Sir George Alan Thomas

Historical knowledge and information regarding our great game.
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JustinHorton
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Re: Sir George Alan Thomas

Post by JustinHorton » Sun Jan 12, 2014 4:03 pm

Geoff Chandler wrote:Hi Justin.

In both cases I just reproduced what was being printed.
Never said I cared or cared less.
Not really Geoff. You were interested in the gossip. When you thought it was just a larf.
"Do you play chess?"
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Geoff Chandler
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Re: Sir George Alan Thomas

Post by Geoff Chandler » Sun Jan 12, 2014 4:15 pm

Hi Justin.

In the Corner case only too glad to find something of interest that filled up ½ column.

The gossip....yes sometimes....if it's harmless and I can squeeze something out of it.

But I have shelved dozens of other gossip stories as not being quite suitable.
If it's not chess related then it's nothing to do with me.

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JustinHorton
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Re: Sir George Alan Thomas

Post by JustinHorton » Sun Jan 12, 2014 4:23 pm

Geoff Chandler wrote:if it's harmless
Although, of course, apologists for what Ray does aren't harmless at all. Or indeed funny.

Not by now.

(Is that the style?)
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Stephen Saunders
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Re: Sir George Alan Thomas

Post by Stephen Saunders » Sun Jan 12, 2014 4:28 pm

Geoff Chandler wrote: We have to put all the skullduggery behind us and recall that Botvinnik was an exceptional chess player.
Couldn't agree more. I was always impressed by Jan Timman writing (I forget where) that he knew every one of Botvinnik's games. There's also a conversation between Petrosian and Keres on Botvinnik's wiki which is revealing :)

Keres' (and Spassky's) love of tennis is well-documented, I think.

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Re: Sir George Alan Thomas

Post by Geoff Chandler » Sun Jan 12, 2014 4:51 pm

Hi Juston.

(Is that the style?)

That's it. You are getting there.

All you have to do now is stop flogging the 'story' to death.

O.G. Urcan
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Re: Sir George Alan Thomas

Post by O.G. Urcan » Mon Jan 13, 2014 8:27 am

I'd like to make some points about various issues in this discussion:

1. The Lasker vs Thomas game is in K. Whyld's 1998 book on Lasker, with a slightly different date: 17, not 18, April 1896.

2. On 5 January Tryfon Gavriel referred to Capablanca's "3rd wife". He was married twice.

3. It's good to see so much scepticism being expressed here about the chessgames.com site.

4. Batsford Chess Openings. There is some very interesting information about who wrote what in an article published by Kingpin:

http://www.kingpinchess.net/wp-content/ ... pin_39.pdf

5. Plagiarism is a serious offence, and it's no different in chess writing from anywhere else. At the Streatham & Brixton Chess Blog, Justin Horton has been providing an enormous amount of documentary evidence since last Summer, and I'm not aware of any serious attempt to rebut it:

http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.c ... index.html

Thanks.
- Olimpiu G. Urcan

Tryfon Gavriel
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Re: Sir George Alan Thomas

Post by Tryfon Gavriel » Mon Jan 13, 2014 11:07 am

JustinHorton wrote:
Geoff Chandler wrote:if it's harmless
Although, of course, apologists for what Ray does aren't harmless at all. Or indeed funny.

Not by now.

(Is that the style?)
Justin there was a further reply from Raymond Keene on Chessgames.com for the record:

"Jan-12-14
Premium Chessgames Member ray keene: let me make it absolutely clear-whenever i have quoted or summarised anything ever written by garry i have sought appropriate permissions in every single case-anyone suggesting anything else is simply making it up. since such people never bother to check their facts with me i ignore them and i advise anyone else remotely interested to do the same."

What concerns me is the facts that I hold onto regarding the My Great Predecessor series.

1. First of all, there is a lot of it - many volumes and many games. I have several of them.
2. Kasparov indicated fairly explicitly he made use of a "1st Category Analyst" in creating these books - when he came for the book signings.

