African chess players

What if we were saying this in the 1970's: "There are unknown black long distance runners who can beat top Olympians."

The lack of strong African players is due to lack of infrastructure, and lack of top class competition.

It is noticible that Egypt places very high on the African list, I suspect that is because of proximity to Europe.

South Africa has a horrible track record, we've had this strange policy where almost all funds and resources are pumped int junior chess, and as soon as players reach senior level there is nothing left for them to do.

For at least 15 years, more than 90% of registered players here have been juniors.

That clearly illustrates that junior players do not translate into senior players. There are only a handful of SA players with a FIDE rating, tournaments are too far and expensive to get to.

BTW, I once played 5 blitz games against Amon Simuntowe, in a Guinness record attempt for the most Blitz games over a 48 hour period. I don't think the 5 games had a total of 70 moves, he absolutely crushed me after having been awake about 36 hours, lol

There are no people at all that can beat top GMs without having access to lots of chess books or programs.

 Right!  How outrageous is that.

SZ.

The truth is: There r chess players, that u may not know of (black, whatever...) who r able 2 beat known & ranked players!; do u understand that!; there is nothing outrageous about that statement. Also how could u, who have no interaction with Black people, say " It's just a matter of chess not being nearly as popular among black people"; u can't b serious ; u have absolutely no idea, what is popular among Black people.

SZ.

 Learn 2 quote correctly; what I originally said was: "with certainty: There r Black (Afrikan American) chess players, who will crush any GM, IM, etc..., that u can think of!" this was my original statement, which is the exact same thing as saying: "There r chess players, that u may not know of (black, whatever...) who r able 2 beat known & ranked players!;"; these r the exact same thing. Learn 2 comprehend; I rephrased (modified), simplified it, so some1 like u would understand.

SZ.

 Actually you toned it down the second time - the first time you indicated CRUSH ANY which is rather more controversial than beat some.  Also your basic premise is fallacious and highly improbable - not from any racist point of view but simply because chess requires its own form of training.  As Capablanca has been quoted as saying "If you could beat me I would know you".

The point I was making when I intially referred to the obnoxious post as a "RANT" was that in one silly paragraph the poster turned what was supposedly a quest for information (in his OP) into a polemical (but ineffective) diatribe about how there are some untold number of (african or african descended) players who are STRONGER than the worlds greatest players.  We know what "crush" means.  Furthermore, he says that somehow information about these players is being manipulated or more specifically REPRESSED so that the rest of the world won't know about them.   It's a stupid point, an irrelevant idea, and to top it off, weakly argued.

Now, if instead the OP had mainted the friendly tone of the thread (as it was until that point) and said something like:

"It wouldn't surprise me if somewhere in the world there are unknown players, perhaps geniuses, some of whom of african descent, who might be undiscovered and of IM or GM strength who could COMPETE with the worlds strongest players..."   

...I don't think  he would have gotten much of an arguement.  There are undoubtedly very, very strong players out there of IM and perhaps GM strength who play and study in absolute obscurity.   To say that these unknowns would CRUSH the world's best players is complete conjecture.  It is also NONSENSE.  Why is it nonsense?  Because even the strongest known GMs in the world do not routinely crush other GMs or even IMs.  More often victories are in the end game and WAY more MOST often games between Super Elite GMs and "average" GMs end in draws. So, even if his point were just simply wrong/misinformed to say it in such an obnoxious way was simply dismissive of all of us who have contributed to this discussion in a cooporative and/or helpful manner.  Furthermore I would suggest that OPer is demonstrating a sort of Afro Arrogance, implying that people of African descent are somehow SUPERIOR, if they would just sort of "get their chance".   I think the OPer is demonstrating ingorance and racism, whether he knows it or not.  And, finally to answer the jab that it probably coming next: YES it is possible for a member of a persecuted minority to be a racist. 

If the OP is too pig headed, obnoxious or just too immature to notice that he is the one that drove this thread off of the rails then there is NOTHING that the rest of us can do about it other than simply back away and let him "steam his own noodle".

You may be right on that, though Frankdawg hasn't clarified. Though, when Rogalentis listed links to the FIDE lists of 3 African countries, he said that they don't include ethnicity; so I don't think he just meant players on the continent.

I went with the general question, in the way that most of the links my search turned up. That's why I came up with one American, one Swedish player and one from Zambia.

moemen13's list is probably more accurate if one wanted the continent, though you would need to go to FIDE and pull lists from each country.

No one can Be an IM or GM id he doesn't have lots of training and learning tools,it doesn't matter if he is african.

end of debate.

I know plenty of hog farmers in the US South that can crush any elite GM !!  They cant be bothered to do so though cause farming is a full time job and they dont have the time for such nonsense as board games !  

You need at least average if not above average intelligence, and dedication to become a gm... That pretty much closes this topic.

I want to be an Axpert.

 He clarified and said, "ethnicity."  So he was wondering about skin color, not nation of origin.

There is a reason that virtually every post in this thread has been "against" you since you started acting like a fool. I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt that perhaps English is not your primary language and the issues you have created by overstating and poorly explaining your position may be due to that rather than to just simply being obnoxious.   Every point that I made in the post that you quoted from me above was directly responding to specific points that you tried to make.  I don't plan to check back into your thread again, but perhaps you can think about why you're acting like a fool here responding to me who has actually agreed with a good deal of your ideas when my main criticism of you has been that you've exagerated (due to language or attitude I don't know) and that you've changed the tenor of the thread from collegial to combative.  You did that, not me.  

Good bye, enjoy your chess. And as always:

Stay classy.

 Isn't this racist?

You're totally correct!!! I bet that if there was a RZA-Carlson match the RZA would dominate so hard..... that i can't even finish making that erroneous statement. Now, i'm not doubting that the RZA isn't good at chess or that he can't compete well against some lower level players but i seriously doubt that he would even make any of the top 200 players break a sweat.

And i am pretty confused on how he is "a chess GM; on the board & n life" if he "doesn't (might not) have a FIDE or USCF rating." Doesn't one need a rating to be conidered a GM?

Hey, stupid rasist asshole, Hi, Szammie, I'm talking to you. First of all, Norway has black people, quite a few immigrants from Somalia (which is in Africa, in case you didn't know). And if that wasn't enough, they would probably see some spill over from Sweden, as Sweden has one of the most generous immigrant policy in the whole world.

Secondly, RZA isn't a grandmaster, he has played alot of chess with GZA, who says that he's usually around 1300 on yahoo chess (Source: http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2739).

If you are interested, here's also a chess game RZA loses against the NYtimes chess columnists, which is far from being a top GM http://gambit.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/playing-chess-with-rza/.

Thirdly: Stop it.