The History of The Intellectual Chess Players

The Intellectual Chess Players group was started on July 20, 2014 by Awesomechess1729 who is still our Superadmin. Good job Awesomechess! 

As we are about to celebrate our 3 years anniversary, I will be posting 4 or 5 articles here in the forums to tell about the history of our group. The plan is to post the first article here today and add a new one every Saturday for the next three, maybe four, Saturdays. 

Comments are welcome. Enjoy!

This first article is about our vote chess history.

Back around the middle of July in 2014, I received an invitation to join a group called The Intellectual Chess Players. It seemed interesting so I joined. After a few days I saw that the group was playing a few team matches and also had eleven vote games going on. Even back then I liked vote chess so I joined 4 or 5 of the games.

I realized that the group Super Administrator, awesomechess1729, had created or joined eleven vote games – all of them 24 hours per move. The Intellectuals had already lost 2 and a third was hopeless. I joined about half the game and suggested that we resign the hopeless game, and we did. So we were 0-3 with 8 games in progress – all of them 24 hours per move.

I messaged awesomechess and talked about good practices in vote chess – mainly that we should discuss moves and not vote early. He saw my point so him and I stared telling the other players in the games I was playing that we need to discuss moves and not vote early. I also did one more thing. I started going through the list of members in the group looking for strong players. When I found a strong player, if they were not already playing vc I asked them to join one or two of the games.

One of the strong players whom I recruited was a man called LongIslandMark. Another strong players came along called f_babaee_a. Before long awesonechess selected me and LongIslandMark and f_babaee_a (also known as f_b) and a teen named Camberfoil as Admins.

We had a strong player already playing called FiveOfSwords. But he was frustrated and often threatened to quit because of all the bad moves that got voted in. So, along with LongIslandMark and f_b, I kept preaching to others to stop voting for moves before we had time to discuss the best moves. It soon started catching on and we won a game, then another. After we won a few I had more luck getting strong players to join in and play – players like W-Luke, Cavatine, MindWalk, Zobral, SpiritLancer, GuessWhoIam, asknotaxe and others.

We also had a weak player called Doktor_Oleg who was to be one of longest playing teammates. At first we simply didn’t have many players so just one or two people voting for a bad move really hurt. Sometimes we only had four or five votes total. And the moves he voted for in those early days were usually very bad. He was not only a weak players, he made no effort to follow along with what move we have played last time to set up something. Getting Oleg to stop voting for bad moves and waiting to read the comments from stronger players was a big step in turning the team around.

Before long we were winning all our games. In fact, of the 8 remaining games from the original 11, we won all 8. So yea, we lost 3 in a row and then won 8 in a row. And that 8 game winning streak would more than triple before we lost a game! We didn’t lose another game until June 2, 2015 – almost a year later. We won 26 games in a row.

Looking back, I can see things that I could not see at that time. One thing was that we probably had cheaters among our team. Some players were just good (and are still good) and did NOT cheat, but some who we counted on for suggestions were later kicked out of chess.com for using computers and cheating in their own games, so probably they were using computers for their suggestions in our vote games as well. But at the time we did not know that.

I suspect that use of computers was one of the causes of another unique part of our early vote games. We would sometimes have long arguments over the right move – very long. Some, but not all, of those arguing would later have their accounts closed for cheating, but some of our strong players who are not cheaters (and who still play with us) argued as well. We had one discussion between moves that went over 100 comments and many that were over 50 comments – all in a game that was 24 hours per move! I must point out that at that time we were getting around 20 or so votes per move and the players who may have been cheaters were only one or two or three, so we still had enough honest players to make the decisions. I remember that FiveOfSwords argued loud and long and often told the others that their lines were not all forcing moves so they could not be 100% sure they would work, and he was right.

But the cheaters did get booted and we did continue to win after that, partly thanks to new players like Elroch and Haskovec and Mkkuhner and pawnninho and others. And I must say that Cavatine has been here a long time and has been a very strong player.

So being strong at vote chess became a big part of our identity as a group. We had some other things going on as well, so be checking back here for other stories about the early days of the Intellectual Chess Players.

