Brussels 1988 (#I) seems to be progressing smoothly, though a surprising number of games are missing from the database.

I've got a preliminary reconstruction for Belfort (II) and Reyjkavik (III). Barcelona (IV) is proving to be difficult, but I'll try to crack it a little more systematically.

Haven't tried Rotterdam (V) yet, and I guess I no longer need to worry about Skelleftea (VI).

If you haven't already, I think I've also figured out the scoring system for the World Cup. It hasn't been easy, since it was devised by John Nunn. I'll put an explanation on the Brussels page sometime.

I'm also going over the 10th USSR (1937), and there are going to be a <lot> of games to submit. Maybe half the tournament.

Elsewhere, Vienna 1908 is finished, and Prague 1908 should follow soon. Yes, I've always had a touch of ADD.> Congratulations! You have officially joined <Benzol> and myself in the career of tournament collection building! You now have a lifetime's worth of work ahead of you that you share with a handful of OCD nuts like yourself. Welcome to the club! :)

&

Besides, it's obvious that somebody searching for a particular tournament will do a search on the collections page anyway, so it doesn't really matter who does them.

I will put links to the various collections within those I do work on. That's another thing you learn in Library Land: Make cross-references!

As I mentioned before, a lot of pleasure I get in collection building comes from looking at the games. This dates back to my old editor days where I probably spent ten hours looking at games for every hour spent actually working on the magazine.

I recognize the joy of looking through games as you collect them for the tournament page, but it really is the sucker of all time. My philosophy is that once each collection is done, the games are there for me to go back and enjoy at my leisure rather than while the work remains to be done. Some of my early tournament collections felt like they have taken forever to complete (like Dortmund or Linares) because of the time spent looking over games. Whereas now, if it's 120 games or less, regardless of when it was played, I can have a tournament done in 2 hours or less. It's a sacrifice for efficiency, but one I am glad to make for now.

One of the reasons I've become so manic lately is because of <chessgames.com>'s promise toward the future of turning these collections into actual pages with kibitzing and links to ongoing series. I figure another 150-200 collections and it will be finally worth their while to do it, and they will have a lot of complete series to start with, rather than launching it and waiting for gaps to be filled. I'm about to hit the 300 mark of tournament collections, and that's after really only two serious years of collection building with long hiatuses for my studies. I'm hoping to break 600 collections by the time I graduate with my doctorate :)

By the way, I have updated the Brussels 1988 page with information on how the Grand Prix points were computed. I don't know how interesting this is for the other tournaments, but I can get the numbers easily if you'd like them.

I've thought of standardizing tournament names for a long time. After all, this is the sort of work I perform daily in my libary's catalog!

So you're going to New Orleans for a conference? Poor fellow. Be sure to make a token appearance at the conference site.> I can't wait to see the Brussels World Cup when it's finished. It will be very impressive!

Well, I'm booked at the conference hotel, so I'm at least guaranteed to walk through the conference on my way to/from libation establishments :)

What I really hate is the opponent who won't resign "on principle", but has given up and is just trying to get the game over with as quickly as possible. Here's a recent example from GameKnot to illustrate this.

click for larger view

Yes, I'm White. And, yes, my opponent is dragging it out. My Bozo 0.5 Computer says it's mate in 7 in any event, but I didn't bother going beyond finding a mate in four should Black take the h-apwn: <1.a8Q Kxh5 2. Qg8 Kh6 3.f4 Kh5 4.Qg5#>

As a joke, I sent this line as a conditional--and Black, who obviously didn't care as long as he didn't have to resign, walked right into it from beginning to end.

<"There were really only two kinds of child prodigies--mathematical and musical. Some psychologists argued there was only one kind, since music was so closely related to mathemnatics. While there were precocious children with other talents, such as writing, painting, and athletics, the only areas in which a child might truly perform at the level of an adult were in mathematics or music.">

Well! This idiot is obviously not a chess player. Though, come to think of it, the only writers I can recall offhand who inlcude chess players among the child prodigies were writing chess books. But let that pass for right now; I found the next paragraph much more interesting.

<"Psychologically, such children were complex; often loners, isolated from their peers and even from their families by their gifts, for which they were both admired and resented. Socialization skills were often retarded, making group interactions uncomfortable.">

Perhaps music can be reduced in its essentials to mathematics, but it seems to me there's much more to it than that. Great music is not just a matter of recognizing the relationships between notes, but using those notes to create a pleasing and original pattern. And it's the same with chess.

Another thought I had was about current-day prodigies, as opposed to the classical examples mentioned earlier (Morphy, Capablanca, Reshevsky, Fischer). Today's prodigies, instead of developing their talents in an atmosphere of explotation, indifference, or even opposition, have extensive opportunities for tutoring and study. I wonder if that interaction will affect their future psychological development as well.

Thanks so much for your contributions to the <Fawn Pawn> games collection!!!!

I'd just like to thank you for all of the incredible work you have been doing in the service of <chess history>.

I love chess history.

And I love you guys for becoming cracker jack <chess game historians>.