What I think you should perhaps acknowledge which you don't currently in the blogs is 2. and also the potential complexity of the underlying "permission models".

For example:

1. What if the "1st Category Analyst" had permission from Kasparov to seek credible sources for the written parts of annotated games ?!
2. What if the "1st Category Analyst" had indeed sought permission for the verbal stuff from other authors?!

I don't see how we as consumers - and take the recent "Beef Burger" crises can accurately know the exact sources of what we consume - whether that be "Beef Burgers" or books. We don't know the complexities of the underlying "permission models". Do we ?! Maybe we should treat the name on the front of the book as the "Overall manager" - who might be aquiring content potentially from multiple other sources?!

For me, it helps to explain though the lack of apparent "passion" behind books like Batsford Chess Openings - no real explanations of plans or evaluations given.. just series of moves a lot of the time. It takes books like Watson's excellent books on the French defence to explain anything. In the case of the "MGP" series, it comes for me as a disappointment because it is like historical games are clinically analysed often without reference to the underlying culture of the times. Sure you can tear to shreds games of the Romantic era, and endless unsound Kings Gambit games, but maybe these were played for brilliance because that is the only way at the time you could make a name for yourself. It seems the "passion" and "context" of these books suffers - that is what we can see for sure.

My biggest book complaint is actually Kotov's "Think Like a Grandmaster". From a consumer perspective it seems to me more like "How computers think with variation trees" a lot of the time. Did Kotov really write it?! Did he really mean it?! If he really meant it, how many GM's really gave evidence they think like variation trees?! The outcomes - are we really going to have thousands of people treating chess like some sort of clinical thinking exercise, perhaps being put off chess altogether ?! Are we really going to think the Romantic era games are terribly unsound and not know why?! These outcomes create a kind of coldness around the game - a clinical coldness. When actually witnessing at one of the London Classics a post-mortem involving Magnus Carlsen, I did the following video which went into the opposite direction and has caused a fierce debate ever since:

Chess Calculation: Try not to calculate anything! Magnus Carlsen example
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O2EzU19fC8

BTW "Play Better Chess" by Leonard Barden arrived today. Another great thing about this thread - many thanks Leonard :)

Best wihes
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Roger de Coverly
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Re: Sir George Alan Thomas

Post by Roger de Coverly » Mon Jan 13, 2014 11:35 am

Tryfon Gavriel wrote: My biggest book complaint is actually Kotov's "Think Like a Grandmaster". From a consumer perspective it seems to me more like "How computers think with variation trees" a lot of the time. Did Kotov really write it?! Did he really mean it?! If he really meant it, how many GM's really gave evidence they think like variation trees?!
I don't know who wrote it if it wasn't Kotov, but is it not a book written at a time (1971) when computer programs struggled to put more than a handful of moves together?

One might presume that at least some of the Soviet GMs, Kotov himself perhaps, thought in the way of variation trees. There are other approaches later revealed by GMs, for example find squares for your pieces and find ways to make moves and combinations work.

The MGP series quotes a lot of annotations by earlier commentators. That's part of the appeal, that GK is recording what was written at the time and giving his own verdict as to whether it was valid. It's usually clear when it's a quoted note and when it's GK original material. The issue being raised by ejh is that the columns in The Times and The Spectator quote more or less verbatim from previous columns, MGP and other sources, without noting at the very least that it's material "based on" or "previously appearing".

A number of the annotations on chessgames.com first appeared in other publications. For example
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1290179 was in BH Wood's Chess and was source material for gaining an understanding of that variation.

This one http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1290180 also appeared in a number of places and is another textbook example on how to demolish the Kings Indian.

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JustinHorton
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Re: Sir George Alan Thomas

Post by JustinHorton » Mon Jan 13, 2014 12:28 pm

At the risk of repeating myself Tryfon, let me repeat myself.

