In the article at Chessbase, Not quite unprecedented, by Carlos Alberto Colodro, much was made of the fact that current World Chess Champ Magnus Carlsen lost two consecutive games in rounds four and five in the 2023 Tata Steel Chess tournament.
“Before the rest day at the Tata Steel Masters, Carlsen had lost to Anish Giri, and in the very next round, he was shockingly defeated by 18-year-old Nodirbek Abdusattorov. The last time Carlsen had lost two classical games in a row was in 2015, at the Norway Chess event, where he lost to Veselin Topalov and Fabiano Caruana in the first two rounds of the super-tournament.” (https://en.chessbase.com/post/tata-steel-chess-2023-r5-b)
There is a box in the article which contains the number of Carlsen losses since 2013:
Amount of losses in classical chess for Carlsen by year: 2013: 4 2014: 6 2015: 10 2016: 3 2017: 6 2018: 2 2019: 0 2020: 2 2021: 2 2022: 1#TataSteelChess — Tarjei J. Svensen (@TarjeiJS) January 19, 2023
Anyone who knows anything about statistics knows that without context numbers are meaningless.
For example, the two games Magnus lost during the pandemic year could be more, percentage wise, than the ten lost in 2015. Without knowing how many games were contested by Magnus for the above years the numbers are meaningless.
Things would have been different if the writer had, for example, taken time to research his subject. The author also could have researched how often the other World Chess Champions had lost two consecutive games, which would have added something interesting to the article.
The article did stoke my curiosity, causing me to wonder why Magnus played such poor Chess moves. I researched the earlier tournament in order to learn the dates of the two games that were lost back in 2015. Then I went to the preferred biorhythm calculator (https://www.biorhythm-calculator.net/) to check what it displayed for Magnus at the beginning of the 2015 Norway Chess event:
Magnus finished the tournament one-half point out of last place in the event, winning two, drawing three, and losing four games. The above chart shows Magnus intellectually low for the entire tournament.
My friend Michael Mulford is one of the good guys involved with the Royal Game of Chess. “Mulfish”, as he is known at the USCF Forum, has devoted much time to Chess over the decades, and is currently very much involved with Senior Chess. After seeing this post on the USCF Forum it seemed to differ from the first one posted:
Postby Mulfish on Sat Sep 17, 2022 8:36 am #354807 https://www.minnesotachess.com/ is the Minnesota Chess website. It now shows tournament details and a link to the registration page, though i still don’t see it on the US Chess website.
I would also caution anyone interested in playing in the Georgia Senior. The round schedule is absurdly tight, with only 4 hours between the morning and afternoon rounds and a time control of G90/ inc 30. The organizer has told me they have to finish and be out of the building by a specific time. The ad does say they provide “light food”. If I were playing, I think I’d bring my own to be sure that I could keep my blood sugar where it should be. I’d probably have used a slightly shorter time control like G/75 inc 30, but it’s hard to criticize them for wanting to use the same time control as the Irwin uses. No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot – Mark Twain http://www.uschess.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=26094
Because it differed I reached out to the Mulfish asking if it were, in fact, a different post. This was the reply:
Michael Mulford
Sat, Sep 17, 9:10 PM
This is the original; I had it only because Parnell included it in his email to me. If you wish to point out I made this original post and then edited it, that’s fine, but if you do please portray it as a revision to incorporate his explanations. He didn’t ask me to do so. I think he would have made a post of his own once he figured out how to join the forums and do so.
“I also caution anyone interested in playing in the Georgia Senior. The round schedule is absurdly tight, with only 4 hours between the morning and afternoon rounds and a time control of G90/ inc 30. I don’t know what they were thinking on this one. Perhaps they lose the site at 5 or 6 pm. If you’re going to play, I’d consider asking the organizer about that. It might be possible to persuade them to build a little more time into the schedule.”
I had questioned the new President of the Georgia Chess Association about the format, which allowed not time for rest or food between rounds a year ago when the format of the Georgia Senior was advertised. For that reason I, and several other Senior players, did not participate in the 2021 Georgia Senior. In response Mr. Watkins defended the format by informing me there would be a “charcuterie” board provided for the players. The definition of a charcuterie board is: “Sausages, ham, pâtés, and other cooked or processed meat foods.” Just what a Senior needs, right? There is nothing like processed meat served on a board that has been sitting out for hours to whet your appetite. Unfortunately, it did not whet my appetite as I do not, and have not eaten pork products for decades, and try to avoid processed food as much as possible, as do most Seniors. I met the new POTGCA at the 2022 Georgia State Chess Championships and the man is HUGE. He looked like the kind of guy who should, by all means, stay away from processed food, and immediately go on a diet to lose at least fifty, if not one hundred pounds.
