On Thu, 17 Feb 2022 18:59:56 -0800, The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca>
wrote:

>Here's a question for all of you particularly the Americans.

"All of you" means the two or three of us. There's almost nobody still
posting here, and most of the posts are by the very boring Eli Kesef,
posting the same boring three or four games he's played (against
different opponents) over and over and over and over again.

>What kind of notation was predominantly used in the US in 1983?

I don't know for sure, but I *think* by then it was mostly algebraic.

I stopped playing competitively around 1959, and almost everyone then
still kept score in descriptive notation. I was one of the very few
USAians who used algebraic (starting around 1955), mostly because I
had several opening books that used algebraic and because I used to
sometimes get copies of Shakhmaty which used algebraic. I used the
notation I was most used to.

My scoresheets were even stranger because I used the German initials
for the names of the pieces, since I was used to German scores in my
opening books in German (some written in German, some translated to
German from the Russian).

>The
>point of my question is that that was the year Walter Tevis wrote The
>Queens Gambit and throughout the book (which was I think supposed to
>be taking place in the late 60s - which would make Beth Harmon about
>5-7 years younger than Fischer - which was certainly in the
>descriptive era but I'm pretty sure my scoresheets from 1983-84 were
>in algebraic. Certainly by the late 80s both Chess Life and Inside
>Chess were algebraic (and the figurine algebraic used by Chess
>Informant had a large part to do with the switch and they started in
>1965-66)

The most recent Chess publication I have is the New York Times book on
the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match (I bought it many years later when I
found out that it had a picture of me in it). It's descriptive.

>(There's a section in the front of each Informant showing the standard
>symbols and descriptions in a dozen or so languages

I used to know the initials of the pieces in several languages besides
English: German, Russian, Serbo-Croat, French, and others, but I've
forgotten almost all except for German.

> and to this day I
>remember ?? in Serbo-Croatian was 'gruba greska' which a Croatian
>fellow at the club taught us to say correctly)
>
>But Tevis wrote the Queens Gambit in 1983 so what notation would have
>been most common in the US at that time? (I watched the TV series when
>it came out but only finished the book earlier today)

Wait! I just found an article in my files by Hans Berliner, "From the
Deathbed of 4. N-N5 in the Two Knights Defense," written in 1979,
about the Fritz variation. It uses descriptive notation. That's not
very far before 1983. I don't remember where I got the article. On the
Internet? Somewhere else?

On Fri, 18 Feb 2022 12:08:10 -0800, The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca>
wrote:

>On Fri, 18 Feb 2022 09:20:06 -0700, Ken Blake <Ken@invalid.news.com>
>wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 17 Feb 2022 18:59:56 -0800, The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>Here's a question for all of you particularly the Americans.
>>
>>"All of you" means the two or three of us. There's almost nobody still
>>posting here, and most of the posts are by the very boring Eli Kesef,
>>posting the same boring three or four games he's played (against
>>different opponents) over and over and over and over again.
>
>I tend to think that anybody who is in the 1800-2000 range or stronger
>who loses as quickly as is typical in Kesef's traps is either
>distracted or unprepared.

Yep.

> I have reached losing positions as quickly
>as those but not many. (I've spent most of my adult career in the
>1700-1900 range - and am best known for my events which in 2003 got me
>an International Arbiter title which I've let go dormant when FIDE
>introduced licence fees - since I think a lot of the FIDE titles below
>IM are mostly cash grabs - though it hangs on my wall next to my MBA
>diploma and my Distinguished Toastmaster plaque)
>
>>>What kind of notation was predominantly used in the US in 1983?
>>
>>I don't know for sure, but I *think* by then it was mostly algebraic.
>
>That's what I thought though of course it would have been descriptive
>in 1969-71 when Beth Harmon was doing her magic. For instance MCO 10
>was descriptive (I think - am not going to go to my shelf to check)
>though I'm pretty sure MCO 12 was algebraic or figurine algebraic.
>
>>I stopped playing competitively around 1959, and almost everyone then
>>still kept score in descriptive notation. I was one of the very few
>>USAians who used algebraic (starting around 1955), mostly because I
>>had several opening books that used algebraic and because I used to
>>sometimes get copies of Shakhmaty which used algebraic. I used the
>>notation I was most used to.
>
>The Queen's Gambit was set in the late 60s which at least in North
>America would have been the descriptive era. Informant started in 1966
>and was figurine algebraic from the beginning while in Europe
>generally algebraic was the name of the day. I saw one of Spassky's
>scoresheets and it was definitely algebraic with the names of the
>pieces being in Russian of course.
>
>When I lived in Winnipeg (mid 1980s) I hung around the Communist
>bookstore since they got imports of Russian chess books - I was gifted
>about 3-4 years worth of Shahmaty Bulletin (which I subsequently
>re-gifted when downsizing) from the late 1970s early 80s and they were
>all Cyrillic algebraic. This is of course where I met Abe Yanofsky and
>heard him reminisce about Groningen and how that changed his life. (He
>entered law school on the Canadian GI bill shortly after and besides
>playing chess had his law practice plus was a powerful city councillor
>which opened the door to a lot of excellent tournament sites)
>
>>My scoresheets were even stranger because I used the German initials
>>for the names of the pieces, since I was used to German scores in my
>>opening books in German (some written in German, some translated to
>>German from the Russian).
>>
>>The most recent Chess publication I have is the New York Times book on
>>the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match (I bought it many years later when I
>>found out that it had a picture of me in it). It's descriptive.
>
>Is that the one with the white cover about 6" x 8" in size?

Yes.

>(I've got that

Look at the bottom picture just after page 122. At the back, about in
the middle is a young man with glasses and a horizontally-striped
shirt. That's me.

To my left is Bill Lombardy, pointing at something. He was a good
friend of mine.

To his left is Aben Rudy, who was my closest chess friend. He's still
alive (he's 86) and is still a close friend. Although we live in
different places and haven't seen each other in several years, we
still correspond by e-mail.

On Friday, February 18, 2022 at 3:08:14 PM UTC-5, The Horny Goat wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Feb 2022 09:20:06 -0700, Ken Blake <K...@invalid.news.com>
> wrote:
> >On Thu, 17 Feb 2022 18:59:56 -0800, The Horny Goat <lcr...@home.ca>
> >wrote:
> >
> >>Here's a question for all of you particularly the Americans.
> >
> >"All of you" means the two or three of us. There's almost nobody still
> >posting here, and most of the posts are by the very boring Eli Kesef,
> >posting the same boring three or four games he's played (against
> >different opponents) over and over and over and over again.
> I tend to think that anybody who is in the 1800-2000 range or stronger
> who loses as quickly as is typical in Kesef's traps is either
> distracted or unprepared.

You are paying too much attention to the numbers. Lichess may rate them 1800, but they are not 1800 CFC. The 1800 players are about 1200. Ratings inflation is a serious problem in such systems, and there is no motivation to take care of this, because players like being "highly rated".

I have reached losing positions as quickly
> as those but not many. (I've spent most of my adult career in the
> 1700-1900 range

I suspect that if you played Lichess, you'd be 2200. The overrating in such systems is not consistent, not being as bad at the high end.

William Hyde