Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 20:21:26 10/11/02
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On October 11, 2002 at 16:47:42, martin fierz wrote: >On October 11, 2002 at 16:30:33, Daniel Clausen wrote: > >>On October 11, 2002 at 16:15:21, Otello Gnaramori wrote: >> >>[snip] >> >>>That is exactly what is missing in those games just seen in the match >>>Kramnik-DF... "the chess beauty" ! >> >>Game #2 was a fantastic game in my opinion. You seem to apply that "chess >>beauty" is equal to incredible queen sacs and whatnot. >> >>Sargon > >i have often noticed that what people find beautiful in chess depends on their >understanding of chess. to somebody who plays no chess at all, nothing is >beautiful. to weak players, a queen sac forcing a mate in 2 is beautiful. to >average players, a classic like Bxh7+ Kxh7 Qh5+ Kg8 Ng5 and mate in all forms is >beautiful. for strong players, there is no beauty there - it's just routine. >i have noticed that the stronger i got at chess, the more i could appreciate >other forms of chess beauty. most of the 1600 hacks who post here can't enjoy >those DF-kramnik games as much as i do. hmm, instead of complaining they should >work on their chess :-) > >there's a nice anecdote on this thing: kasparov was once on german TV and they >asked him about such a Bxh7 position - i'm not sure if he could see the board or >not, i think not. it was a forced mate in 8. they wanted to show the viewers who >knew nothing about chess that kasparov would see a mate in 8 in a split second, >blindfolded. but he didnt! he was confused, and didnt give the solution in a >second like anticipated. what happened? he thought: it was an obvious mate in 8 >- how could they ask him to solve something as trivial as that? so he just >refused to answer IIRC. 99 of 100 chess players would be glad to find a >beautiful combination, but kasparov was insulted by it :-) > >aloha > martin We played a GM vs computer event on chess.net a few years ago. In one game, Crafty announced some ridiculous mate, like a mate in 34 or something, where a position ended up in a tablebase. In another game, it was playing Roman in an opposite bishop ending and the split pawn evaluation code was working well. It methodically ground out the win. After the event, someone asked me about my favorite game, and you might have already guessed, the opposite bishop ending was my answer. They were disappointed in that it was (to them) a boring game. But knowing how precisely that ending must be played, it was _far_ more interesting to me as I watched, because even IMs were saying "this is a draw". Later a couple of GMs showed that it was _not_ a draw, after Crafty had won the game... Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the old saying goes. Some like deep mates. I happen to like endgames. More games are won in endgames than in deep mates, so the percentages favor me too, as in I am more likely to see the kind of game _I_ like than in seeing one that ends in a big boom...
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