) Aug-28-12    WannaBe: Holy U.S. Dollars! Batman! http://espn.go.com/blog/playbook/do... Aug-28-12    Phony Benoni: <WannaBe> Lions tacked on another field goal, so it's 7-6. You expect better when Verlander starts as quarterback. <Travis> I can't imagine any other situation where Capone would be happy to meet someone named "Gabby". Aug-28-12    WannaBe: Opinions? http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebask... NFL play clock is 40 seconds, but it starts immediately, in NCAA it is 25 seconds, but the start of the clock is different. Aug-29-12    Jim Bartle: The first college shot clock was 45 seconds, and was put in just to avoid outright stalling, such as the four-corner offense or the way Villanova held onto the ball when they beat Georgetown in the NCAA Final in 1985. That was fine, though I thought a minute or 90 seconds would have been fine. I see no reason to make college basketball a lower equivalent of the NBA and drop it to 24 seconds. Why should the two games look the same? Aug-29-12    crawfb5: Let the Philistines have their 10-sec shot clock or whatever. It would give me a good reason to stop watching college basketball altogether. Sep-01-12    Phony Benoni: Howard Ehmke had an interesting month in September, 1923. Here's his start on September 7: http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/... And his next start on September 11: http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/... By the 28th, though, it appears he had run out of gas: http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/... Possibly the worst start ever by a 20-game winner. He took the rest of the year off. Sep-01-12    Jim Bartle: Boston let a pitcher stay in and get clobbered for 17 runs? And we were just looking at a game where the starter was taken out after giving up 2 runs in 2+ innings (McNally, 1966 World Series). Sep-01-12    Phony Benoni: Well, it wasn't the World Series. It was also Lou Gehrig's second career start, and I had been Wally Pipp I would have immediately ordered a lifetime supply of headache powders. Sep-02-12    playground player: Attention, baseball wizards! How many times in his career did Babe Ruth bunt? Sep-02-12    talisman: i'll guess one. Sep-02-12    Phony Benoni: <playground player> I don't think we know at the present time. That data will have to come from play-by-play files, which don't go back to Ruth's day. Officially, the record books credit him with 113 "sacrifice hits", which today means "sacrifice bunts" intended to advance runners. This includes 14 in 1927, the 60-homer year, and 21 in 1930. Lou Gehrig also had what would be an enormous number of "sacrifice hits" today, including 18 in 1930. I mention 1930 specifically there was a rule change in 1931 eliminating the sacrifice fly as a statistical category. By a remarkable coincidence, Ruth is credited with no "sacrifice hits" after 1930, and Gehrig with only eight over his final nine years. Therefore, it seems to me that the majority of "sacrifice hits" for Ruth and Gehrig were in reality sacrifice flies--especially since they are credited with no sacrifice flies in their official statistics. Once the SF was eliminated as an official statistic, their SHs disappeared. This is not to say that Ruth and Gehrig never bunted. The game still had a lot of deadball stategy in the 1920s. But I doubt they did it as often as the statistics indicate. We do know that Ruth laid down two sacrifice bunts in World Series games: http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/... (7th inning) http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/... (1st inning) Sacrifice flies do show up in World Series statistics for both players, but they were probably added by later statisticians working from play-by-play reports. By the way, I haven't checked this but that first game may represent the only time a player both pitched and played in the field in a World Series game. Sep-02-12    Jim Bartle: I guess Ruth was sent to leftfield as a defensive replacement in the ninth, as Whiteman had made the last out in the 8th. Or maybe the Sox just wanted to keep Ruth in the game in case the Chicago tied it or went ahead in the top of the inning, as he would have been the second to bat. Sep-02-12    Phony Benoni: Double switches in 1918! But you're probably right that the Red Sox wanted to keep Ruth's bat in the game; he had allowed two runs in the eighth and the first two hitters had reached in the ninth. George Whiteman is a interesting piece of trivia. He was a completely obscure player who had a moment of glory in the 1918 World Series, then never played in the majors again. http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm... Sep-02-12    Jim Bartle: Whiteman went from cleanup hitter in the World Series, batting ahead of Ruth, to out of the league. Not too common, I'd think. I wonder how much the end of WWI had to do with that. Of course WWII decimated the major leagues, but I've never read much about the effect of WWI. Sep-02-12    WannaBe: Speakin' of Ruth, #2 is pretty interesting: http://espn.go.com/mlb/blog/_/name/... Sep-03-12    Tal7777777: Happy labor day! Sep-03-12    playground player: <Phony Benoni> I knew that what we now call Sacrifice Flies were counted as "Sacrifice Hits" before 1931, and then for a long time were not kept as a statistic: which makes it just about impossible to know how many times Babe Ruth or anybody else in that era bunted in his career. The last big slugger I actually saw bunt was Dave Kingman, who was pretty good at it. Mickey Mantle loved to bunt, and was very good at it. I don't think I ever saw Willie Mays or Henry Aaron lay down a bunt. But then I didn't get to see them too often after the Giants left New York. Sep-03-12    Phony Benoni: <playground player> With his speed, I can understand why Mantle would love to bunt, particularly batting left-handed. For right-handed hitters like Mays and Aaron, it might not have been that good a play. Let's see: thirteen sacrifice bunts lifetime for Mays, four of those in his last two seasons with the Mets. He did have two in 1965, the year he hit 52 home runs. Aaron had 21, eighteen in his first three years. Ah, here's the game I was looking for! Check out the Red Sox third inning: http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/... Jump to page #   (enter # from 1 to 914) search thread:    < Earlier Kibitzing  · PAGE 411 OF 914 ·  Later Kibitzing>

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