| Chess One 2004-11-18, 9:45 am |
| >> Dear Neil Brennen,
quote:
>
> No, but there are others here who are better judges. Meanwhile, are we
> to accept your claim to "near IM" strength on faith, as with your
> claims about many other subjects? The evidence, including the answers
> I got to some questions I asked of members of the Vermont chess
> community, indicates you are either lying again, or delusional.
> Meanwhile, feel free to refute me by presenting material that would
> support the claim you are "nearly IM" strength.
>
> (Snip Innes-crement)
Dear Neil,
I think you suffer a missaprehension - that I wish or need to prove things
to you on your terms, therefore you ever characterise them as falsehoods. We
could leave it there.
But the subject is itself interesting, and as a subject of a country which
has relatively little chess activity and a poor chess culture, how well
could you possibly be informed by only taking local references?
Its a pity that a poster called 'Helmet' is no longer writing here, since as
teenagers we were the tyros of our league and regularly bashed masters. I
was always a bit better than Nick and taught him to misplay everything he
knows.
Nick went on to tutor his protege, a kid who lived 12 miles from me but was
too young at the time to be of much note, his name was Michael Adams.
At the time there were no British GMs, and we had to look elsewhere for
inspiration which we found in the fighting spirit of Fischer, the techniques
demonstrated by Larsen, and synthesis and harmony in Spassky, supplemented
by experiments in getting people out of the book and into a real-time fight
as soon as possible in the game.
Having great desire to win always, was to our dissapointment, never enough!
We also had to learn how to manage our aggression OTB by combining it with
sufficient winning chances <grin> and Larsen's play showed how you can for
example gambit a pawn with Black, seize the initiative in say, the Benko,
and then you have yourself a real fight. But if you wanted to delay your
sacrifice then follow the Benoni to various critical junctures, then offer
material in result for a strong attack.
That was the great fun of it, and we very much liked to engage and fight!
A little later the British club-chess system that spawned hundreds of
players such as Nick and myself developed some 20 Grandmasters at Chess, led
by Tony Miles. Over the same period of time the US system developed just 2
home-grown GMs.
The intensity of this chess environment was thereby radically different than
anything than might have been experienced on this continent, and being a
master player was nothing special, I don't think people even used the term
about themselves or others.
Our county team was led by P. H. Clarke who, with such players as CHO'D
Alexander, managed to give even a previous generation of world-title
contenders a shock, and so earned their respect. The legacy of these players
as performers and also as organisers of the nationwide club system - a
continuity from the days of Staunton who stimulated its origins in working
class-clubs in the north of England - continues to produce GMs, a greater
group of IMs, and a small horde of masters.
Levels of play are also much stronger than those days - from 30 years ago!
as exampled by the fact that I twice played the then British Woman champion,
obtaining a 50% result, I don't think she was even 2300 rated. Nowadays that
role is occupied by a player, Harriet Hunt, who has just turned in an almost
2600 level performance at the just concluded Olympiad. While M. Adams
performace at the same event was 2900.
And why am I not worldchampion? <LOL> Living in very rural Germany Albes,
then the highlands of Scotland successfully removed me from being a serious
contender to Fischer <grin> and in fact any other player since there weren't
any around, and of course because I was never nearly good enough.
Looking at, and talking with GM players these days, I do not entirely envy
them their existance, and how they must behave in it's culture.
Having so many GMs now in the West is a situation they we have not really
adapted to at a managerial level, neither nationally nor internationally,
and will pose some problems looking forward in how to support them. (I take
it as an axiom that these players stimulate all chess activity.)
As for yourself - you like to fight no? This is good in a chess player,
maybe even better than any other quality!
But rather than licence hostility it needs to be "Larsenized" to properly
combine one's will, innate fluency at the game, and the disciplines of
learning, all harmonized within a canon of proportions.
Whether in chess, dialogues or life itself, I do so contend.
Cordially! Phil Innes
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