POTGCA Parnell Watkins in foreground on right nest to large soda cup
In an email exchange Parnell closed with this:
“A monkey in my plans is that I have been diagnosed with a heart condition, a leaky valve. I will have to have surgery this year, and it explains finally why I hit a wall in chess (tournaments and can’t seem to get past the first couple of hours of a tournament. I always contributed to my nervous disorder causing me to become exhausted. No, my heart gives out.”
Regards, Parnell
Mr. Watkins became POTGCA when no one ran against him. The VP of the GCA is Thad Rogers, who has his own health problems.
“I never let schooling interfere with my education.” – Mark Twain
Today is the anniversary of the brutal murder of POTUS John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The event which transpired in New York city on September 11, 2001 has been equated with what happened in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, which to anyone my age is laughable. The enormousness of the killing of a POTUS dwarfs any other day of infamy.
The death of President Kennedy was announced at a pep rally at my high school on a Friday afternoon. Half of those in attendance cheered. JFK was reviled in the South, not only because he was a yankee, but also a Catholic. Southern Baptists did not like Catholics. Actually, most of them did not like anyone other than those who were like minded.
I had turned thirteen a few months earlier and was in the eight grade at a new high school where I knew only two other students, both from my grammar school. Fights broke out after the announcement. Fortunately I was not involved.
Like most other Americans my family gathered around the television to watch the continuous coverage. One could tell how important an event was this because there were no commercials broadcast for days. I saw Jack Ruby allegedly shoot Lee Harvey Oswald, if it was really Lee Harvey Oswald, in the basement of the Dallas police department. Oswald said he was a patsy. Some do not believe Ruby, an FBI informant, actually shot Oswald. Only a few people know the truth, and they are not telling. One reason may be what has been written about something in the office of organized crime figure Carlos Marcello’s office: “Three can keep a secret if two are dead,” which is a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin.
I read Rush To Judgement, by Mark Lane, in the late 1960’s and was hooked. At one time I could count the number of books on the assassination, but that is no longer the case, and has not been for decades. Former Georgia Chess Champion Michael Decker once told someone that I “Had read EVERYTHING!” It may have been close to the truth then, but there have been so many books written now that it is virtually impossible for anyone to read all of them. Michael, like most other Americans, refused to believe anything other than what the government said had happened. On one of the many visits I made to visit him in Louisville I noticed a copy of Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, by David S. Lifton. When asked if he had read the book he looked like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He refused to discuss the matter, so I let it drop. I could discern his faith in our institutions had been shaken.
I even read discredited books concerning the assassination considered by knowledgeable people to be disinformation. When asked why I would reply, “In order to know what they leave out, or where they want you to go, so I can go the other way.” I drew the line, though, at the doorstop, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, by Vincent Bugliosi. After all, my time on this earth is limited and reading that piece of trash would be a complete waste of time. I will admit, though, that the reviews panning it were even better than the reviews of Gerald Posner’s terrible book, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK.
I went to the Atlanta Historical Society one evening to listen to a lecture by a man some call an “eminent historian,” Robert Dallek, who had written, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917 – 1963. I was in line to ask him a question when the first question to him was, “What books have you read on the assassination of JFK?” When he said, “Case Closed,” the questioner asked, “That’s all?” When Dallek said there was no need to read any other books after reading that one, the audience booed, and hissed, and booed some more. I turned and walked out. Need I tell you this is one of the highlights of my life?
Back in the 1980’s Michael “Mad Dog” Gordon, another Chess player, watched a two-hour program on the JFK assassination, which he thought made him an expert. The Legendary one, had told Mike that I had read many books on the subject, so Mad Dog began asking me questions one evening while taking a break from playing fifteen minute games. We did not play another game. Many hours later he offered his couch because of the late hour. I could not do that now because my memory is not what it used to be. I have forgotten names, dates, and details, unfortunately. The program Mad Dog had watched “proved” that LHO had shot JFK. As the man from the High Planes, Life Master David Vest, former Georgia Chess Champion and Georgia Senior Chess champion, would say, “I refuted the Mad Dog.”
Whatever one thinks of John Fitzgerald Kennedy the fact that you are here today and reading this is testament to the man because if he had not been POTUS during the Cuban Missile Crisis there would have been a nuclear war. There would have been an alternate timeline, one that possibly would not have included humans. You see, the hawks who wanted to bomb the hell out of Cuba did not know that nuclear weapons were positioned there, ready to strike the US, and that the Russian battlefield commanders had authority to fire them in case of an invasion. This was learned decades later at a conference in Cuba.
A few who have learned of my continuing interest in the sordid affair have asked me what book to read, as if there were one, and only one, book to read on the assassination of President Kennedy. My usual response has been to scoff at such a ridiculous question. Now I am old and today may be my tomorrow, so I have decided to share the titles of the books I would recommend one read, if interested in the subject.
When I began researching the subject I focused on not who had killed the POTUS, but why was he killed. This is the best book to answer that question:
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, by James W. Douglass.
Garrison Keillor puts out an edition of The Writer’s Almanac every day, which can be listened to on NPR and found here: https://writersalmanac.org/
Mr. Keillor writes in today’s edition, “As they drove through Dealey Plaza, Lee Harvey Oswald opened fire from a sixth-floor window in the Texas School Book Depository.” Lee Harvey Oswald was later that day tested for nitrates on his face, something he would have had if he had fired a rifle earlier in the day. He tested negative.
Because it is his birthday a piece on Charles de Gaulle, a former President of France, follows, which is ironic because when asked about the Kennedy assassination, de Gaulle, who had survived numerous assassination attempts, said, “His security was compromised.” This is the book to read in order to understand what happened that November day in 1963:
Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect President Kennedy, by Vincent Palamara.
Douglas Horne has written a five volumne set of books that is simply de rigueur if one wants to know what happened in Dallas that terrible day: Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK.
If one wants to know the empirical evidence he should read the masterful: A Deeper, Darker Truth, by Donald T Phillips.
That’s it, unless one is interested in speculation, when I would highly recommend: Target JFK: The Spy Who Killed Kennedy? by Robert K. Wilcox, the author of the highly acclaimed, Target Patton: The Plot to Assassinate General George S. Patton.
Then there is, THE MEN THAT DON’T FIT IN, by Rod MacKenzie. Can it really be true that these last two books are true? With the JFK assassination, anything is possible.
The Men That Don’t Fit In
By Robert W. Service
There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.
If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they’re always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: “Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!”
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.
And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.
He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone;
He’s a man who won’t fit in.
An interesting thread on the USCF Forum caught my eye, “Chess and the 2010 Census”, by nolan on Fri May 23, 2014 11:24 am (http://www.uschess.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=20015&sid=f8cd2da1e12b399d4e1656ea88bac60a).
In this thread one can find the number of people who, “Participated in Chess in the last 12 months,” for example. The total given is 6,896,000. There are other breakdowns as well. This PDF is included: (http://www.uschess.org/datapage/12s1240.pdf)
I found the statistics Nolan included in his next post several hours later most interesting. It is “…the breakdown from the latest age group report.” From this we learn the 32,783 adults are outnumbered by the 34,463 prepubescent “12/below” group. Back in the day before the scholastic movement most members paid a full membership fee. Since the prepubescent group pays less than a “regular” member, it would seem the USCF is taking in less money, relatively speaking. I have heard a question asked numerous times by many different members, Since it is not the children who pay but their parents, who are adults, why should membership cost less for them?
The other divisions shown are: 13-15 (8497); 16-19 (5554); 20-24 (2180). Before going on, I would like to point out the sharp decline within these age groups. The total of the three age groups above is 16,231, which is less than half of the prepubescent group. I wonder why adults are considered 20+ by the USCF. It would make more sense to consider an adult as 18+. Therefore, I would like to see a breakdown of three years, as the given 13-15 age group, by 16-18 and 19-21, then 22-24, which would seem to make more sense.
The next group is from 25-64, comprised of 22581 members. This group makes me think of the coveted age group of TV viewers, which is something like 18-49. A group with these age limits would seem to make more sense here because a member is eligible to play in the USCF Senior chess tournament upon turning 50. Why is a 50+ group not shown? I could understand a 50-64 age group, because a player must be 65 to play in the FIDE Senior.
As it is the numbers given tell us something, but more numbers with a better breakdown would bring greater elucidation. I am reminded of the quote Mark Twain attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, a British Conservative politician, writer and aristocrat, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” This is another example of a myth becoming legend. For example, see (http://www.twainquotes.com/Statistics.html) “Further background on this quote is provided by Stephen Goranson who writes on the Mark Twain Forum in a post dated 31 July 2002: Twain’s Autobiography attribution of a remark about lies and statistics to Disraeli is generally not accepted. Evidence is now available to conclude that the phrase originally appeared in 1895 in an article by Leonard H. Courtney. So Disraeli is not the source, nor any pre-1895 person; merely Courtney. The 1895 article is now available online at: http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/lies.htm Courtney may have read Carlyle on statistics (also quoted at this site); certainly, misuse of statistics was complained about before 1895.”
Armchair Warrior 