Chess Forum / General Topics / October 2007

They have not stopped.
Dennis Monokroussos reports that Polgar and Truong have posted to his
blog under 36 different fake names. He has banned all 36.
http://chessmind.powerblogs.com/posts/1126731029.shtml

I would like to point out that in 1978, when Nona Gaprindashvili was
awarded the GM title, the current requirement of three GM norms and a
FIDE rating of 2500 was not yet in effect. The rule up until at least
1970 was that ONE NORM in a 1A tournament of at least 16 players and

It is sad that the recent Trollgar-Sloan garbage has diverted us from
chess again. I've been suspicious of the phenom known as Jude Acers in
the past, due to his supposedly shady rating history (here I only know
the rumors) and my own experiences in playing him.

It seems like about three quarters of the current world championship
games end in a draw. Although the situation for chess is not acute
(unlike Anglosaxon draughts that has been solved by the computer) I
have the feeling that modern chess is involved in a slow downward

I study and appreciate Watson's, Aagard's, Silman's, Soltis', Crouch's
and Flear's books. I'm studyng Dvoretsky. Recently I hear people talk
about Motwanis' books. I'm searching on google, but I can't find useful
information to know if I must buy them. Did anyone of you study ...

   Do you think there'd be interest in a website about unusual chess
sets, something like www.odd-bikes.com or www.odd-homes.com?
Thanks,
- Jeff-

I have discovered one of those Wikipedia a.sholes has been going
around trying to delete the biographies of famous chess personalities.
He has already deleted the biography of Mig Greengard and Ali Nihat
Yazici, President of the Turkish Chess Federation, and now he is

Does anyone understand and can explain how the charts work in the book,
Chess Openings the Easy Way, by Nick de Firmaian?
Can't figure out how to read it.
thanks

I haven't been able to access Chesspublishing.com for the last couple
of days. Does anyone know
what the problem is?

The following highly relevant questions by a lawyer or law student at
Texas Tech have appeared on the Blog of the Daily Toreador at
http://www.dailytoreador.com under the article about this case.
Here is what he says:

Over the last few days a rancorous discussion has been going on
between Helpbot (aka Greg Kennedy), GM Mihai Suba, and Larry Parr on
the subject of telephone conversations between Bobby Fischer and Henry
Kissinger (then National Security Advisor) pertaining to Fischer's

I used to play chess at Blitzin as an un rated player.  I would guess
my rating based on the strength of the players I could beat would be
around 1400.  I now play at Yahoo.  My rating is 1370.
Anyone know what kind of USCF rating that would equal?  Pretty bad

Now that the Fake Sam Sloan has been positively identified as Paul
Truong, I would like to look at the old Bellsouth.net postings.
The Bellsouth.net poster as he was called made posts under many
different names starting December 2004 through 2005. He attacked many

Knights have been evaulated as 3 points.  A rating difference of 100
points means a player should win 5:8 games. In relative value, how
much is a knight worth in rating points?  And the other pieces?
If a player is 100 points higher should he be able to win with a

Mig Greengard has complained that there are at least ten different
fake people posting to his blog at
http://www.chessninja.com/dailydirt/2007/10/slime_spillover.htm . Mig
is sure that all but one of them are fake because they all say much