Still missing the point.

I had been recovering from a broken back when I played Alex in 2004, already nearly 2 full years since I played any so called "serious checkers." If you really chatted with Alex, I find it HARD TO BELIEVE he would not mention this. And if you tell me such an injury would not impact your play, you are wrong.

Furthermore, I won a game, 1 out of 3, with 1 draw, all played late at night after hours of playing his son in Gothic Chess, plus we had a few beers as well.

I would rate his play as "not that great" but under the circumstances, this was by no means a tournament. It was 3 blitz games, at varying time controls.

In 2002, Alex also had Nemesis when we played in Banks Ladder. I was able to defeat him in one game. The common claim I hear is "Nemesis doesn't lose" or can't lose or something similar, but in the hands of a World Champion, who can also "check its play", it did lose.

Why? Using WCC as a "tool" I was able to "look ahead" and lead it down paths leading to positions my own experience knows will lose, and that a program will not see until too late.

I have done this here to Pedro, winning from 110+ moves out if you count both sides.

It's not too hard to do IF YOU HAVE THE ABILITY to back it up. You can't do this if you are mindless computer player.

And, as many people know, Alex won't play you on the internet unless you play 3 minutes or quicker. Anyone care to tell me how someone could have time to enter a move into a computer, wait for it to think, then make its move, all in under 3 minutes?

IT'S IMPOSSIBLE, so drop it.

I won my own games. I have wins against the last 3 world champions - Alex, King, and Lafferty.

Al Lyman still has my blitz game with Laffertry from the GameZone saved somewhere. This was played without a clock but still in about 5 minutes total with about 20 people watching. And again, it was BEFORE GIL AND I MADE WCC, so you mind telling me which program was being used???

If you still have that email, forward it to me at GothicChessInfo@aol.com or else I consider it a forgery.

The NACA was based in New York and there were COUNTLESS events sponsored by them. Mostly offering exhibitions at carnivals, the NACA players always drew a crowd when playing simuls. The president of the company was a retired fire chief who played a pretty mean game.

Sorry, you can't convince me that something I know is true did not exist - I was in some of their tournaments and was a volunteer at two of their simuls, playing 20 boards each time.

And finally, get a life.

I can't help it that I was good at a game that you wasted decades of your life playing. It's a joke. It's a child's game, and you act purely infantile if you insist that I can't play the game.

I beat the computer world champion in 1996.
I beat the last 3 human world champions in at least one game.
And all of you losers keep trying to say I can't play because you are basically jealous of my ability to play a stupid game.

The matter is not closed, it is open, as long as you persist in your nonsense.

Gooner: Karpov signed it. It is a PRELIMINARY AGREEMENT. If they did not want to sign this, why bother with a 100 page document outlining every single detail.

gooner: Here's is Kaprov's signature on the contract:

http://www.gothicchess.com/zmnxcbv.html

A "hidden" html name for the obvious reason.

P.S. Grim Reaper has been banned from every discussion board on BrainKing, in case you did not know.

I only came back here because your statement functionally impugned me when you wrote:

http://brainking.com/en/Board?bc=9&ngi=544486

You implied I was avoiding you, and this is clearly not the case. I did not avoid the World Checkers Champion who came to visit the week before Christmas when I was walking around like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, so I would not be avoiding a game with you.

I can't back down from an issue where I am attacked for no reason. Rescind your statement about me trying to avoid you, and I will have nothing more to say.

The whole point is moot anyway. I haven't played checkers in a very long time, and I am trying to get Bobby Fischer to play Anatoly Karpov a 12-game match of Gothic Chess. So far, Karpov said yes, and I flew to Iceland just last month to meet with Grandmaster Fridrik Olafsson, Bobby's closest friend and neighbor.

http://www.gothicchess.com/images/iceland_1.jpg

From left to right:

A youthful 71-year old Fridrik Olafsson, Alexis Skye (a 6'5 blonde goddess) who is the most popular Gothic Chess tournament director, International Master Frank Camaratta from the HouseOfStaunton.com (Frank is designing the wooden Gothic Chess set for the Fischer-Karpov match) and on the far right, me with my big bald spot *1*

I am playing a couple of games of checkers on here to try and get back into the swing of things, but it is no longer a "focus" for me.

Just two things I want to make perfectly clear:

1. I have never declined or refused to accept any challenge to play a game of checkers.

2. I am, or was, very good at the game, and nothing anyone can say can change that.

This was the game with Pedro:

http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=967503

WCC does not annotate games. Sure it's a great tool, but it has no concept of strategy, and it certainly cannot distill essential elements into curt explanations that make sense. BTW, Alex has Nemesis and WCC and Kingsrow and Cake, so why can't he use them to annotate his own games? For that matter, since thousands of copies of WCC were sold, why didn't Alex contact any of these people to have them annotate their games?

I'll tell you why. Because I have a unique perspective that Alex values, and I can explain things in ways that are instructive and worthwhile.