1. Nobody has ever said that they have given Ray permission to reuse copyright work without acknowledgement. Nor is there any good reason why they would do so. Nor can any publisher say that they have done so, since it would amount to saying they were prepared to cheat both their writers and their readers.
2. The only person who has ever said so is Ray, and we know from long experience than his unconfirmed word is worth nothing. (He also knows very well that he has, indeed, been asked about it before, as he knows very well that he has had inconvenient critics and postings blocked and deleted from his chessgames.com forum.)
3. In a point that for some reason needs to be reiterated endlessly, permission isn't actually anything to do with it. Plagiarism is passing off other people's old work as your own new work. This is what has taken place, on an industrial scale.
4. Ray has a substantial record of plagiarism.
5. Ray has a longer record of passing off old work as new, in the course of which many copyrights have been infringed.
6. His latest wheeze involves copyrighting in his own name work which has manifestly appeared and been copyrighted elsewhere.
7. This is just the latest episode in a thirty-five year career of misconduct.
8. Recycling old work as new, copyright theft and plagiarism are all quite wrong, for reasons that we are all old enough to understand, and no publisher can admit to having engaged in these practices. They also mean what they mean. They do not mean something entirely different where Ray Keene is concerned.
9. Until his publishers want to explain their conduct and his, then speculation and "what ifs" are a waste of time.
10. The reason Ray has got away with so much for so long is because there is never any shortage of people in the chess community to cover up and make excuses for him. There is also a large section of the chess community, to which I belong, which considers such activities abject and views them with distaste. I have a similar distaste for having to engage with them and waste my time on them.
"Do you play chess?"
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Tryfon Gavriel
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Re: Sir George Alan Thomas

Post by Tryfon Gavriel » Mon Jan 13, 2014 12:39 pm

JustinHorton wrote:At the risk of repeating myself Tryfon, let me repeat myself.

1. Nobody has ever said that they have given Ray permission to reuse copyright work without acknowledgement. Nor is there any good reason why they would do so. Nor can any publisher say that they have done so, since it would amount to saying they were prepared to cheat both their writers and their readers.
2. The only person who has ever said so is Ray, and we know from long experience than his unconfirmed word is worth nothing. (He also knows very well that he has, indeed, been asked about it before, as he knows very well that he has had inconvenient critics and postings blocked and deleted from his chessgames.com forum.)
3. In a point that for some reason needs to be reiterated endlessly, permission isn't actually anything to do with it. Plagiarism is passing off other people's old work as your own new work. This is what has taken place, on an industrial scale.
4. Ray has a substantial record of plagiarism.
5. Ray has a longer record of passing off old work as new, in the course of which many copyrights have been infringed.
6. His latest wheeze involves copyrighting in his own name work which has manifestly appeared and been copyrighted elsewhere.
7. This is just the latest episode in a thirty-five year career of misconduct.
8. Recycling old work as new, copyright theft and plagiarism are all quite wrong, for reasons that we are all old enough to understand, and no publisher can admit to having engaged in these practices. They also mean what they mean. They do not mean something entirely different where Ray Keene is concerned.
9. Until his publishers want to explain their conduct and his, then speculation and "what ifs" are a waste of time.
10. The reason Ray has got away with so much for so long is because there is never any shortage of people in the chess community to cover up and make excuses for him. There is also a large section of the chess community, to which I belong, which considers such activities abject and views them with distaste. I have a similar distaste for having to engage with them and waste my time on them.
Justin thanks for the points. In general I mistrust books quite a bit. I think that is why there is a large scope for "live commentary chess videos", or chess videos in general - where you see the actual GM etc themselves a lot of the time. In this way, you are getting it from the horse's mouth - and see the horse in the video.

I don't wish to endlessly debate with you Raymond Keene - I think we have flogged the horse enough now. Perhaps time to get back to the Keres/Botvinnik controversies. I found a very controversial page by "Sam Sloan" here - has anyone here read it?!

http://www.anusha.com/keres-bo.htm

Happy new year :)

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Geoff Chandler
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Re: Sir George Alan Thomas

Post by Geoff Chandler » Mon Jan 13, 2014 1:09 pm

Hi Justin.

10. The reason Ray has got away with so much for so long is because there is never any
shortage of people in the chess community to cover up and make excuses for him.

