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BGonline.org Forums
why not leave things as they are?
Posted By: Jake Jacobs In Response To: why not leave things as they are? (Chiva Tafazzoli)
Date: Saturday, 2 June 2012, at 6:49 p.m.
Chiva, while "popularity" might play a small role, unless what you are really mean is closer to "name recognition," it isn't much of a factor. If being popular was what mattered the Carter would be Giant #1, and Larry Liebster would be in the top ten. Most of the top players are reasonably well liked, but I can think of at least one former Giant #1 who was not viewed as Mister Warmth.
The game has changed since the early days of the list. When Yamin, Carol, Howard, and I started playing there were few tournaments and a lot of money play. Two things were obvious then. First, there were players out there whose paths never crossed, so any system based upon tournaments was hopelessly inadequate. There were, for instance, several players in Chicago who were world class who were barely known outside of Chicago. If you look (as I have recently) at an ancestor of the Giant 32, a Giant 32 list from 1981, you'll see the name Craig Chellstorp. By 1981 Craig had moved to Las Vegas where the folks putting him on the list were able to observe his play. If you talk to other Giants from that era (Magriel, Senk, KG, Kit, Nack were all on the list, and all were friends of Craig) they'd all agree his name belonged there, yet most people had never heard of him. Even less well know were the ones who stayed in Chicago and stopped playing - Greg Defotis, Bobby Anderson, and Tim Wisecarver - to name three.
Secondly, because there was more money play than match play (a subject hardly touched upon in the early books), something else was widely accepted: the best money players did well in tournaments, but some of the best tournament players were total fish. There was another name on that Giant 32 list: Dick Furland. I had to ask some of the New York City players who he was. He had nearly made a rare tournament appearance in the Plimpton Cup, but was barred as a professional by the tournament committee. As Senk put it (I am paraphrasing him), while Dick wasn't as good technically as some of the better known tournament players, he was "very solid," by which he meant that in money games Dick was prepared to eat the better known players for breakfast. To go further, bordering on the indiscreet, if you were to choose the greatest tournament player of the 70's, and the greatest of the 80's, there would be little argument about either name. And if you were to ask who two of the tastiest fish among the money players were - I watched intermediates carve the two new rectums.
These days things have changed. But as long as some people perform less well under pressure, something the bots don't measure, the Giant 32 list will remain of interest.
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