From: cfc@isr.harvard.edu (Christopher F. Chabris)
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
Subject: Re: CJA Awards
Date: 26 Aug 92 02:10:21 GMT
Article-I.D.: burrhus.1992Aug26.021021.6625
Organization: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

mginsbur@wissel.GBA.NYU.EDU (Mark Ginsburg) writes:

>The more I think about the Cozio Defense piece winning the CJA award,
>the more steamed I get.  That's because I've read that piece as it
>appeared in _Chess Horizons_ and I consider it:
>
>(a) misleading
>(b) presenting a false conclusion that black enjoys equality
>(c) omitting critical black losses in the variation that are readily
>available on ChessBase 'spanish without ...a6' diskette
>(d) not at all up to date - no recent games included
>(e) GM Praxis very little considered - see (d) 
>
>I ask again for an explanation.  Was it the cuteness of the father & son
>team?  

First of all, let me state that the piece in question, which won the award,
appeared in Chess Horizons, a magazine of which I was Editor in Chief in 1989
and Games Editor in 1988. However, I have not been formally involved with the
magazine or its publisher (the Massachusetts Chess Association) for the past
two and a half years, except for serving on an ad hoc search committee to 
screen candidates for the Editor's job earlier this year.

I'm not sure I qualify as a "strong player" by Mark's definition, my peak
rating being 2320 and my current rating being 2267 (2270 FIDE), but I was one
of the three judges who handled the awards. Each judge was asked to rate all
of the entries in each category ("Best Analysis" in this case) on a 5-point
scale. The Chief Judge then compiled these ratings to determine the winner
and Honorable Mentions in each category. He will have to explain the procedure
he used to do this, if anyone asks, but I assume it was just a simple average
of the three judges' ratings. This was a very time-consuming task, as there
were well over 100 total entries in about 25 categories, for which we were
paid nothing but a one-year CJA membership that would have cost $10. To have
better, or perhaps higher-rated judges, would probably cost money. This could
be financed by an entry fee, which might also cut down on the number of entries
(some categories had several entries from the same publication). But that is an
issue for next time, when I will no longer be involved.

On to this case. I did not give the highest rating to the Shipman & Shipman
piece. I gave it to "The Search for Truth" by Leonid Shamkovich, which 
appeared in Chess Life. (This was an installment in an ongoing, detailed
analysis of the line 1 e4 Nf6 2 e5 Nd5 3 d4 d6 4 Nf3 dxe5 5 Nxe5 Nd7 6 Nxf7,
as I recall.) Evidently the other judges felt differently.

>GM Rohde's articles in Chess Life, for example, beat this hands down
>(any of his monthly columns).

This may be true. However, only one article by Rohde was nominated in this
category, and it was not one of his monthly columns. It was an opening survey
on certain lines of the French and Bogo-Indian defenses based on his own
games (in the 1991 US Open, I think). It was interesting, but did not seem
like the "best analysis" in the category.

>Joel's article in Chess Chow refuting
>Stefan Buecker's "Vulture" also puts this to shame.

I liked this article, too, though I'm not sure I would have rated it above
the Shamkovich piece. However, again, it was not nominated!

>I would put the Cozio in the 'C'mon, you're kidding, right?' category
>instead, and give the 'analysis' category some, well, ANALYTICAL basis
>for judging!

Whatever the merits of the opening variation, they have nothing to do with
the merits of an article on it. The term "Best Analysis" could mean different
things to different people. It could be the most detailed, the most accurate,
the most comprehensive, the most interesting, the most enjoyable, the most
instructive, piece of chess analysis. The diversity of the seven entries in
this category helps to demonstrate that. And judging is a subjective process,
as we have seen in events like the olympics, especially when the categories
are broad and the guidelines few.

>In my opinion, this call by the judges puts their other calls into question
>as well.  How much time did they spend looking at the submissions?  Even
>the most cursory glance at the "Cozio" article drew these reactions:
>
>"Total garbage" - Fedorowicz.
>"Laughable" - Benjamin.
>"The opening just stinks."  - Rohde, who somehow saw all of his
>crushing wins versus the IM-part of the "Cozio" author team disappear
>from that article.
>
>And we are to somehow believe that the professional player group
>I just mentioned is THAT FAR OFF BASE?!  I think not.  C'mon, judges,
>you were hoodwinked!  Or does _Chess Horizons_ get a quota of 
>first place awards from the CJA every year?!  Unbelievable!

This one doesn't seem reasonable. Chess Horizons frequently wins many awards.
I thought many of them were deserved in the past, but have been disappointed
in the results sometimes myself. This year there was more competition in the
magazine field, and Chess Horizons won many fewer awards than usual, 2 "bests"
and 2 honorable mentions. Chess Life in fact won the lion's share, which is
the more unusual result. My own first place vote (by rating) virtually never
coincided with the final outcome in any category, so perhaps I'm just on a
different wavelength from the other judges. But you can hardly charge a pro-
Chess Horizons bias when it won so little.  Personally, I gave Chess Horizons
four top ratings and Chess Chow four. (I just counted this up, of course; I
was not trying to achieve such a distribution when I actually made the
evaluations a few weeks ago.) I also voted for Joel Benjamin for Chess
Journalist of the Year.

Perhaps the judging can be improved next year by funding it and hiring a wide
variety of people with more expertise to spend more time on each entry. This
year, I did the best I could with the limited time available and tried to be
as objective as possible. 

-Chris
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