Ametanoitos wrote on 02/15/06 at 14:17:37:
@ madhacker: I think you are wrong about some things.
Firstly you say:
"I don't give a sound line for Black because I don't think there is one ("theoretically interesting" and "theoretically playable" are different!). I've had an admittedly brief look at the content of both Eddie's book and Mikhail Golubev's work in "Experts vs. the Sicilian" and White's lines look quite convincing to me. Either way, I'm sticking with ...d5 for now. "
Do you disagree about my recomendation of 19..a5 (which is not in the books you mentioned)? I have tested this line against strong oponents and won easily two times.If you don't study one system in depth (not only with computer assistance and reading books) DO NOT say it's not sound! People read these threads and make wrong conclusions!
Secondly i also disagree with what you say about the old threads. I think it is very annoying to search lots of threads to find something i want.Also it is a common thing when you ask someone here about something ,to get an answer like "this was discused in another thread, look there..." and lots of hours spent then trying to find something in a lot of similar-subject threads.
First, the issue of soundness: you'll notice the words "admittedly brief" sandwiched in between "I've had a look". Now, if I was reading this, this would not come across as something conclusive. This would come across as someone who hasn't really looked at the lines closely, but their own experiences of it aren't great. This does not mean that there isn't anything for Black.
It should be very clear that this is an opinion. Not a fact. There is a distinct difference between "I don't think that this is sound, but I haven't really looked at it" and "This is not sound". Please stop treating me as though I had said the latter and misconstruing what I said. Incidentally, that goes for you too, Eric. Besides, if we all agreed, message boards would become pretty boring pretty fast, wouldn't they?
I'm not going to take a look at 19...a5 until I find any serious problems with 9...d5, as the rook-for-several-pawns endings don't tempt me either, but if or when I do that'll be my first point of call. Until then, I neither agree nor disagree with your idea. Based on my own knowledge of the Dragon in general, and FightingDragon's post, I'd lean towards White, but I wouldn't make a certain choice either way until I'd looked at it for myself.
Oh, and just to pre-empt any further straw men being set up: I mean by that that I don't personally like them, compared to the 9...d5 positions; I prefer to have the queens on. This is personal preference, and no more than that.
As for resurrected threads: you might find it annoying to search old threads, but if you want to find out about something on a message board, if the topic has been discussed before - at any time - the onus is on the person who wants to find things out to search through the old threads (in fact, in principle I think if you know there's been a thread on something and someone starts a topic saying "can anyone tell me how to play this?", you shouldn't reply; there's a search function in a forum for a reason, so people should learn to use it!). If there's a long-dormant thread with good content in it, start a new thread and put a link to the old thread in the new one; if there's one without any appreciable content, as this one was six months ago, in what way is posting in it of value? Essentially, if a thread has been quiet for some time, whether or not it was busy originally, there's probably a reason for it. Either everyone had said what they wanted to say, or there wasn't much to say in the first place. If it was the former, then feel free to reuse the old thread - but make sure you've got something useful to contribute; if the latter, start a new thread. If nothing else, if there's junk in the original thread, people are more likely to contribute more junk - on the other hand, a well-thought-out first post
will attract well-thought-out posts in reply. There are enough intelligent chess players who can recognise what's worth responding to and what isn't.
A lot of my views on forum etiquette comes from being an active member of
these message boards for some time. They might seem a bit strict, but they're the best-run message boards I involve myself in, and they consistently get good content because if threads don't have any useful content, they get closed. End of. Obviously standards are different according to what boards you are on, and I wouldn't expect things to be enforced as strictly here, but in terms of things like the search function, they can find the information themselves no matter how strict the rules are. That's nothing to do with rules, that's sheer laziness.
Adam