Your Letters

 

 

10.11.00

 

E-MAIL from Mark Penkower

 

Greetings from New York.

 

I am currently in a very low category, but am obsessed with the game.  I spend a few hours each day, working on my database.  I have 82 of your games - all from the MegaCorr CD.  I was wondering if there were other games of yours either publicly, or privately (for trade or sale) available.

 

Thank you

 

REPLY

 

First of all, congratulations for being obsessed with the game of chess!  If one has to be obsessed with something, I can't think of too many better choices.

 

Tim Harding's CD MegaCorr is an excellent compilation of correspondence games. He has done a marvelous job of saving so many correspondence games from possible extinction.  In the past there was no central storehouse for CC games, so the ultimate repository for these games was the individual player (or a tournament book for the more prestigious events).  Because the game records were not in a single location, many records were lost, even for important tournaments.  Sometimes when a player died, his games went with him!  In the future this will not be a problem because all of the games will be reported in a proper format, stored electronically in databases, and will be made available for downloading.

 

But the games of the past are a different story.  It is easy to see from the list of my games in MegaCorr, that for most of the tournaments many of my games are missing. Obviously it's up to me (or my past opponents) to provide these games for future editions of MegaCorr. This year I began transferring my games (that had been written down on score sheets and notebooks and stored in various boxes in several closets) into the Chessbase format.  All of these games have to be entered by hand.  Even the games that I had recorded on my old Mac were recorded in the US descriptive notation, so I also have to reenter all of these games by hand.  It's a tedious task and will take some time.  The positive side is that this gives me a chance to review these games, relive the agony and the ecstasy, add comments, and select games of special interest for future articles and analysis.

 

As this project proceeds, these games will appear in articles, reviews of tournaments and openings, etc. They will also be made available for downloading and inclusion in databases such as MegaCorr.  But, it will take some time due to my writing commitments to the ICCF and CCLA, upcoming tournaments, the webpage, and living life in general.

 

Best Wishes,

Victor (Vytas) Palciauskas

 

 

04.11.00

 

E-MAIL from Volker Jeschonnek

I noticed that the end of your game versus Ingvar Carlsson (ICCF Master Class, 1971) is given differently by two sources:

Bryce Avery's book says that the last moves were 50 Kd4 Qd3+ 51 Kc5 e3 which looks natural.

Your website says that the last moves were 50 Kd4 Qd6+ 51 Kc4 e3 which looks somewhat artificial to me (but what do I know?).

For the record I would like to know which version is correct.

Volker Jeschonnek

REPLY

Congratulations on having such a sharp eye and detecting this inconsistency! The actual moves that occurred in the game were 50 Kd4 Qd3+ 51 Kc5 e3 as cited in Bryce Avery's book.

This is a very interesting example of the potential problems with the US descriptive notation (when one is careless).  Because I presently use the ChessBase database as the storehouse for my games, I began transferring all of my games (that had been written down on score sheets and notebooks and stored in various boxes) into the Chessbase format.  Most of my games were recorded in the US descriptive notation, so I have to enter all of the games by hand.  One of the flaws of this notation is that a square such as Queen six (Q6) is different for White (d6) and Black (d3).  As I was entering the game into chessbase, by move 50 I was rushing and chose the wrong Q6.  Note also that Kc5 and Kc4 stand for K-B5; but is it White's or Black's B5?   This is a very unique case where the recording error is difficult to spot because the two sequences, 50 Kd4 Qd3+ 51 Kc5 e3 and 50 Kd4 Qd6+ 51 Kc4 e3, are reasonable and both win for Black!

 

Best Wishes,

Victor (Vytas) Palciauskas