Thanks justadude for this article. I am proud to be on this team and love votechess. And I love discussing the best move of the board. It's very instructive, Ilearn a lot.

Axorcist we have been vey happy to have you on our vote teams. You have been a strong player. 

And thanks for taking timeto comment on my post here. 

i read it! Thank you. This is a pretty good summary. I guess we can't spell out which player was the most memorable cheater.

Part 2:

As mentioned earlier, back around mid-July in 2014, I received an invitation to join a group called The Intellectual Chess Players. It seemed interesting so I joined. After a few days I saw that the group was playing a few team matches and also had eleven vote games going on.  For the story of the vote games, look back for that article from last week.

Back in 2014, quite often the chat and talk on the group’s front page really was intellectual. We/they talked about math and science and literature and stuff.

Our Admin and vote player f_babaee_a (we often call him f_b) started a thread in the forums to discuss your favorite literary quote. It was a huge success. It eventually got over 230 entries. It is still in our forums and is excellent reading – especially if you are intellectual. We learned that we really do have some people who are not only intelligent, but have a deep understanding of some of the subtle points of life – intellectual people.

f_b doesn’t come around too much these days, but he is a good man and really is intellectual. He is also a good chess player. And if you read the forums you will see that he has a strong sense of both art and literature. f_b lives in Tehran and is a good reflection on that unique city.

Awesomechess and Elroch and others would talk about higher math ideas and functions. Both re very intelligent and they both know math. Elroch is a mental powerhouse. His contributions in vote chess cannot be measured, but I can tell you that they have been high in quantity and quality.

Many in the group liked to discuss the arts. We have threads right here in these forums about classical music, classic movies, art, literature, and one for favorite quotes from movies. Take a look. And let me add that our member MindWalk is a published author.

But these days we seem to have moved more to light hearted fun and less toward real intellectual conversations. We often tell riddles on the group front page. But if we can’t have fun why are we here, right? But most of those smart people from the early days are still around. Perhaps their intellect has not been damaged from hanging around me too much.

However, back in those early days we were very disappointed with one of our members, who was also an Admin. Check back next week for the crazy story of LongIslandMark.

Since those early days we have had more intellectual people join our group. Many of them are great chess players as well as being intelligent. So here we are, about to celebrate our 3 years anniversary.

I am a member of several teams, but this one is the best one, with the best admin!

Thanks Haskovec. For sure you have made large contributions to our vote chess team.  

Thanks JustADude :> brought back memories of when I came to join several years back. <3 

Thanks Shannon. Be sure to read the next two.

I've had fun

David, gooood!  

Let's remember that the 3 year anniversary of the group is only a few dys away, July 20! Below is part 3 of the group history.

As mentioned earlier, back around late July in 2014, I received an invitation to join a group called The Intellectual Chess Players. It seemed interesting so I joined. After a few days I saw that the group was playing a few team matches and also had eleven vote games going on.  For the story of the vote games, look back for that article from two weeks ago. For a talk about the intellectual discussions in our early group activity, go back and read last week’s post.

My first good friend in the group was a man who went by the name of LongIslandMark and on his profile he said that his real name was Mark. I private messaged with him sometimes and got to know him better than most in the group. We were almost the same age. I remember that it was almost exactly a year’s difference in our ages, but I don’t remember if it was him or me who was the older. It seems that I was a year older than him. He also talked about recent heart problems that he was having. In the past I had experienced similar health issues so we talked about that. And of course we talked about being an Admin in the Intellectuals group. And we talked about chess.

At first, Mark was one of those strong players who was in the group already but was not playing vote chess. He was one of the very first that I recruited to join our vote games. But he did not join them all, only two or three. It seems that when he first started playing VC with us his rating was around 1800 or 1850. He suggested one or two web sites to me that were databases of games to be used for reference. He was actually a professional computer/IT person. Using databases in not cheating on the chess.com web site, and Mark used more than one database for his games. Over a period of 6 or 8 months, his rating in turn-based games (AKA online chess) increased up to about 2000. I once heard him say that he was real bad at blitz and his chess.com blitz rating agreed. It was around 950.

