San Francisco vs. Miami
IMEANT
_OO_O_
ELTENS
O_O_ _O
SPURMU
_OOO_ _
GORUT
_OO_O
HESIN
O_ _ _O
"_ _ _ _ _ _ _. _." _ _ _ _ _ _
...leading to a San Francisco victory, 2.5-1.5.
Wednesday, November 18
New Jersey vs. New York
Sometimes, when you write about nothing week after week, you have to take a little break, to recharge the old batteries. So this week I will try writing about something.
It has been suggested on a couple of blogs that draw odds is too great an advantage to give the higher seed in these playoff matches, though there still should be some reward for season-long achievement. A well-known Holland-born 6’5 IM and former co-editor of a chess magazine, connected with a USCL team in the Southwest, for instance, suggests giving the top seed choice of color in the Armageddon game. Now this is not exactly nothing, but I am not sure if it is a bigger edge than getting the lane nearer the equator (with its subsequently weaker gravitational pull) in a high hurdles race. A postseason series in pro basketball or hockey offers home court or ice in the odd game, which is a little bit more, but still seems pretty scant reward for having outperformed the other side by twenty games in the regular season. But those leagues make lots of money, so fairness does not have to rate high among their concerns. And I’ll grant that I always root for 2-2 in the championship match here because that elimination blitz thing they do is fun fun. But trying to make the postseason more exciting always carries the danger of making the regular season (which is most of the season, after all) less. So if a 5-5 team needs to actually defeat an 8-2 team to advance, then so be it, I say. We want a chess champion, not a cheese champion.
On to the match. Looking at the lineups reminds me of another difference between pro sports leagues and the USCL. There, a team can be counted on to field their strongest lineup for the biggest games. In fact, in baseball, what with the greater number of rest days allowing a team to go with fewer starting pitchers, they effectively can go with an even stronger lineup than their strongest. I take it that Gulko (the perfect) was unavailable to play this Wednesday. Even so, Finn seems, from all I know (based entirely on his three league games) to be considerably underrated. I think therefore that New Jersey will manage the 2-2 they need to advance.
P.S. I also look forward to the day when someone can write about chess without feeling the need to make endless sports analogies.
3 comments:
Will someone please comment to say they solved it? I'm starting to get nervous. I apologize for its slim predictive value.
Is it pruess tn moment, although not sure what that means?
Thanks, that's it. It's a play on "Proustian moment", after the scene in "Remembrance of Things Past" where the scent of madeleines brings back a flood of memories. Or if the chess part was confusing, TN stands for Theoretical Novelty.
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