Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Figure of fun II

Times leader, yesterday.


What was that claim again?


What a load of old nonsense.

But, to be fair, not their error originally.

I mean it's in The Times - so it must have appeared somewhere else before.*

- - - - -

UPDATE: moving from one unlikely story to another, here's Oliver Kamm in the same newspaper today.



Come again?


Did he?


[* This gag courtesy of Jonathan]

9 comments:

Adam FF said...

According to the FA, around 2m people in England play football, which I find an interesting comparison to the, ahem, 6m chess players: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/danroan/2011/06/tough_times_for_grassroots_foo.html. Also, are we really doing too badly if we have (6m / 600m =) 1% of the world's chess players, when we have (60m / 7bn =) roughly 1% of the world's population?

Matt Fletcher said...

At 175 grade, the ECF grading site says I'm ranked 900 in England. I always thought that was somewhere around the top 10% but the Times tells me it's the top 0.02%! I like the Times...

John Cox said...

Didn't he? If Hans Kmoch says that Samisch himself told Kmoch this story, that's better verification than most anecdotes, I'd have thought.

ejh said...

Maybe better, but not actually particularly good.

ejh said...

"No, guv, I wasn't there, but this other bloke was, he reckons."

"When was this? Search me. Who do you think I am, Samuel Pepys?"

"What do you mean, why didn't anybody else seem to notice this was happening? You calling me a liar? Look, just push off, eh?"

Anonymous said...

You rascals leave Raymond Keane alone! I will not stand for this attack on his good character. I have written to David Cameron and Her Royal Majesty the Queen and have requested that Raymond Keane be knighted for his services to chess. In my opinion he is one of the greatest men that has ever lived!

Simon said...

Raymond Keene seems to be rather bored by the Anand-Carlsen match. Instead, he has using the "times chess" Twitter feed to repeatedly promote his 1980s TV series, "Duels of the Mind".

Anonymous said...

The action in Chennai cannot possibly generate the same level of intellectual excitement as Nathan Divinsky's statistical analysis of which metric to use to make sure Kasparov comes out as all time #1

Anonymous said...

Not to mention Alekhine as #19 ;)