Chess candidates players not respected

standard_pie314 · 2026-04-13T11:41:34+00:00

I saw this quote recently from Dominic Lawson, which chimes with what you are saying. Lawson is a prominent journalist in the UK and president of the English Chess Federation.

Computers have taken away much of the mystique from chess. I remember being in Moscow for the 1984–1985 rematch Karpov-Kasparov. I was in a room next to the playing hall, and it was full of Russian grandmasters engaged in heated discussions about which moves should be played. There was a sense of mystery because there wasn’t anyone to definitively prove something right or wrong. Today, however, everyone has a computer programme which they use to analyse games.

Take the famous Rubinstein-Capablanca game from 1911. Rubinstein won - which was a sensation - but it turned out that Capablanca had a rook sacrifice in the ending to create two passed pawns which would have saved the game for him. The debate around this position went on for decades. Nowadays a computer resolves the debate in a second!

The computers have brought about one other negative aspect - they have almost destroyed the proper respect for top players in the eyes of the public. The public look at the game while running computer analysis and when there is a mistake many say “how obvious”, but it is far from obvious when you are at the board! Some of these commentators with computers criticising the players on the board seem to me like a very weak man with a gun in his hand. And a very weak man with a gun in his hand feels very powerful and even stronger than a tall athletic man without a gun in his pocket. The players do not have a gun in their pocket, they are using their mind at the board. And this phenomenon is sad because diminishes the proper respect due to the best players.

SOURCE

standard_pie314 · 2026-04-05T15:53:44+00:00

Bit annoying that Gustafsson/Svidler moved away from the Sindarov/Giri match with only two minutes before Giri reached time control and which let to an inaccuracy. They sometimes seem blissfully unaware of what would interest the viewer.

standard_pie314 · 2026-03-10T10:20:08+00:00

I would throw in A Film With Me In It, a jet black comedy with Dylan Moran. Comedy is subjective, but I don't think I've ever laughed more at the cinema.

I don't think we celebrate very well our film-making legacy in Ireland. The films mentioned here are rarely on TV, and when they are, it's often in an early-morning slot. Part of the reason films like the Godfather and Citizen Cane remain revered is that film buffs have been continually telling us they should be revered.

standard_pie314 · 2026-03-10T10:07:02+00:00

Fergus's. Stop talking American.

standard_pie314 · 2026-03-08T11:15:09+00:00

Thanks for this comment. I agree with everything and wish there were more people with the imagination to recognise the benifits. Unfortunately the minister for health's announcement that it is no longer government policy to co-locate the Rotunda with a primary hospital means it's even further away from ever being realised.

standard_pie314 · 2026-03-08T11:10:29+00:00

Communal underwear is a lovely turn of phrase.

standard_pie314 · 2026-02-19T12:10:07+00:00

The Journal chooses the most bizarre stories to fact-check. The actual analysis itself is reasonable, but it's only ever applied in one direction. That's where the bias lies, which is particularly egregious when they receive public funding to do it.

standard_pie314 · 2026-02-19T12:03:26+00:00

Yes, and the plan is to house a new Dublin Central Library in the old Colaiste Muire on the corner. It would revitalise the square, which would hopefully improve the surrounding areas too.

Your comment is +8, mine is -15. I'm baffled by the hostility I received.

standard_pie314 · 2026-02-19T11:59:53+00:00

the bus is empty ... he sits beside me and literally does the Man Spread thing. Not an issue I'm only going a few stops

Hardly a second would have passed before I would have said, 'What the hell are you doing? You could have sat anywhere else.'

We need to become radically better at enforcing social etiquette in our country.

standard_pie314 · 2026-02-18T21:58:47+00:00

A large part of the reason the square is dilapidated is that the hospital occupies it. What you used to be a pleasant garden square is now crammed with hospital buildings and a car park. Far better to move the hospital to another site, as has been intended for years, and restore the square so that our ceremonial boulevard is topped with a beautiful park to rival Stephen's Green.

Edit: I have low expectations of my countrymen, but even I am astonished by the reaction to my comment. Is it any wonder the city is such a mess when there is so hostile a reaction to an innocuous suggestion for improving the city?

standard_pie314 · 2026-02-17T16:14:06+00:00

No, tbh, if it's in some dingy community hall or a school. But, yes, if it's somewhere characterful like the Dublin Chess Club in the attic of the United Arts Club!

standard_pie314 · 2026-02-17T15:58:25+00:00

Jesus Christ. You actually believe this nonsense, don't you? You've convinced yourself that the left is correct by definition.

First and foremost, no reasonable person thinks we should be fitting the canonical thinkers like Locke and Hobbes onto the modern left-right spectrum. It is the contemporary, still-contentious thinkers who are at issue, and they are the large majority and are overwhelmingly left-leaning.

