From: hyde@cs.dal.ca (Bill Hyde)
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
Subject: Re: STOP BASHING ALEKINE
Date: 13 Oct 92 20:39:01 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.Bw2up1.Ix8
Organization: Math, Stats & CS, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada

In article <1992Oct11.214138.10452@uoft02.utoledo.edu>, dweddin@uoft02.utoledo.edu writes:

|> hey,
|> 
|> although i'm no big fan of alekine as either a chess player or
|> as a person, i'm sick of all these people complaining about how
|> he was ducking capablanca.
|> 
|> first off i think he was. why? because he LIKED being world ches
|> champion. he didn't want to risk losing it.

	Hardly an excuse, is it? Having Capa banned from any tournament
	Alekhine played in was a pretty low strategem.
|> 
|> the thing i don't like is that capablanca was no saint when it
|> came to defending the crown.

	Champion six years, one defense.  But remember,
	nobody thought he could be beaten, so financial
	backers for a challenge were hard to get. Only Lasker could
	have put up a reasonable fight vs Capa before 1925, and
	he wasn't interested.  A tournament was held to determine the
	challenger, and Capa duly played his strongest opponent.
	The same cannot be said for Alekhine.


 how many defenses did he have in
|> his years of holding the title???? That's one of the reasons 
|> that FIDE came into being...becuase capablanca he didn't like
|> to risk it to ANYBODY!!!

	No.  Alekhine was the inspiration for the current system
	of selecting candidates.  Capa may have played only once, but
	it was against the best opponent. Your claim is ludicrous, for
	Capa never thought he was risking his title by playing a
	match.  Alekhine showed him wrong. Alekhine hung on for years
	when he was only (at most) first among equals, and dodged many
	dangerous opponents.  I agree, however, that Capa did not pursue
	the rematch with as much eagerness as has been portrayed.


 at least alekine would play saps who
|> didn't stand a chance! that's better than nothing!
|> 
|> what about lasker???? again, what did he have, six defenses in 
|> 20 years???

	FIDE says you should defend once in three years,  Six in
	twenty sounds like the correct amount to me. Actually,
	I make it eight matches in twenty seven years (Janowski twice
	(not counting the four game match), Marshall, Tarrasch twice,
	Schlecter, the Steinitz rematch, and Capablanca.  Not bad for
	a man who got his PhD in the period, which also included a little
	interruption called WWI.

 and he usually stacked the deck in his favor so that
|> he wouldn't lose.

	Justify that. He played anybody who had the money.


|> 
|> about the only TRUE champion when it came to defenses was william
|> steinitz. he used to risk his title any time any place to anybody
|> who was a legitimate contender. he was a real sportsman.


	True.  This aspect of Steinitz is not sufficiently
	appreciated.  But then, he died a pauper (so did Lasker, but
	only because of the nazis).

|> 
|> so anyways, don't go bashing alekine unless you do so in the same
|> breath that you bash capablanca and lasker...and what about the
|> worst of them all....sir howard staunton.

	First point, he was never knighted.  Chess players did not
	get knighted in those days - the first may have been Sir Harry
	Golombeck, probably in the 1970's.

	Secondly, Staunton's unofficial title ran from 1844 to
	1851.  In that time he played  Horwitz and Haarwitz
	as well as the London tournament (if he could lose its title in
	it, I'd say it counts as a match).  Three title defenses
	in seven years (there may have been more, these are only the
	ones I remember) is a record as good as that of steinitz.


	By morphy's day Staunton was largely retired, and clearly
	no longer the best chess player in england, let alone in
	the world.  His last major event was a match with Von Der Lasa
	in 1853.  The morphy-staunton imbroglio was largely the
	creation of a journalist looking for copy (Frederick Edge),
	though it has been carried on by men who should know better
	(I.A. Horowitz ridicules staunton's excuse of "pressure of work"
	on the grounds that Staunton's writings were of low quality.
	Strange, in that case, that 140 years later they're still in print,
	isn't it?).  No doubt Staunton was an arrogant man, and no
	doubt he found it hard to admit that his playing days
	were over, but he was a worthy champion of that era, and
	he did us all a great service when he organized the first
	international chess tournament.


						Bill Hyde
Department of Oceanography
Dalhousie University,
Halifax, Nova Scotia
hyde@Ice.ATM.Dal.Ca or hyde@dalac


|> 
|> 
|> don wedding
|> 
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess