Wednesday, May 07, 2008

A Bit of Fide Master Silliness

Over at Liz Vicary's place, FM Jon Jacobs goes off in the comments to this post:

They and their blogs carry colorful handles like Liquid Egg Product, blunderprone, Wahrheit, and even Man de la Maza.

(snip)

Less politely, they could be described as a "cult" - the word I used in my first post here. The clincher is, despite the painstaking effort they pour into both the MDLM puzzle "circles" and documenting their progress on their blogs .... few if any of them are actually showing any chess improvement!

Since Jon-Boy obviously doesn't know what the hell he's talking about, I make a comment with a whole paragraph of bold type. I don't need to repeat it here, go ahead and check it out if you like...

Anyhoo, I must say it was all in good fun, I can only hope he'll stop by here and share his response, if he's up to the challenge of explaining what the hell he was talking about.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bravo!

(a long-time lurker)

transformation said...

i dont want to mention any names, but i have gotten emails from Fide Masters, and some of them live very unhappy lives. bravo.

you say it so well. but another way is just to say: 'i decline to feel your pain as my own'.

Unknown said...

Hi Robert, I wasn't going to "weigh in" with a response to that nonsense by Jon Jacobs, but then I couldn't help myself!

I don't think I will allow some "puny" little runt of a 2300 player, who only recently poked his head above it, and then not by very much, insult decent folk who are at least trying and most of the time, have not as much time, as they would like to devote to the game, such is their lot.

As far as I'm concerned, if you're not 2500, you're a whelp on the chess board, so don't be talking big!

That goes for me too!

Anonymous said...

Firstly: Can we get a guarantee you haven't been a secret devotee of the circles?

The whole thing was more amusing than irritating and it's probably for the best that it didn't end up with too many tasered bodies.

Bold type, like milk, goes well with a lot of stuff.

Blue Devil Knight said...

One thing I learned, when I am in a flame war, there are a few people whose wrath I definitely wouldn't want to be on the receiving end. Shoemaker and Wahrheit being the top two.

Going back over it after a day, it is weird, as he has some thoughts that are interesting, but they are embedded in such a suite of unfounded insults that the interesting bits are hard to focus on.

Unknown said...

Thanks Blue Devil, I'm actually a closet dictator, but not to worry--I have vowed never to enter politics!

Anonymous said...

I tried to post on BDK's site but that failed for whatever reason.

Are you guys going to post some sort of retraction since the Vicary thread turned into a love fest?

Are you going admit that Jacobs has a point?

I'll admit that I'm not sure if this already exists: is there a summarized list of the Knights and the ratings they started out with and the ratings they now have (and the rating type, since ICC is different from FICS is different from USCF).

Again...because I don't know where to find it...Can any of the Knights show "remarkable" improvement in their USCF rating? Internet ratings make me yawn.

Think of me what you will, but I'm seriously asking. I have enough chess books to last me a while but with plane flights and all I'm trying to evaluate whether CT-ART is worth my time.

I've enjoyed the blogs and posts focused on how we learn and assimilate information. For the group, I'd seriously suggest doing some research (example: most of BDK's thoughts in his recent PDF could've been taken from a CJS Purdy book). Try Nikolai Krogius for chess psychology. Purdy was "only" a Correspondence world champion and Krogius "only" a GM. I'm inclined to listen to them over guys/gals my own level. Just as I'm inclined to listen to an FM over a B-class player like myself, even if his life sucks.

Just some thoughts. Thoughtful discussion welcome.

--Otis

otis_the_tau (at) yahoo (dot) com

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