Jim West On Chess: Case Solved

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Case Solved

The case of mistaken identity at TWIC has been solved!

I received an e-mail from The Week in Chess explaining how the error occurred. Although each player is supposed to have a unique identifier, the software program at TWIC tends to select the weaker player whenever there are two persons with the same first initial and last name. Since Jonathan West's FIDE rating [1970] was lower than mine [2162], it chose him instead of me.

The corrected crosstable appears in issue 775.

"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov