Dread Pirate Roberts: All right: where is the poison? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both drink, and find out who is right and who is dead.
Vizzini: But it's so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you. Are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet, or his enemy's? Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I'm not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool; you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.
Dread Pirate Roberts: You've made your decision then?
Vizzini: Not remotely. Because iocane comes from Australia, as everyone knows. And Australia is entirely peopled with criminals. And criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me. So I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.
Dread Pirate Roberts: Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
Vizzini: Wait till I get going! Where was I?
And as everyone who has seen the wonderful little movie "The Princess Bride" knows, Vizzini continues in his attempt to out-think the Dread Pirate Roberts. You may surmise, even if you have not seen the movie, that his attempt is not a rousing success.
Now to chess. According to Chess Today (issue 2091), Kramnik's manager, Karsten Hansel, has stated that at Dortmund Kramnik will not show any of the novelties he has prepared for the Topalov match.
Now why would he say such a thing? Let's say it's true. Wouldn't Kramnik want Topalov to waste his time carefully examining his Dortmund openings? Surely he doesn't gain anything by reducing Topalov's workload!
Hmm...wait a minute: maybe Kramnik is going to use his Dortmund openings, and Hansel's statement is designed to throw Topalov off track by getting him to disregard those openings! But maybe that's too quick. It's not that Kramnik wouldn't play those openings, but just that he wouldn't show his novelties. Still, Kramnik wouldn't reveal his preferred openings, and help Topalov know where to look in his preparations, would he? So Topalov can disregard these openings after all...unless this is another red herring.
Looks like Topalov should just ignore the Hansel/Kramnik gambit and just prepare normally - after all, there might be iocane powder in both cups.
isn't really important, and the only thing important
is the world championship.
He doesn't seem to realize that this is disrespectful
to both
- his opponents (They would of course have lost, had
only Kramnik used his dreaded novelties)
- the organizers of the tournament (ok, here Kramniks
manager would be included himself)
It's reasonable to spare novelties, but to talk about this
is not very nice.
Enough raving.