Stream of Bilge Concerning Steven Jones

[John Upham]

Unfortunately, a stream of utter bilge has erupted on chessgames.com concerning Steven Jones

See https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.p ... =4#reply82

Clearly "Overgod" is unaware of how much

1. Steven is underrated by rather a lot
2. Steven works incredibly hard on chess
3. His depth of preparation is superb
4. His understanding is top notch

I'd like to help put a stop to this nonsense since there is a risk he might read it and more importantly, it is not true.

Suggestions?

[Paul Cooksey]

That you don't publicise it.

[John Upham]

That you don't publicise it.

Good idea. I will ask the search engines to follow your advice.

[Alan Walton]

After reading through the comments it seems it is just one moron spouting crap with no evidence, and the rest of the forum shouting him down saying its unsubstantiated

Easy way to stop this stuff if website's like this actually moderate their comment sections correctly and remove said posts

[NickFaulks]

After reading through the comments it seems it is just one moron spouting crap with no evidence

There is no evidence yet of the usual Russian / Israeli GM suspects piling on, so this will probably sink without trace.

[John Upham]

Apparently:

"Chessgames.com was founded in 2001 by Daniel Freeman and Alberto Artidiello in association with 20/20 Technologies. They developed software to integrate a chess database with a discussion forum, so that all games and players have a unique message board."

However:

"After co-founder of Chessgames.com Alberto A Artidiello passed away in 2015 at the age of 56, it is now with a deep feeling of sadness that I have to announce the untimely death of our beloved webmaster Daniel Freeman.
Daniel passed away on Tuesday the 24th at the age of only 51."

[Joey Stewart]

I think this is a good example of the danger of treating players as a mere number without considering anything beyond - saying that a 'mere 2100' could never perform this well, even though he should really be 2300+ if it were not for the awful ratings deflation which a regular tournament player such as Steven would undoubtedly fall victim to, the fact that Fernandez would have pushed over confidently assuming a win and not at all expected the violent and sharp stuff coming back in his direction (and, ok there was bound to be a fair bit of engine prep in the opening which would force the % match up but not so much that he could win without actually calculating at some stage)

[Matt Mackenzie]

There are suspicions of multiple sock puppets in the chessgames.com comments, amongst other things.

[NickFaulks]

the fact that Fernandez would have pushed over confidently assuming a win

Fernandez played rubbish, you don't need a computer to see that. Just the same, all credit to Jones for cleaning him up so efficiently.

[Tim Spanton]

I annotated Jones' round-one loss to Michael Adams at my website: https://beauchess.blogspot.com/2023/08/ ... ht-it.html. Not much evidence of engine use there ...

[Angus French]

I wonder, who is Overgod on chessgames.com?

[Roger Lancaster]

Last time I checked, the BCC employed arbiters - and I mean experienced arbiters rather than recently-qualified ones. They are averagely diligent throughout but, in any tournament such as this, someone who is clearly outperforming will get (very discreetly) special attention. So, to give any credibility to what is being suggested, one has to believe that Steven Jones is beating not only his opponents but an observant arbiting team. I'm not saying that's totally impossible (few things are!) but the alternative possibility, that the posters on chessgames.com are cretins, seems to me very much more likely.

[Tim Spanton]

I wonder, who is Overgod on chessgames.com?

I suspect his self-effacing modesty is his strongest attribute.

[Geoff Chandler]

I'm Sally Simpson on chessgames.com (favourite WHO song) but click the name and I tell all who I am.

I'm glad John brought this up, I was going to but dithered as It is partly my fault because I fed the troll. It looked like he was grade blinded and I was correcting him but he kept going on and on.

I decided to ignore him but he has kept it up adding insults. I raised an objection (something I very rarely do) but as yet nothing has been done, his post are still there which is surprising, I've seen others removed for a lot less. Hopefully he will cease or has been warned by the powers that be.

[Ian Jamieson]

Unfortunately moderating most forums takes time and costs money and I would not be surprised if this is an area where companies have tried to cut costs in the current climate.