diesel72
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Re:(1.g4) Grob any good? - 2006/06/28 04:13
I don`t know what is possessing me to get into this thread.... in the early 1970`s he was convicted of brutally bludgeoning his own mother to death, wrapping her body in a rug and dumping it in a remote area. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted when the U.S. Supreme Court made their "cruel and unusual" ruling.
Later, he managed to escape for several months supposedly by tricking a guard who was keeping track of him at a chess tournament. They stopped the practice of allowing prisoners out to play chess after he did this. There were some accusations of rating fraud, and many people claimed his strength was only in the expert range. Explanations (other than fraud) for the rating inflation in the closed pool of the prison system were offered. Some other people feel he could have improved (what else did he have to do with all that free time?), and the question of his playing strength is still technically open.
Claude`s true age is also in doubt. When researching the facts of his murder conviction after he filed suit against Inside Chess for libel (this was before Inside Chess laid me off - I don`t know the current status of
jump of about 15 years in a three year period. (i.e., he was a certain age at the time of his arrest, then three years later at his post-escape recapture, he was reported as much older than simple chronology would allow). One theory about this is that it is in his interests to claim advancing age to try to get an early release for medical reasons. A competing idea is that he thought he could get sympathy in the first place
were just in error one or the other time. His mother`s reported age at the time of her death is somewhat more consistent with the first theory, making Claude currently in his late 50`s, but is not entirely inconsistent with the second idea - and Claude`s own claim - that he is in his early 70`s - assuming she was a mother in her very early teen years. I believe he still has a sister living somewhere, who could presumably supply a true answer. I would say that he is an older-looking guy in his late 50`s or early 60`s who plays chess in the mid-expert range and who took advantage, either intentionally or not, of a flaw in the rating system to gain a very high national ranking.
But, I could be wrong. And I`d rather not be a co-defendant in that lawsuit, thank you very much. Note I didn`t use any words like "pathological liar" or "sociopath" in my descriptions. I felt that would be a bad idea.
Also, anyone who wants the exact details about events, dates, and ages will have to do the research themselves, or write to IM John Donaldson, who went to the East Coast and found most of the original documents; I left all of the documentation behind when I left ICE.
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It is in vain to hope to please all alike. Let a man stand with his face in what direction he will, he must necessarily turn his back on one half of the world.
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