Smaughster, Blaickner, and all -

GREAT comments Smaughster! The best way to tell if someone is as good as his/her rating is to talk to him/her and find out what he/she knows about the game.

For instance, I could talk until I would bore you all to tears about opening strategy, end game strategy, keystone pairs, triangles, skews, elongated triangles, offensive pairs, etc. at Pente because that is my game and I am one of the best at it.

I also have played some real-time Chess at www.pogo.com. The cheating there is amazing!! I am decent at Chess, U.S. Chess B class over-the-board and a master in postal play so I have a good idea of 'just a few' concepts. :-)

At pogo.com, if I see a player rated over 2100 (about my Chess rating there), I simply ask them what they know about the Najdorf and Sicillin as well as some basic concepts of end game play, which anyone over about 1900 should easily be able to talk about. I'm amazed at how many people don't even know that the Najdorf and Sicillin are OPENINGS!

I'm always polite when asking my questions so the truly good players will sometimes go to great lengths to talk about them and an interesting conversation usually follows. But if they can't answer them, I ask them if they have played in real-time U.S. Chess tournaments. If they haven't or can't quickly come up with a reasonable answer, then I pretty much know they're cheating. If they're bold enough to continue talking, I'll ask them what software they're using. I actually have had TWO tell me!

My point is, Arnie, before accusing someone of something, get more information first instead of saying inflammatory remarks about him/her. If you have substaintial evidence to prove your theory, THEN people will listen to you and not think that you are whining.

One last thing here. I have also had a person accuse me of cheating because something like 15 of my 20 moves in a Pente game matched the best Pente playing software on it's highest level. My comment to that is: If I'm one of the best players and the software is some of the best software, then OF COURSE a high percentage of moves are going to be the same.

So my suggestion would be to ask Blaickner what she knows about the opening, middle, and end-game strategies of Othello/Reversi. If she knows little, you have a case. Otherwise I think that the accusations should stop.


Gary Barnes