Mark invited me to join another group where he was a member where they also liked vote games. So he and I had lots of things to talk about, and we did just that.

So Mark and I got to be friends and we started winning all our vote games and we were growing as a group, so all was well with the Intellectual Chess Players group – for a time. Suddenly one day when I clicked on Mark’s profile to send him a message, I got the standard screen that said “Account Closed”. It sure looked like Mark’s account had been closed for being a cheater. I was very surprised – very.

I talked to a few chess.com friends in both of the groups and all were very surprised that he had been kicked out. Before he was booted, nobody thought that Mark was a cheater. Mark was also an Admin of that other group where we played some vc games. We were both friendly with the group’s Super Admin, a man named Lee. So after Mark was booted I talked to Lee about it. He had Mark’s email address outside of chess.com and had been in touch with Mark through email. He said that Mark had assured him that he did not cheat and that apparently the chess.com software had hit him because he used so many moves from databases. I asked Lee did he really believe Mark’s reason and did he think Mark was a lying cheater. Lee simply replied, “I don’t know”.

About a week later the Intellectuals got a new member named Darkling Salmon. He fell right in with the group and started playing vote chess with us. He made comments and suggested some good moves. He seemed to fit into conversations quickly for a new member. His profile said that he was an American, but I don’t remember where in America. It also didn’t tell his age. He was a good player in vote chess so we were glad to have him. About two weeks after he came along I sent him a message and told him about LongIslandMark and asked him if he was the same person. His reply was, “If I was, would you really want to know?” So he never gave me a direct answer but after a while I just assumed that it was the same person, but I couldn’t say for 100% sure.

So we rolled along winning vc games and picking up new members. It was about this time that Elroch came along and we had 5 or 6 regulars that were rated 1800 or higher as well as a few others rated that high who played in only one or two games. One of the members of the group (Cavatine?) asked me if I thought Darkling Salmon was really LongIslandMark, and I replied that I didn’t know for sure but it might be. It was also about this time that in one of our discussions about a vc move that someone started talking about playing blitz. Dark Salmon commented that he was terrible at blitz. I looked at his profile and saw that while his online rating was about 1900 his blitz rating was about 900.

Shortly after that, Darkling Salmon’s account was closed – once again it looked like he was booted for being a cheater. That really made me suspect that he was Mark and was a cheater all along.

So we thought that was the end of LongIslandMark, but we were wrong. Our Admin, f_b, was working hard at getting new members so we had quite a few new people. About a month later we had a new member join the group called LarsAlmondKing. Weird name, right? He explained that by saying that his name was Lars and he had always liked eating almonds so when he was a kid his friends called him the almond king. He started playing vc with us and was a pretty good player. After 2 or 3 weeks our long-time member Cavatine messaged me and said that he thought that Lars was the same Darkling Salmon. He said to just look at the names, they were the same letters rearranged. I thought “wow”. Then I realized that those letters also spelled LongIslandMark. So the dude was not only coming back again and again, but he was using the same letters to make his new name! Why? No idea.

My impression was that Mark thought he was smarter than we were and wanted to prove that to himself. He wanted to put the clues right in front of us thinking that we would not notice. But maybe I am wrong. I can’t (and couldn’t) read his mind. But when he came back a third time and made is name an obvious clue I took that to mean that he was not interested in being my friend.

As soon as Cavatine pointed out that LarsAlmondKing was the same person as Darkling_Salmon (but before I realized that the letters also spelled LongIslandMark) I notified the group Super Admin, Awesomechess1729. Awesomechess didn’t like it at all and you can’t blame him. Mark was a cheater who kept coming back to our vote team and we don’t want cheaters. I can’t remember if Awesomechess kicked him out of the group or gave me the OK to do it, but anyway LarsAlmondKing was booted from the group but was still in chess.com for a week or so and then he was booted from there also.

As far as I know that was the end of LongIslandMark and his connection to the Intellectual Chess Players. But who knows? The way he changes names, he might still be among us. He might be reading this page right now. We don’t know. But that is another story in the history of the Intellectual Chess Players.

Come back next week for another story of a strange fellow who thought he was smarter than everyone else in the group – and then found out different. 

Scrabble skills come in handy!

The words "darkling salmon" seem unusual together. We scarcely ever use the word "darkling" and that is why I stared at the name for a while. 

While I was staring at it trying to figure out why anyone would name himself that, I thought it sounds like one line from my favorite record album in the world, a sing-along with Pete Seger, from when I was little

The Pete Seger album has "This land is your land" in it, and it's "the SPARKLING SANDS OF her diamond desert", sort of like "the darkling salmon her diamond desert" if you aren't paying very good attention.

The word "salmon" always gets to me anyway since it reminds me of "salmonella".  Who thought to spell it that way? English doesn't make any sense to me.  I guess that's why it can seem fascinating.

I don't remember exactly what I wrote to JustADude but i easily could have failed to mention the letters, assuming he would notice, even though it's not very obvious if you don't stare at the letters for an unnaturally long time (something a Scrabble player might do. I would win more Blitz games if my opponents would not have such interesting names.)

Happy Anniversary to the Intellectual Chess Players! Below is part 4 of the group history.

Long through history there have been fables and myths of a troublesome spirit called a Gremlin. A Gremlin is a troublemaker, and often a spirit who makes trouble by breaking things. The term became widely used during WWII when allied pilots and mechanics had problems with things breaking on their aircrafts. They blamed it on unseen Gremlins.

As mentioned earlier, back around late July in 2014, I received an invitation to join a group called The Intellectual Chess Players. It seemed interesting so I joined. After a few days I saw that the group was playing a few team matches and also had eleven vote games going on.  For the story of the vote games, look back for that post from three weeks ago. For a discussion of the Intellectual side of the early group, look back to the post from two weeks ago. For a story of a strange character who had a big impact the early days of the Intellectuals group, look back to last week’s post.

As also mentioned earlier, we started off real bad at vote chess and changed to real strong in a period of just a few days. When I joined the group the team had already started playing eleven games – all 24 hours per move. We/they would go on to lose the first 3 and then win the remaining 8. We would also go on to win 26 in a row before we lost – and that about a year later.

However, a few weeks after we started winning we noticed that one or two of our players were voting for very strange moves. We would be early in the game and the position would be even or we might be winning and some of our team would vote to resign or to offer a draw. So after a few times Awesomechess and I would make comments that we didn’t want those votes to offer a draw or to resign because we were even or winning. Before long the situation got worse.

Before we started talking about it, those crazy votes would come along every three or four moves. After AC and I started asking people to stop it, it started happening almost every move. Clearly one or two (occasionally three) players were more concerned with making trouble than they were with winning the game. They were acting like 3 year old children more than adults. At that time we could not tell who voted for any move – which would change when chess.com version 3 came along (probably the only good thing in v3 in my opinion). So we had members of our team trying to throw the vote chess train off the track – or they were just seeking attention in a childish manner.

It seemed that we had one or two or maybe three Gremlins playing vote chess with us, and that was the word that I used in talking to the other Admins about the problem.

At this time we have around ten to fifteen players in most of our vote chess games. The move that normally won the vote had about 5 or so votes. So to have two people voting to offer a draw was disturbing. If a position had two good moves and the serious vote was split then three votes to resign or offer a draw could cost us the game. I was pretty unhappy about it. I discussed it with the other Admins and Awesonechess, and while they were concerned, they were not worried about it like I was. I took it as an insult to me as an Admin and vote leader. We had gone from losing every game to winning every game based on the ideas that I presented, and these votes to resign or offer a draw were intentional insults to the team and my leadership.

I soon saw that the more I talked about it in the game comments, the worse it got. So while I was still discussing it in private with the other Admins, I stopped talking about it in the game comments. I even started messaging my most trusted teammates and told them to not make any comments about the Gremlin because that attention just made it worse.

Then I got a good clue as to who was the Gremlin. We had a game going where the other team had to vote by some time Sunday afternoon. I logged into the game just about 5 minutes after their vote was in and was surprised to see that we already had one vote – a vote to offer a draw. But by going to the list of our team members I could look and see who was online at that time. There were only three team members signed in to chess.com so it was very likely that the Gremlin was one of those three people. Two of the members I knew well enough to think that it wasn’t either of them, so in my mind I now had a prime suspect.

This is a good place to clarify something I mentioned earlier. On the chess.com web site a person can run either the new software (version 3) or the old software (version 2). I don’t like v3 at all. I am planning on running v2 for as long as they let it run. However there is one good thing about v3. Back before v3 came along, the votes in vote chess were strictly secret. Nobody in the group, including the Admins or Super Admin, could find out who voted for what move. In v3 after a person votes in vote chess they can see who voted for all the votes so far on their team. And here is where it gets interesting. Now if a vote player is running v3, or if they just temporarily switch over to v3, they can go back to the old vote games in a group’s game archive and see who voted for what move even in games played years ago! And yes, I have done that. And yes I now know who the Gremlin was. Or to be more exact I know who the main Gremlin was and who the other two players were who occasionally voted stupid Gremlin votes.

More about the part-time Gremlins next week.

But back to the story as it happened. After I saw the clue where the Gremlin vote had just happened and I had a prime suspect (I will call him F.P.), I presented that evidence to the other Admins. They agreed that it was likely F.P. but they couldn’t be sure and thought it best to just ignore it and move on.

After the LongIslandMark incident and because the Gremlin continued to be a pain in vote chess, I started to focus a lot of my attention on getting bad characters out of the group. This was at the same time that Awesomechess and f_b (another Admin) were trying to get a lot of members into the group. So it became a sticking point in discussions between me and the other Admins. There was no heated argument or strong internet fighting; we all respected each other too much for that. However I did stop focusing my attention on most Admin functions. I kept being a leader in vote chess and ignored most other Admin things – all but one. I did continue to be the person to welcome new members. And I do that still.

Meanwhile the Gremlin, member F.P., was really trying to play mind games. Like LongIslandMark, he seemed to think he was the smartest man in the room. When we got new members in vote chess, and he made his regular votes to resign or offer a draw, and the new person would post a comment asking why we had those stupid votes, F.P. would be the first person to tell the new guy about how we had a Gremlin. Once or twice he described the Gremlin as being harmless. Once he was describing the Intellectuals Group to a new member and while listing the good things about the group he mentioned “the silly Gremlin” as a good thing. He didn’t fool me.

Sometimes if we didn’t have any new members and nobody had mentioned the Gremlin in weeks, he would say something about it. In other words he was going out of his way to look like he was not the Gremlin even though nobody had ever accused him of being the Gremlin. So I told him to stop bringing up the Gremlin because attention was what the Gremlin wanted. I figured that if he continued to do so after an Admin asked him to stop, that would be a clear case of him not being a good group member and team member.

And F.P. might have kept at it for a long time if he had not picked up other bad habits – habits that were done in front of others in the group. He started acting like he was in charge. In vote games he would sometimes declare what vote we were supposed to vote for. And of course I have seen some groups do that regularly but not the Intellectuals. We might discuss votes A and B and C and not clearly pick one as the best. But we still let everyone vote as they see fit. But before the time was out he would tell new members (or sometimes even long time members) which move the group had decided on even though the group had NOT decided on one move. In other words he would pick a move and pretend that he was the official authority to announce what move was selected. I told him twice to stop that. After the second time I talked to Awesomechess and told him that while I still though F.P. was the Gremlin, he should be banned from playing vote chess simply because he would not follow the rules or listen to the instructions from an Admin, me. I also told AC how he kept talking about the Gremlin after I had told him to stop. So Awesomechess finally banned him from vote chess and when that happened, all the Gremlin votes stopped.

But the story doesn’t end there. When F.P. later got unbanned he came back and played a few vote games and then just sorta disappeared – just lost interest I guess. But after v3 came along and after I used v3 to verify what I already suspected, that F.P. was the Gremlin – he dropped in to a vote game - just a few months ago. He made a joke about being gone so long and did we miss him. So I told him right away that I had used v3 to go back to our old games and see who was voting for what. That was all I said. I stopped short of telling him what I knew because he knew what I meant. He did not reply. He left and has never come back. And he is no longer in our group. In fact, when I checked his profile a week ago to see if he is still a member of chess.com I saw that he is, but has not logged in since January of this year.

So that is most of the story of the Gremlin. There are two or three things that I sort of glossed over in this article and the others as well. So next week I will finish my history of the Intellectuals with an article that covers lots of short subjects and also fills in a few questions brought up by the articles I have already posted. Don’t miss it next week!

Your Gremlin story reminds me of something at my previous University location.  Our building had a central elevator and it contained a board for posting announcements of talks.  Very frequently, someone would deface the postings--making unpleasant comments about the names of the speakers (especially female speakers) or just writing swear words. 

At first I figured it was just random passers-by.  But it was always that elevator, and it went on for a long time--over four years, which is really odd at a University where most students are only present for four years.  I guess it must have been a professor or staff member, or perhaps a long-term graduate student; or somehow it was more than one person.

I finally moved out of that building so I don't know if it's still going on.

Did you ever figure out your helper-Gremlins?

Yes I did figure out the two assistant Gremlins. That will be in the next post. Good to hear from you Mary. 

Here is part 5:

As mentioned earlier, back around late July in 2014, I received an invitation to join a group called The Intellectual Chess Players. It seemed interesting so I joined. After a few days I saw that the group was playing a few team matches and also had eleven vote games going on.  For the story of the vote games, look back for that post from four weeks ago. For a discussion of the Intellectual side of the early group, look back to the post above here from three weeks ago. For a story of a strange character who had a big impact the early days of the Intellectuals group, look back to the post two weeks ago. Last week’s post covered an invisible struggle between me and one annoying group member that went on for years.

This last article is a collection of (hopefully interesting) facts that were not in themselves long enough for a whole post so I will collect a lot of small stories and put them here.

Admins and the Super Admin:

Most people in a group don’t know a lot about the authority or responsibilities of a Super Administrator and a regular Admin. Since I have told stories about how I often checked with Awesome_Chess about certain administrative decisions in the group, let me say a few words about Admin and Super Admin authorities. Admins (that is me) can delete anyone’s comments from the group’s main page – well actually from any group page I guess. An Admin can ban any group member from playing vote chess or playing in team matches or can kick a member out of the group.

An Admin cannot promote or demote anyone to being an Admin. A Super Admin can promote members to Admin status or remove a member from being an Admin. A Super Admin can also pin any thread in the forums to the top of the list so that it doesn’t get moved on down the page. An Admin cannot to any of those things. A Super Admin can also do anything an Admin can do.

Betrayed:

I will refer to a member as D.O. rather than his actual name. He was in the group before me. He was playing vote chess before me. He is a weak player and was a big reason the group lost the first three vote games. But when I, along with some strong players, started playing vc he did listen and started waiting before he voted and seemed to be voting for strong moves. In the future he was one player that, as much as any, I could count on to show up and participate and (I thought) follow the rules.

Late in 2016 when I learned that by switching over to v3 I could see who voted for what move in a vote game - and I could go back to old games and see who voted for what moves way back then - all that with D.O. changed a little. I went to those old games and found out that, just as I suspected, that character F.P was the Gremlin. He, F.P., voted to offer a draw or to resign when we were either even or winning dozens of times, over and over. However on the instances where there were multiple Gremlin votes I was surprised by who the other two Gremlins were. One was an obscure nobody that almost never made any comments and didn’t even play in all our games. I will call him Robert. Robert probably made Gremlin votes between ten and twenty times. It did not bother me a bit to go back to our group Admin page and ban Robert from playing vc and then kick him out of the group – which I did. By that time the other Admins were not active in the group at all and Awesome_Chess wasn’t around very much so I didn’t consult with anybody – I just did it. The other Gremlin was D.O. He had not made Gremlin votes as often, but had done so more than two or three times. That bothered me. I felt betrayed by an old friend. I took no immediate action.

For years we had another vc player who was here when I first arrived and had played vc longer than me. But as opposed to D.O., Willie Luke was a strong player. When I first came to the Intellectuals Group, Willie Luke was already playing vc. However after the first losses he stopped being active even though he had joined most of the games. So in one game, as I looked over the list of players I saw that he was rated around 1900 and wasn’t participating, so I messaged him and asked him to help us win that game. We had a bad position but strictly in material the game was still even. He messaged me back and told me that the game was hopeless and he didn’t want to waste his time. So we went on without him. With LongIslandMark and Shtein and GuessWhoIAm leading we got better in that game. Next thing I know there was Willie Luke suggesting good moves and commenting on others suggestions.

Back in early 2015 I played some vote chess in another group that had a player named Haskovec. He was by far the best player in that group and eventually left the group because the weak players wouldn’t listen to his advice. But I did remember his name.

In May of 2015 the Intellectuals played a vote game against the group CzechoSlovakia (our game #25). They were a strong team but so were we. Unfortunately we had that character Darkling_Salmon also known as LongIslandMark, who was probably cheating when he made suggestions (look back two weeks and read that story if you didn’t already). But we finally won the game. Like me Darkling_Salmon looked at the comments of the other team after the game was over. Late in the game we started an attack that threatened a back rank mate. We left one of our knights hanging on the a file as bait and a distraction that would allow us the one tempo we needed to rush out pieces to the back rank and checkmate their King. It worked, they took our knight over on the side and we mated their king. Darkling Salmon mentioned that during the game just before they captured that knight, one of their players called that knight a Trojan Horse, referring to the move where they took the bait. I looked into the game archives and (using Google Translate) saw that the comment was made on move #27 by the same Haskovec that I had played vc with in another group.

Team matches.

I mentioned f_babaee_a (we call him f_b) but I probably didn’t say enough about him. He is, and was, an early Admin just like me. f_b did a lot to recruit members into the group and to make our forums successful. He is a good chess player and has been a great asset to the Intellectuals. In 2017 he hasn’t stopped by the group very often, but has a few times.

In the early days when LongIslandMark and Willie Luke were not playing in every vote game, Spirit Lancer, Zobral, and I took the lead as the strongest players in several games. We won those games and those games were part of the 26 game winning streak.

Spirit Lancer was/is a young American gamer. He loves to compete in any kind of game. He is bright and helped us win several vote games.

Zobral is a successful engineer and businessman in Brazil. He played a lot of vote gams with us back in 2014 and 2015. He is a big fan of the professional football (soccer) team in his area called the Corinthians. In those early days he often made comments about the best move in a game and closed his comments with the phrase “Go Corinthians!” Some of us asked him why he said that and he explained that it was his favorite team. For some reason one of our regulars took mild offense by that same phrase being repeated over and over (was it Cavatine?). When that member complained and asked Zobral to stop saying that Zobral politely said that he would consider it. Soon after that someone in the group made the remark, “Go Intellectuals!” So that has sort of been our cheer ever since. Zobral still comes around a little but not enough. He is a good group member.

Mary Kuhner, aka mkkuhner, came along in the 2016 time frame and helped us a lot in vote chess. She is also good at riddles that we sometimes have on our group front page. And oh yea, she is an official  Women’s Candidate Master, US Chess Federation.

IndianaCityGirl was cool, and still is with her new name. She is the only Intellectual who is also one of my facebook friends!

JuCeaser has long been a good player in vc, as has WorldOfKnow, Depatras, and Io Jupiter. Arildto pawnninho, asknotax, and GuessWhoIAm disappeared a long time ago, but none the less they helped a lot at one time.

That is far from a complete list of people who have helped make the Intellectuals what we are today. I apologize for leaving out some important people, but like I said earlier, this account is about 99% straight from memory and I have forgotten a lot of good things and people.

My guess is that the next three years will be different for the group, but not a lot different. We need to get back to talking more in the forums and on the front page. I wish we would play a few team matches, if the group will commit to doing it well. I expect that Awesome_Chess and I will be the only active Admins, but I also expect f_b to start to show up more and help. We have some new members who are contributing well to the group. I think we will be just fine.

Thanks for taking time to read this account of the Intellectual Chess Players group. Please do comment if you have enjoyed reading it.