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October 15, 2008What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?The forum is the proper meeting place for all players who want to leave a message to the community of PlayChess.de. You are welcome to join the various categories, post a new message or reply to an existing one. Hint From my experience I suggest that all messages should be short and compact so that they can be easily read. Avoid empty lines between paragraphs.
Posted by Michalis Kaloumenos at 09:06 AM
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October 11, 2008The BanzayFish scandal - Scene III (The avatars of the tortoise)I borrowed the title after a short essay by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges about the Zeno’s paradox Achilles and the tortoise. Here in Playchess.de we observe a different kind of paradox that requires our attention. There are handles supposed to belong to strong female Dutch players who show a bad attitude against their opponents. Many years ago these handles belonged to different persons. So they say in their comments that accompany moves played. It is simple logic for me to conclude that some of their confessions are true, some are not, OR all of their confessions are lies. It is not logical to conclude that they always speak the truth. The truth is some times blinding. There are two methods to face a situation like this. Either one tries to figure out what is true and what is a lie, or believes (make-believe) what one likes as true. In other words “So it is (if you think so)” Così è (Se Vi Pare), Luigi Pirandello If the script is recited in chronological order then Scene III should not follow Scene II. I want to provide some answers following the Blindness test of the previous article. I do not give the links to all of the games, but all underlined text opens a new window with the games's history. Scene III You still play the leading role, you play chess in Playchess.de and you read your opponent’s comments. You make a detailed investigation in the games' history of the handles anne_t, BanzayFish and ZorMaster. anne_t This handle was created in March 2001 and joined an A class tournament. Its owner called herself Anne, preferred the French flag instead of the Dutch and gave a lot of information about herself to her opponents. BanzayFish This handle was created in October 2001. BanzayFish is a killer fish who attacks his opponent and does not care if he dies by this attack. Its owner didn’t like to chat but always replied politely. Here he says that he is “brandnew” in chess. You check the ranking lists of 2001 and discover that WIM Marta (the player that BanzayFish is supposed to be today) had ELO 2193. You quickly discover that this user’s name is Maarten and leaves in Delft or Oegstgeest or Tilburg, but he is a student in Delft University! Airplane constructions! ZorMaster This handle was created also in October 2001. The user’s name was also Anne. A final comment. There is another member who faced anne_t and suspected that he knows her with another chessname. Bravo PLUTARCO! With a handle like this you sure know all about Vitae Parallelae.
Posted by Michalis Kaloumenos at 12:03 AM
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October 04, 2008The BanzayFish scandal - Scene II (Blindness)You probably know that the final edition of a movie that reaches the theatres has nothing to do with the original script. There are always new ideas from the writer, the director and sometimes the actors that alter the content, the scene sequence and the characters. In our case, I must add Scene-II in the middle of Scene-I, after the end of the Internet game between you and BanzayFish and before the local club simul with Marta. There is no variation this time. You (only you) play the leading role. Scene II When the Internet game was over you were very angry, but your conscience instructed you to try and forget the incident, as if BanzayFish never addressed insults against you. But BanzayFish did not forget. She was angrier than you, insisted that you cheated her with computers, and decided to act further. She sent a message to you, using the messaging system of playchess.de, did not hesitate to append her e-mail address (very irritating, don't you think?), with a content of only two words: "pathetic guy". Then she made an Internet search and found your name as a member of your local chess club and posted a comment to your chess club web site, repeating her accusations. She signed the post as WIM Marta (full name of course). Blindness Allow me to start with the final conclusion. Our little virtual chess club is blind (totally blind, unforgivably blind) compared to the real world of OTB chess, where real chess players meet in open tournaments and play each other on real chessboards with real pieces, real clocks and real score sheets. They have the chance to meet, talk, have fun and drink a couple of beers together. What do we have? The distance that separates us is a thick dark colored curtain that does not allow us to have real contact with each other. Technology offers e-mail, instant messaging system and video conference but all these cannot be compared even with a simple handshake. So, a cheater accused many players for cheating. Some of these players could be real cheaters and they really used computers. There are many cheaters out there, isn't it? Who cheated whom with a cheat-cheat here and a cheat-cheat there? Here a cheat, there a cheat, everywhere a cheat-cheat. Who deserves the best cheater Academy award? "And cheaters, wherever you are out there…" I hail you with the same three little English words that Al Pacino used in the crowded Baird school auditorium, in the final scene of the film "Scent of a woman". (Remember that the hero Frank Slade was a blind person) Blindness test Memory may cure blindness. One of those handles was “anne_t”. I remembered that I played against her 5 years ago and I annotated our game. Click here for the annotation. What do you observe? What goes wrong here? You don’t have to read the whole annotation. You don’t even have to scroll down the page. The critical information lies in the comment after 2.Nc3 Well, any comments? Please, no sharp language, no real Dutch names.
Posted by Michalis Kaloumenos at 06:12 PM
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October 01, 2008The BanzayFish scandal - Scene I (Introduction)I like fiction and drama, I enjoy a good thriller movie (especially when gun fighting is limited), I have spent a lot of hours playing Sherlock Holmes last week, I got inspired from your comments to the previous article I wrote and I decided to recite you the story of BanzayFish as if it is a movie script. My files are overloaded with e-mails and links and all little things that I discovered and my mind is full of emotions and ideas mixed with sarcasm (?!). I am not going to reveal everything I know right from the beginning. Be patient. You waited for 12 years before you see another World Championship Match; I am not going to torture you for such a long time. The storyboard We have a correspondence chess site where players use nicknames to login. Users have a choice either to keep their personal data hidden or to show to the other members their name and chess title, if any. Now this handle, BanzayFish as well as another handle, ZorMaster, do not hide their data. The first one belongs to a strong titled woman player, who for the purposes of the script has the name Marta, the other one belongs to a young lady, numero uno in her category whom we may call Kerstine. Scene I You played an Internet game against BanzayFish, you knew that Marta was a very strong player, it is a challenge to play known and strong players, you read theory and game bases again and again so that you get out of the opening phase with an equal position. Then in move 23, she accompanied her move with an insult and an accusation that you cheat with a computer. Her words were so sharp that you got angry, you sent a complaint to Thomas but you received no reply (you should know that Thomas works eight days a week, because he has a family to feed and a greedy server that sucks all his money). You were angry for a week, then you calmed down and then… Scene I – variation Now the leading character is not you, but him. (I prefer a male character for the purpose of the variation) He is a young man, his parents were divorced when he was fourteen, he recently failed a university exam or his employer asked him impolitely to be more productive, he is eager to conquer the world and feels cheated because the struggle is harder than he thought. Well, this lad is a very good chess player although not in a national level. He always returns to chess and finds happiness, because chess is the only activity that keeps his mind in discipline and harmony, so he played chess almost everywhere, (the park, local club, Internet) and anytime (work breaks, afternoon, before he goes to bed). Now he is the one who played a game against BanzayFish and faced the sharp insults, he also played against Marta at the local club’s simul exhibition. He made the same observation as you did, but he could not control his anger during the game. Perhaps earlier he visited a coffee shop (sorry, in my mind the story takes place somewhere in the Netherlands) and that was the main reason for his confusion. When everything was over he approached her and then… Do you get the picture? This is the beginning of “the BanzayFish scandal”. Just the beginning… Many thanks to the playchess.de member who inspired Scene I :-)
Posted by Michalis Kaloumenos at 11:04 PM
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The BanzayFish scandal - Scene III (The avatars of the tortoise) The BanzayFish scandal - Scene II (Blindness) The BanzayFish scandal - Scene I (Introduction) Recent Comments
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