Talk:Larry Evans (chess player)

A little POV?

The article says earned him many awards but none was more deserved than the USCF's Chess Journalist of the Year award. I don't dispute that at all, but is it a little POV? Bubba73 (talk), 04:56, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of POV, what about the sentence that he "guided Fischer to his capturing of the world title in the famous match against Boris Spassky in 1972.". Isn't that a rather grandiose statement? What exactly was his role? According to the William Lombardy page, Evans was Fischer's second for the Candidates' matches, but they had a falling out before the Spassky match. Peter Ballard 03:12, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Good points. I think both statements should be fixed up. As I recall, Evans and Fischer did have a falling out before the Spassky match. I should look up the details (as far as they have been reported), but they really belong in the World Chess Championship 1972 article. I think this page should just say that Evans was Fischer's second for the Candidates matches, as you mention. Quale 06:36, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

US champ how many times?

The article says that he won the US championship 4 times, but U.S. Chess Championship gives 5 times, including his 1952 match with Steiner and the time he shared it with two others. Bubba73 (talk), 01:47, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

The back cover of his book This Crazy World of Chess refers to him as "a five-time USA champion". He ought to know. I've corrected the article accordingly. Good catch. Krakatoa (talk) 08:09, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Mistakes in the Game Score

It's ironic that there are at least two mistakes in the score of his game with Yanofsky. Possibly it was copied from one of his articles? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.126.250.132 (talk) 21:31, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

I found and corrected one mistake. Which move is the other error? Bubba73 (talk), 23:17, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Newsday Long Island Newspaper

Didn't Larry Evans also write Chess articles for the Newsday, a paper out on Long Island? I believe he used to contribute a weekly column which was widely read. I used to keep up with it until the notations changed. Hope that helps round things up.66.193.147.225 (talk) 09:49, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

The section called Criticism of writings is not proper

The section is not what it says it is. There are no “writings” included, and it seems to be nothing but cheap shots and smears. The attacks are, in fact, part of a “back & forth” that went on and on, and yet the section doesn’t include any of Evan’s replies, which are not hard to find. Also the authors of the attacks are not described in anyway that would indicate that they are "critics of writing" or objective. And there is no objectivity in the sources -- the sources are the ones making the attacks.

Evan’s books were published and reviewed, and yet there’s no reference to anything like a review.

The section doesn’t have any value, it violates Wikipedia’s NPOV policy -- WP: NPOV, and should be removed.GretDrabba (talk) 21:27, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

It is not enough for content to be sourced, content should also not violate NPOV. All of the sources are biased in the section are biased. That's why the section was deleted.

These quotes are from the article Wikipedia:Neutral point of view:

Editing from a neutral point of view (NPOV) means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic. All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view. NPOV is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia and of other Wikimedia projects. This policy is nonnegotiable and all editors and articles must follow it.

...

"Neutral point of view" is one of Wikipedia's three core content policies... The principles upon which this policy is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editor consensus.

...

Achieving what the Wikipedia community understands as neutrality means carefully and critically analyzing a variety of reliable sources and then attempting to convey to the reader the information contained in them fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias. ... the neutral point of view does not mean exclusion of certain points of view, but including all verifiable points of view which have sufficient due weight.

...

Indicate the relative prominence of opposing views. Ensure that the reporting of different views on a subject adequately reflects the relative levels of support for those views, and that it does not give a false impression of parity, or give undue weight to a particular view.GretDrabba (talk) 04:56, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

None of those quotations justifies your blanking. First of all, your complaint has more to do with WP:DUE. The fact that the article is incomplete is not a reason for blanking. I'm thus reverting your edit. Toccata quarta (talk) 06:39, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Hello, Toccata quarta. I didn’t realize it was you, at first. I don’t think this section can be saved by being, as you suggest “finished, or by adjusting the “weight” of the opinions (as in WP:Due). But if you think it can be improved, I’d encourage you to do it, that is -- if you want to. You’re certainly one who’s capable of improving articles. Or, you could point the way.

I think it’s not a worthy section because it does nothing but extend an old and lengthy argument between two rival chess columnists. They went at it with all kinds of various accusations both in print and also in private correspondence for years and years. Unless the section were to be supported by a properly objective source. The attacks that Wikipedia is offering in this section all come from one source, one man: Winters. The section could be accurately titled: "Ed Winters attacks Larry Evans".

The short section makes at least a couple of false statements (!): It claims that Winters accuses Evans’ work of being “sloppy”. That’s not specifically in the source that’s footnoted -- unless you add an interpretation, which might be then be considered “original research”.

Another false statement: The section quotes Winters quoting Seirawan making assertions, and then the article states that a friend of Evans “denounces these assertions”, but in fact, the opposite is true: according to the source, this “friend” claims that he will NOT respond to Seirawan’s assertions.

The sources for the entire article appear to be self-published internet pages with no indication of any editorial control. The footnote doesn’t give any publication date or anything. Wikipedia considers this kind of source to be questionable, as I'm sure you know. (WP:QS)

If anyone wants to find a critique of Evans’ writings, he got plenty of reviews by established reviewers of his books, he was a published author -- and they’re not going to be the abusive nonsense by a pair of partisans that this Wikipedia section's got now.GretDrabba (talk) 17:55, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

I remember contributing to the "Criticism" a few years ago, as Evans had a very controversial reputation (to say the least) among chess journalists and historians. When I checked it just now, I was aghast at what I found.

1. Instead of being a list of those disputing Evans' work, it was primarily a list of those that had positive words about his writings. This was not even the original intent of the subsection. The positive feedback is presented first.

2. Every negative criticism is given an extensive rebuttal by Evans and/or close friends like Larry Parr (without presenting further responses by the original person criticizing him), then largely dismissed in a subjective, highly biased statement by the editor.

3. Contains other subjective sentences that simply don't belong in an encyclopedia, for the purpose of showing that Evans' writing was spectacular, and anyone who criticized him was/is wrong; "A journalist could not write for nearly forty years without acquiring some antagonists." was one such example.

4. Somehow gives Evans credit for writing a book by Bobby Fischer, My 60 Memorable Games, simply because he supplied an introduction. Then it includes a lofty quote of praise by Kasparov for Fischer's work, not Evans' introduction. This is probably the most absurdly biased example yet.

Even after changing all of this, I STILL think the section suffers from a heavily POV bias towards Evans. I don't know who was responsible for these changes, but I hope they will stop doing so, and understand that this is supposed to be an encyclopedia with a neutral point of view. As for GretDabba's charge above that those criticizing Evans' writing were "biased", that is impossible to prove. However, it should be noted that both Larry Parr and IM Anthony Saidy were close personal friends of Evans, so by that logic, should their positive words towards Evans be utterly dismissed? ChessPlayerLev (talk) 01:18, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Extensive criticism sections in chess biographies often worry me. The article should have some discussion of criticism of Evans's writing, but this should not be given undue weight compared to the rest of the article. I like most of the section as you have edited it now, but I'm unsure about the final paragraph concerning Seirawan's letter. It's the longest thing in the Criticism section, but almost none of it is about Evans. I'm not sure I even understand it as it's written here. Seirawan wrote a letter asking Iljumzhinov to resign and then Evans wrote a response (to whom?) that Seirawan says distorted his position (how?)? Looking at Winter (not cited inline, although it certainly should be), I see that both letters were published in Inside Chess. Winter provides no details about what Evans distorted, so really all we have is that Winter says Seirawan didn't like what Evans wrote. I respect Seirawan and I'm sure he had a reason to be displeased, but this incident simply isn't significant enough to belong in this biography. It's just an opportunity to take another whack at Evans, but I think there's sufficient and more substantive criticism in the rest of the section. Quale (talk) 07:13, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree with you that at present, the Seirawan subsection is an absolute mess. Rest assured that this wasn't a case before the POV-pushing edits; the section was much shorter (since it didn't contain a built-in rebuttal/rationalization) and much clearer. That being said, the distortion of Seirawan's letter is a rather long and involved affair of chess politics, and I have no problems deleting that particular criticism. I can replace it with very specific criticisms by either the player Lodewijk Prins, who Evans rather shamefully insulted based on a complete fabrication, or chess writer/historian Taylor Kingston, whose views Evans outright lied about in order to advance his conspiracy theory about Keres being forced to lose to Botvinnik. ChessPlayerLev (talk) 08:06, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I decided to go with Prins , since it's a simple case of objective results (which Evans admitted to utterly misrepresenting, but didn't seem terribly troubled by) and not a he said, she said case of chess history/politics. ChessPlayerLev (talk) 08:19, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, that's good. The Prins story is a good example. I'm sure that it didn't bother Evans very much that what he wrote wasn't true. I don't think he thought of himself as being primarily a historian, and he was more interested in telling a good story than an accurate one. Whether that made him an entertaining popular writer or a total fraud depends at least somewhat on your point of view. It does mean that we have to be very careful if we want to use Evans as a source for anything as he didn't have a reputation for accuracy. Quale (talk) 03:55, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

I used to read Evans' Chess Life column growing up, and every installment was something about Soviet match-fixing, particularly with regards to Stalin (?!) having a hand in fixing the 1948 World Championships. At the time, not knowing much chess history, I thought it might be semi-reasonable. The more I learned about chess history (Keres, who finished 2nd in 4 different Candidates Tournament after Stalin's death and was infamous for choking at the end, needed prompting?), and just thought about it logically, (why choose the Jewish Botvinnik, whose race was widely reviled by the Soviet government at the time, instead of the non-Jewish Smyslov?) the more absurd it became. ChessPlayerLev (talk) 23:01, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

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School

The article says not a word about what high school or college he attended. I would see him in the halls of CCNY from time to time, but know nothing of his earlier schooling. The article on Arthur Bisguier mentions that Bisguier went to Bronx Science high school. Shouldn't similar info be given here? Abenr (talk) 20:05, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:David Pritchard (chess player) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 20:47, 17 November 2019 (UTC)