You may recall, a while back, there was another discussion involving ustica, pedro, and myself. Ustica said something like "you would have shown more courage to play move X-Y in your game with me rather than W-Z which is an easy draw", to which my reply was "X-Y loses." Pedro chimed in, claim the move would not lose, so we played a complete game where he agreed to play move X-Y and I would play the other side.

It took about 117 moves if you count both sides's moves, but I won.

Can I see 117 moves ahead in a position with about 18 pieces on the board?

No, of course not.

It was my intuition based on many, many games that lead me to make the claim that I could win from that position. And you know Pedro was gunning for me, trying like heck to hold down the draw.

Even you cannot convince this board that a program is able to perform a 119 ply search and call a win a win from that distance.

Regarding Ron King, you missed the point entirely. Ron King did not drive 500+ miles to your house to play some checkers with you.

Alex did drive such a distance to play me.

gooner:

I am not always trying to convince anyone of anything. People that lose to me are the ones trying to say "he must be using a computer."

What computer was I using when I defeated the Deep Thought chess supercomputer in 1989 when I played it in front of about 100 people?

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1272214

What computer program was I using when I beat Chinook on October 20, 1996? (see the link Purple posted to the Wall of Honor). If you count from the bottom up you will see I was the 5th or 6th person to ever defeat it on the highest setting.

I would like to remind you that it was this feat that put me in touch with Gil Dodgen. He was impressed with my win, and we agreed to collaborate on a new checkers program, WCC. We relased it as a Macintosh program in August of 1997 and a PC program in September 1997.

Year later, when visiting Gil at his home in southern California, he asked me to play WCC an 11-man ballot game on a computer that was averaging 400,000 positions per second. Not only did I get a draw with it, I predicted 12 moves it must make in order to secure this draw. Don't take my word for it, ask him yourself. His email is GilDodgen@cox.net and I'm sure he will vouch for my playing abilities.

I don't understand why you keep saying you made no such arrangements to meet and play checkers. Then why did you say I was "reluctant"? You told me you were coming to Philadelphia, you said you wanted to play, and I agreed.

Once you got here, I did not hear from you.

So what?

I have had players try and meet me before. I was in Kansas City in 2001 and I called Al Lyman. He could not play because he said he was going to some log cabin with a son-in-law or something. Leo Levitt wanted to meet with me one time, but his wife had to be taken to the hospital, and he could not swing by.

I didn't accuse them of fabricating anything. Stuff happens.

And if I am such and "amateur", as you say, just answer me this one question:

Why did the current World Champion ask me to annotate one of his favorite games?

I would love to hear your conspiracy theory on that one.

gooner:

1. When Alex visited me, I had been recovering from re-injuring a previously broken back. Did he tell you that I could not even stand up straight the whole time he was there?

2. His son was with him, and we played chess and Gothic Chess for at least 2 hours. There was much beer and chatter, nothing much about checkers even started until about 10 PM.

3. I showed him the perfect play databases in my computer lab upstairs. He had to spot me a 3 minute head start for me to even get there!

4. Some of the most difficults wins in the 4x3 database Alex could not win against the program. He was impressed. At this point, he asked if I wanted some games with him. Back down the stairs we went.

5. I did not have a checkers set, nor did he. We played on a chess board using only pawns. At first Alex gave me 10 minute to 3 minute odds. Even in my injured state, I had a won 6x6 ending against him, and we both stopped the clock. The next game was played at 5 min to 5 min, which I resigned, the next at 5 min to 3 min, to a 6-piece draw.

How this translates to a "good novice player" I don't know. Maybe because of my loss I walked into an easy shot in the endgame, but the other 2 games I thought I played well above the mark, given that he was crowned World Champion not too long before and I had effectively not played much in months.

6. You told me the name of the hotel, the address, and the dates you would be there. You left no phone number or any other way to contact you. I drove down there, you weren't there.

Amazing how the sands of time allow you to re-write history. Just take a look at both of your posts.

gooner: I waited 90 minutes in the hotel lobby off of Island avenue. You failed to mention that you did not make the reservation (maybe your girlfriend did?) so the hotel clerk could not find your name in the register.

Who was avoiding who?

And I have pictures of the World Checkers Champion visiting me on December 18, 2004. Funny, I can't play checkers, but Alex feels it necessary to make a trek to my house (with maybe 7 days notice) just to see how good I am.

Furthermore, he asked me to annotate what he considered his best game he has played. You can read about it here:

http://www.usacheckers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=609&start=15&sid=fe667613241dda0b193e9a2c000f182c

So I can't play checkers but the World Champion asks me to annotate his own game for his own book.

Care to explain that?

Just read the posts. Seems these two by the same person have flip-flopped more than John Kerry.

http://brainking.com/en/Board?bc=9&ngi=381939

http://brainking.com/en/Board?bc=9&ngi=544486

Funny how gooner forgot his own viewpoint over time.