From: dcrosgr@uoft02.utoledo.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
Subject: Re: TO THE GM's/IM's FROM DON
Date: 22 Dec 92 02:05:26 EST
Organization: University of Toledo, Computer Services

In article <1992Dec22.014644.18244@u.washington.edu>, fujimoto@carson.u.washington.edu (Bryant Fujimoto) writes:
> dcrosgr@uoft02.utoledo.edu writes:
> 
>>In article <1992Dec21.105652.903@u.washington.edu>, fujimoto@carson.u.washington.edu (Bryant Fujimoto) writes:
>>> dcrosgr@uoft02.utoledo.edu writes:
>>> 
>>>>My personal philosophy on life can be boiled down to:
>>> 
>>>>A working imperfect solution is better than a non-working perfect solution.
>>> 
>>>>I have little respect for 'critics' who lack the ability to climb to the top,
>>>>and it spills over....
>>> 
> [stuff deleted]
>>> 
>>> If you look in the sports pages you find critiques of coaches
>>> and athletes written by journalists who are neither.  The sports
>>> writers may claim a player is no longer effective, etc.  And it
>>> seems some people enjoy arguing over which of two athletes
>>> (or teams), who did not play at the same time, was the better athlete.
>>> This appears to be the same sort of activity which you are condemning
>>> in some of your posts (how well did Fischer and Spassky play? is
>>> Fischer as good as he once was? etc.).  However, since this sort
>>> of thing is accepted in other sports, why do you object to it here?
> 
>>Because what Benjie (and the others) did was the equivelent of 
>>taking two missed passes thrown by the WINNING Superbowl quarterback, and using
>>them to 'prove' that the man is NOT as good as he was last year (which, by the
>>way, his team ALSO won). 
> 
> Consider a quarterback who had a good regular season - high precentage
> of completions, lots of yards passing, etc.  His team gets to the
> Superbowl where he completes only 5 of 20 passes, has 3 intereceptions,
> no TDs, etc., *but*, his team wins, in part because the opposing
> team turns the ball over 8 times.  Even though his team won, his play
> will be criticized by the sports journalists.  The difference between
> your example and mine is the quality of play; if its bad, its going to
> be criticized.  You appear to think that Fischer's errors are trivial or
> minor (for a QB to have only 2 incompletions in a game is not serious),
> and therefore can not be used as evidence that he no longer plays as well
> as he once did.  However, to convince anyone of this you will have
> to directly dispute the criticism of FS-II, and this you steadfastly
> refuse to do.

Nice hypothetical. But, I doubt even Benjamin would compare Fischer's ability
to being as poor as the QB in this analogy. get him on the Net, and if he
agrees with it, you might have something I'll address.

Otherwise, it is merely so much mud clouding an otherwise
hard-enough-to-keep-focused debate, and will have to be jettisoned. 

Sorry.


> 
>>Maybe he saw 600 pounds of lineman running towards him.
>>Maybe it was based on a run pattern that was blocked.
>>Maybe he was just stopping the clock.
> 
>>Besides, it is not Fisher's coach which was making the comments, it was
>>the quarterback of a semi-pro farm team for the losing team...
> 
> Please read the posts more carefully.  I was not referring to coaches
> criticizing athletes, I was referring to coaches *being* *criticized*
> by sports journalists (most of whom have never coached at a high
> level, if at all). 

Well, I thought you were referring to the WHOLE pictue, since at the college
level, it is a combination of coaches and sportwriters who pick the top dogs.

My opinion of non-players who critique? Not much, I suppose you do need an
outside source, as if you left it up to the coaches themselves, you would get
horribly biased reults based toa large extent on politics and personal likes
and dislikes.

(Much like the current slamming of Fischer by GMs.)

If it were someone who was beliveably neutral about Fischer, I would trust his
views MUCh more than Benjamin and the others.


> 
> Be that as it may, most sports journalists are not even good enough
> to be the losing quarterback of a semi-pro farm team.  So even *if*
> we accept your characterization of the GMs, we still have in most
> other sports a situation where the journalists are, by your
> criteria, even more unqualified to comment on the quality of play,
> than the GMs are to comment on FS-II. Yet criticism by sports 
> journalists is generally accepted.  So why should chess be different?

Nope. Backwards. The journalists are less biased. They are also less
knowledgable.

Besides, IF Benjamin had some big-picture analysis which rested on more than
comparing a few plays against the tournament of the 70s, he would have given
it.


> 
> Bryant Fujimoto
> fujimoto@denali.chem.washington.edu
>