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PR and Winning: Naive Question

Posted By: Jake Jacobs
Date: Sunday, 11 March 2012, at 3:58 a.m.

In Response To: PR and Winning: Naive Question (Stick)

"I'm sure everyone sees it as me trying to piss on Ray's parade ..."

I hope no one thinks I was trying to get Ray to parade in your piss.

I agree with you, both on the nice things you have to say about Ray, and about the fact that even some amazing tournament streaks are overrated. Not naming him, but old timers should know who I am referring to, there was a player during the first half of the 90s, usually had a big cigar, Middle Eastern origins, and New Jersey habitations and ... Korean wife, as I recall. He was one of the winningest players in US tournaments, and there were plenty of people who seemed to think he was at least a near Giant. I doubt any of his matches were recorded, but he would have had a double-digit PR. (Though I am sure that if you examined enough of his matches there were some where he played as low as 8.0.)

In bridge they discovered that any old lady who lived long enough, and if they were an "old" lady I am being redundant, could amass 300 masterpoints and become a Life Master. With inflation, that had become easier and easier. The record was zero to LM in less than one year. (By a European champ playing with other world beaters, but the record he beat was originally set by Leslie Stone's mom, back in the fifties, playing with Tobias.) They did two things about it: one, they deprecated the title by adding others for greater milestones. I haven't played in years, but I seem to remember that 10,000 points made you an Immortal Omnipotent Master, or something. The second change was to stiffen the requirements by adding colored points. Even in the thirties you need a certain number of "red" points, earned in big tournaments, to go with the "black" points any weekly club play might offer. But then they added gold points, which had to be earned in national events. And then ... It got to be like Superman and Kryptonite: after awhile you had to keep an art student on retainer just to read the damned comics.

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