I participated in road races off and on for about thirty years beginning in the late 1970s.
Do you still run but no longer race or did you stop running altogether?
I participated in road races off and on for about thirty years beginning in the late 1970s.
Do you still run but no longer race or did you stop running altogether?
dkny64 wrote:
Do you still run but no longer race or did you stop running altogether?
I'm injured right now, but I hope to be back running in a month or so. I haven't raced in several years. These days, I just run to be a good animal.
The third match was another tie. Explain to me why these two gifted players played the game right down to a king and a bishop (of opposite colors)left before declaring a draw. I know Anand offered a draw earlier but still to play to that point seems very odd to me.
Chess players please explain.
dkny64 wrote:
Thanks for Murray's name. Cracked me up to find on the web that he played a rated game in 1984 at the "Au bon pain invitational" - wasn't that kind of the anchor store in the atrium just across from where he set up his table? I see there's video of him on the web too - I'll have to take a look.
That's really something about Ken Rogoff. I just know his name as "famous economist who might win the Nobel" - hadn't known about his serious chess background.
When you talked to Larsen, did you ask him about the 0-6 result against Fischer in the famous candidate's match?
To my chagrin, I see that USCF actually still has a record of my existence and that my final rating was 1772. Sigh. It was such a shock to see my USCF membership number - I used to have it memorized and seeing it was like hearing a bit of some song I hadn't heard in years. And even though I don't actually have any desire to play tournament chess again, when I saw 1772 part of me started thinking, "If I study a little bit and play half-way decently, I can get back over 1800." Strange how the mind works sometimes.
Yes, Murray set up his table next to Au Bon Pain. I do remember that he was still playing some rated chess back then.
It's funny that you mention Larsen's 0-6 disaster against Fischer. I forgot how it came up in our conversation, but Larsen told me that he was sick with a cold or something during that match. I was a bit shocked that he would offer that excuse. I mean, six straight losses because of a cold? In fairness, he was the kind of player who would rather go down in flames instead of taking a few draws just to save face, and I think that's what happened in that match. Larsen was actually one of a very small group of players who had multiple wins against Fischer, and he had been the last player to beat Fischer (at the Palma Interzonal in 1970) before Fischer's great string of wins (about nineteen in a row, I think) that finally ended during the candidates final against Petrosian. But Fischer was clearly a touchy subject with Larsen. You could see it in his writings, and the way in which he squabbled with Fischer over who should play first board in the USSR v. The Rest of the World match in 1970. (Remarkably, Fischer gave in, and let Larsen play first board against Spassky while Fischer played second board against Petrosian.)
woodenpiecemover wrote:
The third match was another tie. Explain to me why these two gifted players played the game right down to a king and a bishop (of opposite colors)left before declaring a draw. I know Anand offered a draw earlier but still to play to that point seems very odd to me.
Chess players please explain.
Carlsen pretty much always plays down to the end. He wins a lot of games on endgame technique. Much of his strategy is predicated on this.
woodenpiecemover wrote:
The third match was another tie. Explain to me why these two gifted players played the game right down to a king and a bishop (of opposite colors)left before declaring a draw. I know Anand offered a draw earlier but still to play to that point seems very odd to me.
Chess players please explain.
I do not have a sensible explanation. But then I'm no where their level in chess knowledge! They are among the strongest players in the world!
This match seems to be like a sit-and- kick 5k that some runners abhor?
Anand offered a draw and couldn't offer another no matter how ridiculous it was to play on. Carlsen is trying to play head games but its clearly not working for him. After shutting down Anand's request he didn't want to admit it was a draw after all.
Carlsen is learning that winning major tournaments and winning the championship are night and day different. He white play is passive and show a lack of preparation. Black had the advantage with his passed pawn and white was lucky to get the draw.
Avocado's Number wrote:
It's funny that you mention Larsen's 0-6 disaster against Fischer. I forgot how it came up in our conversation, but Larsen told me that he was sick with a cold or something during that match. I was a bit shocked that he would offer that excuse. I mean, six straight losses because of a cold? In fairness, he was the kind of player who would rather go down in flames instead of taking a few draws just to save face, and I think that's what happened in that match. Larsen was actually one of a very small group of players who had multiple wins against Fischer, and he had been the last player to beat Fischer (at the Palma Interzonal in 1970) before Fischer's great string of wins (about nineteen in a row, I think) that finally ended during the candidates final against Petrosian. But Fischer was clearly a touchy subject with Larsen. You could see it in his writings, and the way in which he squabbled with Fischer over who should play first board in the USSR v. The Rest of the World match in 1970. (Remarkably, Fischer gave in, and let Larsen play first board against Spassky while Fischer played second board against Petrosian.)
Perhaps Fischer especially disliked Petrosian? Anyway, certainly interesting that he ultimately deferred there to Larsen but I guess wouldn't defer to Reshevsky at a few Olympiads. I gather Fischer and Reshevsky really didn't get along. This all made me take my copy of Profile of a Prodigy down from the bookshelf. The edition I have is from 1965, so no risk of it reading Fischer's history backward from 1972.
my take2 wrote:
Carlsen is learning that winning major tournaments and winning the championship are night and day different. He white play is passive and show a lack of preparation. Black had the advantage with his passed pawn and white was lucky to get the draw.
I think this is very in line with his play in tournaments He is not an opening theory guy and usually aims for anything playable out of the opening. Most guys seek advantage but he is perfectly happy with equality.
On the contrary I believe Anand is trying to lure him out to play something more daring and double-edged.
I hope we are going to see, perhaps, a Ruy Lopez, both of these guys have tons of games in that opening.
Anand was definitely the one with winning chances today. I thought he missed 29 ... Bxb2
my take2 wrote:
Carlsen is learning that winning major tournaments and winning the championship are night and day different. He white play is passive and show a lack of preparation. Black had the advantage with his passed pawn and white was lucky to get the draw.
This is about right. At least this game had a moment or two of tension. The first two were tedious affairs. I thought Carlsen was going to walk off with the title without breaking sweat, but now I'm starting to wonder
For fun go back and take a look at game 16 of the 1985 Kasparov-Karpov match. The chess in the past 3 games looks like C-tier pansyville compared to that masterpiece.
Avocado's Number wrote:
Here are a couple of youtube videos on Asa Hoffman. He talks about his portrayal in "Searching for Bobby Fischer." (Apparently, he was paid for the rights and he signed a release.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljNbDf0lVjAhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7jdVs6TYasMost of my chess-playing was in Philadelphia (high school); Cambridge, MA (college); and Washington, D.C. (post-college). The first great player I remember meeting was Bent Larsen, when he came to Philadelphia to play a simultaneous exhibition. At the time, Larsen was the highest-rated active player outside the Soviet bloc, since Fischer had gone back into seclusion after becoming world champion. I was fifteen years old, and had only been playing tournament chess for a short time. On the black side of a Benko Gambit Reversed, I managed to get a draw. (Larsen played 31 games, winning 28, losing one, and drawing two.) Afterward, Larsen talked to me for a long time, answering every stupid question I could think of, which made me a fan for life.
I remember Walter Browne (a very brash guy who looked and dressed like a porn star and dominated U.S. chess for a while in the 1970s), Pal Benko, Lubomir Kavalek, Lev Alburt, Roman Dzindzichashvili (who reminded me of a Russian bear), Joel Benjamin when he was a 13-year-old master (he broke Bobby Fischer's record for the youngest U.S. master ever, but he seemed like an incredibly normal kid who just happened to play a particular board game really well), and lots of others. I was awed to see Sammy Reshevsky still playing in tournaments. He was a diminutive man who had been perhaps the greatest prodigy in the history of chess when he was an 8-year-old master-level player back around 1920. If life circumstances and world politics had been a little different, he might have been the world champion in the 1940s or 1950s. He continued to play at an international level up through the 1980s, when he was in his seventies.
Walter Browne as porn star - just not what I would have imagined. He was certainly a big name to me but I never had a sense of him as a person + I'm now realizing that I had a tendency to run him together with Larry Evans in the category of "well-know American player not as good as Fischer".
Just got a chance to watch the Asa Hoffmann videos - they were great. To my eye he looks healthier and happier when those videos were made a few years ago than he did 30+ years before when I was seeing him at the Bar Point in the early 80s.
On a sadder note, this whole trip down memory lane thing led me to find out that a guy named Andy Zupan, who was one of the most impressive quiz show people I ever knew / knew of + just a really good person from everything I could ever gather died earlier this year at age 50. Words fail me.
p.s. I completely agree with Asa when he said, "There's no hypocrisy in chess - the error is punished." And that attitude has something to do with why I quit playing tournaments.
In particular, in either my very last tournament game or one of the last, I was playing some guy of roughly my rating in New York in some low-stakes quad and he had the better of things off the opening but made some blunder or other and I won and after we shook hands he was so angry and kept going on about how he should have won.
I believe I just kind of kept my mouth shut, but I was certainly thinking something along the lines of "Dude, we're a couple of random patzers playing for fun - lighten up."
It certainly wasn't the case that everyone back in Columbus was a good sport, but I remember a lot more players having a sense of humor about themselves. In New York, however, I think he was more typical than I was and I was just kind of done.
This may be the best troll thread ever.
Avacado's number - did you go to Harvard?
Impressive drawing Larsen in a simul. My best was a blindfold loss to Nakamura.
kdvmklasf wrote:
Avacado's number - did you go to Harvard?
Impressive drawing Larsen in a simul. My best was a blindfold loss to Nakamura.
I was an undergraduate at M.I.T., and returned to Cambridge several years later as a law student at Harvard.
Nakamura is a fun guy to watch.
not just for geeks wrote:
who wins? Carlsen or Anand?
I say Carlsen by a landslide
I'm saying Anand.
5-time defending World Champ. Tons of experience in match play. There has to be a reason he is ranked much lower but has found a way to win 5 World Championships... he is best when he gets to play an opponent over & over again.
Carlsen is obviously ranked higher, but much more experience in tournament chess rather than match play.
Avocado's Number wrote:
I was an undergraduate at M.I.T., and returned to Cambridge several years later as a law student at Harvard.
What were you doing during the interim period in DC?