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Chess on the net

BY Graham Brown
from the website www.easytorecall.com/chess.htm
(If you have a chess website to add to this review please send it to
editor@easytorecall.com)

TONY Blair thinks Chess is a sport. Old argument "Sport or Game?" It doesn't
matter what your particular skill is. It could be chess, long distance
running, high-board diving, even the triple jump for crying out loud ...
nobody likes to see their chosen field of endeavor downgraded to the status
of a mere game by anyone with half decent debating skills.

Oxford University has some funny old ideas on this. You may know that you
can win the famous "Blue" for paddling a canoe up The Thames but were you
aware you can win a Half-Blue for Tiddlywinks? and that there is not even a
Quarter-Blue for chess. But Tony, Parliamentary time allowing, will be
getting the Queen (no pun intended) to announce in October 2001 that chess
is a sport! And for starters that means that chess can benefit from Lottery
funding and apply for Olympic status. As he said recently in that most
fearsome of debating chambers and I quote "We're good at chess!"

The Internet

Tony's extra-systemic solution for chess is good news, but I believe it
palls into insignificance if we analyse the contribution the Internet has
made. I would compare the boost the Internet has given chess to that given
to snooker by Colour Television. Consider the facts.  Michael Adams our
chessboard equivalent of Rocket Ronnie O'Sullivan brought back $142,400 from
his recent 2 week shift at the FIDE world chess championships in Las Vegas.
And he was knocked out in the Semi Finals! And millions watched the event
live on the net. WebCams pivoted everywhere in the neon lit gambling capital
of the world. If you got bored with watching people lose their money in the
thousands of Flashing Fruit machines you could watch any of the 100s of live
duels on instantly updating chess boards right there on your computer. Every
grimace, every triumph! So maybe you want to learn the game, or return to pa
st glories? Remember the thrill of winning that cup? The pride it gave you
the glory the �5 book token OK so the school swat was away at a Poetry
Recital at the time but it still had to be won. The following information
below will hopefully help you in your quest.

Finding a Club

The British Chess Federation's site is a good place to start. If you email
them, they will give you recommendations in your area.

Acknowledged by many as the best homepage on the net is Exeter Chess club
Its written in classical hypertext lots of default colour hyperlinks within
well-written text. The content is fantastic too! If you're a beginner you'll
find lots of extremely well written training articles, if you're an expert
you'll find lots of valuable information.

The largest list of clubs that Ive found is Brit Web. this has a list of
well over 100 chess clubs in B Britain. There is also a clickable map of
Britain so you can easily find one near you.

Brush up on the news

If you're joining a club you'll need to keep up with the news. Keep up to
date with the first and still the best "The week in chess". By Mark
Crowther. TWIC is the acknowledged King (no pun intended) of Chess Sites.
Its updated on a daily basis and its links alone could be argued to make
this article redundant! Again its virtually pure hypertext with the
occasional graphic where needed.

Play Live

Then you might want to try out your game first. If you go to The Internet
Chess Club or ICC  you will be able to play a game straight away, just by
clicking on the play now link. You will be playing another guest at 10
minutes for all your moves. If you download the software and join up you'll
be able to use more features and you'll even get a grading. Beware of this
one though it's highly addictive! One of their fun statistical features is a
percentage of your life spent on the ICC. Make sure it doesn't go too high!

If you don't want to pay then Yahoo has a large section of games available
including chess, just click on games at the top of Yahoo. They also have a
grading system so again you can see how you're doing.

Another good free site is Kasparov's whose grading system seems far more
realistic that some of the others. For example, I am about an 1850 player
and that is where my grade hovers around on Kasparov's site. On ICC I have
been known to fly up to 2100 which is rather flattering. Definitely a case
of inflated ratings, and they also move very quickly. You can go from 1800
to 1900 in a few games. On Mr K's site you go up (or down!) much slower.

Chess Today

If you want to improve your game then try "Chess Today". I have to declare
an interest as I am one of the technical editors. Editing it has done my own
game (I'm  an average club player standard) a lot of good.  GM Alex Baburin
is the mastermind behind Chess Today as well as Grandmaster Square which is
the official webhome of a number of grandmasters including GM Morozevich, GM
Baburin, and GM Psakhis. He is the author of "Coffeebreak Chess" an
intermittent free newsletter of URLs, notes and tournament adventures. He is
also the author of the acclaimed book Winning Pawn Structures. On the Chess
Today site you can also sign up for a free trial. Another way to test out
Chess Today is to go to Mini Chess-Test which is a daily chess puzzle. Solve
it correctly and you can win a copy of Chess Today. If you do decide to sign
up with Chess Today (and it works out at a few pence per issue) then make
sure you go to Mini Chess-Test  and claim your free 10 back issues including
CT-23 Interview with Michael Adams by GM Baburin CT-40 Instructional Issue -
Positional play with GM Alex Baburin. CT-123 Bobby Fischer 58th birthday
tribute issue

Get Software

At the ChessBase site you can download Chess Base light for free. Its a
powerful database program to store your games. Then you can download pgn
files. You will see this option on a lot of the sites I've mentioned so far.
If you need any advice on this just go to the Exeter Chess Club pages
(mentioned above).

Search for games

One you know what pgn is or if you already know you can use my final tip. If
you are looking for information on your favourite opening and its proving
difficult type into Yahoo the moves in pgn notation with quotation marks on
each end e.g. "1. b3 e5 2. Bb2 d5 3.h3". This will bring up only pages that
mention these exact moves. They will almost certainly contain games with
these moves in.

Of course I haven't even scratched the surface here. If you type in "chess"
to your favourite search engine you'll get millions of pages, drink in the
information, play a game or two, join a club, search and find but beware
don't surf all Knight (pun intended). Graham Brown 2001

from www.easytorecall.com/chess.htm