I've never seen anybody make an excuse for his copying and pasting and lifting actions.
Though I will have to say I've never read all the comments you have recieved regarding this saga. (quest).

We all knew that it has been going on for years.
And RDK knows we all knew and still.....

Anyway good luck with this, don't know where or when it will end.

You missed out No. 11.

11. Some chess players don't seem to care due to the over exposure this matter recieves
and one sad individual seems to think the whole mattter is quite hilarious.

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Re: Sir George Alan Thomas

Post by PeterFarr » Mon Jan 13, 2014 1:40 pm

Tryfon Gavriel wrote:Perhaps time to get back to the Keres/Botvinnik controversies. I found a very controversial page by "Sam Sloan" here - has anyone here read it?!

http://www.anusha.com/keres-bo.htm
If you google something like "Sam Sloan chess" you will find a wealth of material about this colourful man, but nothing to suggest that his views on the Keres-Botvinnik saga should be taken as authoritative, to say the least of it.

O.G. Urcan
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Re: Sir George Alan Thomas

Post by O.G. Urcan » Mon Jan 13, 2014 1:57 pm

Geoff Chandler writes:

"I've never seen anybody make an excuse for his [Raymond Keene's] copying and pasting and lifting actions."

Please refer to http://www.kingpinchess.net/2012/04/plagiarism-watch

Concerning the 1948 world championship match-tournament, Tryfon Gavriel gives a link to a piece by a notoriously inaccurate writer which is no basis for any serious discussion. That article even begins by saying that the event was "held in Amsterdam and The Hague". No, The Hague and Moscow.

Tryfon Gavriel
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Re: Sir George Alan Thomas

Post by Tryfon Gavriel » Mon Jan 13, 2014 2:05 pm

O.G. Urcan wrote:....
Concerning the 1948 world championship match-tournament, Tryfon Gavriel gives a link to a piece by a notoriously inaccurate writer which is no basis for any serious discussion. That article even begins by saying that the event was "held in Amsterdam and The Hague". No, The Hague and Moscow.
(Good observation - Hague (in the Netherlands) and Moscow (in Russia). I see your point.) Also thank you for the Capablanca Wife No.2 correction - I need to read about Capa's bio a few times, to try and minimise such issues. His second wife Olga seemed to invigorate his play and return to competitive chess. What do you think of the overall standard of Capas's bio at Wiki?! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_ ... Capablanca - it is worth a read ?!

What was of interest to me is the analysis of the actual games which is verifiable oneself - which is what I intend to do as part of my evolution of chess style series. Surely you cannot suggest that the analysis of concrete chess games is worthy of doing for the analysis of Chess history and the evolution of Chess style generally?! So far in the thread, the five games haven't actually been technically analysed. Perhaps it would be interesting to analyse them in depth.

In a recent Andrew Martin video, mention is made of Keres, and how few people seem to have heard of him in the young generation. So it is interesting historically to check out Paul Keres and these games and others of course pre World War II and after. I already admire Keres from later on in his games from Fischer and beyond (but feel I ought to examine his much earlier games).

Here is one of the shorter games:



Here is the 5th game encounter won by Keres:



Best wishes
Tryfon
Last edited by Tryfon Gavriel on Mon Jan 13, 2014 2:36 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Sir George Alan Thomas

Post by Gerard Killoran » Mon Jan 13, 2014 2:34 pm

O.G. Urcan wrote:I'd like to make some points about various issues in this discussion:

1. The Lasker vs Thomas game is in K. Whyld's 1998 book on Lasker, with a slightly different date: 17, not 18, April 1896.

Thanks.
- Olimpiu G. Urcan
Back on topic: The source I quoted gave the date of the Lasker - Thomas game as the previous Saturday (via Lady Thomas), which in April 1896 was the 18th. Either my source or Ken Whyld is mistaken. Perhaps even the late, great Ken Whyld made the occasional error?

Tryfon, going from Raymond Keene to Sam Sloan brings the words 'frying-pan' and 'fire' to mind. Careful how you go...

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