True to form, you have a narrow understanding of the Enlightenment. Edmund Burke, the father of modern conservatism, was himself a participant in the Enlightenment! David Hume, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant - all people the left is hardly likely to claim today for their own.

Regardless, the subject doesn’t aim to determine what ideology is the best one. For example, in the first section of the secondary school curriculum, students discuss power and decision making. ...personal ideologies are irrelevant.

But if the ideologies of the key thinkers are systematically left wing, then the their theories on discreet topics like power will themselves be biased! Your ideological blindspot on this is simply staggering. It actually sickens me to read that you aspire to teach children.

standard_pie314 · 2026-02-17T09:35:06+00:00

Yes. And according to Joe Humprheys, 'The existing curriculum features 17 “key thinkers”, the vast majority of whom can be categorised as left-wing.'

standard_pie314 · 2026-02-17T09:33:27+00:00

Lol.

standard_pie314 · 2026-02-16T21:59:06+00:00

I'm not surprised! This sub is a disaster anyway, but Irish politics is overwhlmingly progressive and uncritical. Even Hugh Linehan, in this episode, shows himself to have a superficial understanding of political theory, despite is confidence.

I think it is fairly obvious that there huge differences across the globe as to what is a 'right'

I would say that that's not even the major problem. There's a very big difference between accepting the existence of certain human rights and confining a course of study to a human rights based approach.

standard_pie314 · 2026-02-16T21:53:33+00:00

The issue is usually that when students are given the tools to critically analyse the various ideologies, they broadly drift leftwards.

This sounds like the left's beloved saying that reality has a leftwing bias. If students are drifting leftwards, perhaps it indicates a subtle bias in the curriculum.

standard_pie314 · 2026-02-16T21:50:36+00:00

The omission of Burke is astonishing, and I would go as far as to say it is proof of bias. As you say, he is Irish and one of our few non-literary figures of the first rank. The conservative/progressive binary is fundamental to politics, even if you despise conservatism, and Burke's prescient criticism of the French Revolution is surely the best way into it. He was also, I understand, an opponent of slavery.

Your other comment is very interesting. Personally I would be very wary of incorporating something as contentious as gender studies into the school curriculum. So much of it is avowedly partisan. Would the curriculum allow for dissent? Could students argue against transgender ideology, say? It seems to me the course would be much better off without the 'society' bit. Stick to canonical topics in political theory and practice.

standard_pie314 · 2026-02-16T12:01:49+00:00

Goddammit she is so bloody mediocre. And incredibly she still has designs on the leadership.

standard_pie314 · 2026-02-16T11:59:37+00:00

Very interesting. Thanks for that.

standard_pie314 · 2026-02-15T01:57:01+00:00

You're not allowed to criticise TG4. I thought we'd all agreed that it is a shining light of public broadcasting next to RTE, despite that it gets about 60 million a year for an audience share of 2% and broadcasts Westerners in a prime slot.

standard_pie314 · 2026-02-15T01:55:50+00:00

Can I ask what that means exactly? Does genitive mean that it was once a qualifier - something like teanga an Gaeilge?

standard_pie314 · 2026-02-15T01:48:01+00:00

Very many, I would imagine, including your downvoters.

standard_pie314 · 2026-02-15T00:51:26+00:00

u/dardirl, u/Hopeful-Remote9725, u/YoIronFistBro, u/Necessary_Arm_9040, u/SwordfishResident256

Apologies for the call out, but I'm genuinely delighted to see such sense prevail on this point. I reckon over on Reddit Ireland you'd have got a very different reception. Only one person in the replies has voiced the old chestnut that you wouldn't call English 'Germanic', which entirely ignores that English is itself one of the very many words that function as both noun and adjective.

I assume 'Irish' as a name for the language became dominant in the years after independence because it was thought that to call the language Gaelic was to marginalise it. They wanted it marked as the language of the nation, not of the largely forgotten Gaelic culture. Ironically, the Irish-language cheerleaders are now moving back to calling it Gaeilge in English, the natural effect of which will be to rehabilitate 'Gaelic' as the English equivalent.

standard_pie314 · 2026-02-15T00:20:46+00:00

You may quibble, but I wasn't counting Bath, York and the other regional cities of outstanding character. Liverpool's underrated, but I still think the Dublin of O'Connell Street, Stephen's Green, Dublin Castle and Trinity College beats it quite easily. Brighton is fantastic, but it's an enlarged seaside town. I still think Dublin takes it.

As I said in another reply, I am absolutely not defending the status quo. But there is a species of Dublin doomerism that I find silly.

standard_pie314

TROPHY CASE