New Chess Sites

I've been contacted by a couple of new chess sites that look quite interesting.

Chessdom is a mix of news, interviews, tournament reports and bits and pieces. They have some grandmaster analysis (by GM Dmitrov) and interviews with high profile players. They also claim to be the official media partner for a number of top tournaments that are coming up. Content is a little sparse at the moment, but it could be one to watch. The site is Bulgarian and available in English, Bulgarian and Russian.

Chess.com is a whole collection of things: forums, blogs, some news pieces, analysis, etc. A social networking site for chess if you like. They have definitely bagged the most desirable web address, and the site appears to have potential. At least one of our Chess Tales regulars is a contributor there.

There was one other, but they've not replied to my email, so we'll leave them off for now!

Chess club website

One of my current projects is developing a website for Tynemouth Chess Club. It's still only an early prototype, but you are welcome to visit and let me know what you think.

The site has match reports, news items, a calendar for fixtures, and even a store to buy chess products. My intention is that every member of the club will have a password and can create and maintain the content.

Do you have a website for your chess club? Which club websites have impressed you? What would be on your wishlist of features for a chess club site?

How much time do you spend playing chess?

I got an email over the weekend from a Chess Tales' reader in Pune, India. Prashant, a medical student, asked "how much time do I spend playing chess, and against whom?"

I'm sharing it with you because, I thought it would be a great question to put to all you Chess Tales readers.

I tend to 'keep my eye in' by playing on the Internet; I use a couple of sites: Buho21 and more often nowadays on Chess Assistant. Both are free to join, check out my previous post about them. Buho21 is also a great place to practice my Spanish, unfortunately I don't have any Russian to use on Chess Assistant.

I only play blitz chess online (between 1 minute and 3 minutes each / game); it seems crazy, but I don't have the patience for anything longer in cyberspace. I had a spell where I was playing a tournament or two everyday online (and probably about 1-2 hours / day), but due to commitments of starting a new company (and writing a blog!) I've not been a regular visitor recently. You can check me out on either site under the handle 'rogercoathup'; please say "hi" and challenge me to a game.

I also play league chess (3 hour long games) for Tynemouth, where I captain one of the teams. I don't find time to get to many club nights though. Other than that, it's tournaments (usually 3 or 4 weekend swisses each year and the county championship). Looking ahead, I'm planning an International tournament in the summer, and a better organised training schedule in preparation. If that goes well, I'd like focus my energy on these higher level events.

Prashant explained that he gets to spend about 2 hours / day playing, and that is against Fritz or ChessMaster on a handeld.

I don't play against computers myself, but do use them when I'm analysing / playing through a game: an early version of the Fritz engine in ChessBase on my PC, or Hi-arcs / Sigma on my Mac. Buho21 used to have a free engine called Sherlock, but it's no longer available.

The handheld is interesting, I saw someone running Fritz on one the other night; she was analysing my game (against her father) whilst we played. In this case it was innocent, but I guess highlights how they could be used surreptitiously.

So what about you guys? Where do you play and how often? How much time do you spend studying game? And, perhaps more interestingly, how much time would you like to spend studying chess?

Chess Tales Diagrams

I've had a couple of emails recently, from Roy Raymond and Edwin Meyer, asking about the diagrams I use on Chess Tales.

I spent a fair amount of time looking for good layouts, so it's nice to hear that they are appreciated.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any automatic software that generated position diagrams I liked, so I've had to resort to grabbing screen shots from favourite chess software.

The blue diagrams are screen shots from Buho21, a free online chess server with a very clean interface. They use a font for the chess pieces called Merida.



Recently, I've switched to some brown diagrams using screenshots from Sigma on the Mac. This was purely by chance: my Windows PC power supply packed up and I hadn't realised I could also run Buho on the Mac.



Having set up the positions, I grab the screenshots, move them into Google's Picasa, and finally into Blogger.

Ok, now the quiz (a difficult one), the positions on the boards are from which 2 famous chess games? Answers to roger AT 21thoughts DOT com. Also let me know if you prefer the blue or the brown diagrams.

Chess and social networking

Have you noticed the little buttons at the bottom of the posts on Chess Tales for reddit, digg and del.icio.us? Ever wondered what they do?

In the increasingly Internet driven world we can access more news and information than ever before, but how do we see the wood for the trees?

Social news sites, like reddit and digg, address that problem. They let you rate stories you like (and those you don't like) and share that information with everyone else. Cut the bad stories and just go straight to the ones the world says are worth a read. That's the theory anyway. They also do other clever things, but I'll let you visit their sites to find out more.

Del.icio.us is also about sharing things you like with the world, but this time your bookmarks. Instead of storing them on your computer, you store them online. You can then access them from anywhere, and also share them with other people. Again, there are lots of other advantages that are worth discovering.

It's all part of the phenomenom of social networking online; new ways to build business relationships, meet new people, share information and interact. MySpace is the biggest operator in this field, with some 100 million young (and not so young) members.

You could argue that chess players are amongst the pace-setters in niche social networking. Our online playing sites such as Play Chess, ICC, Buho 21 and Chess Assistant bring together thousands of people online every day.

I'll be talking about social networks and the future at an event in late April, contact Anna Brown at Service Network for more information.

Let me know if you've make use of social news and social networks, and which are the most chess friendly.

Build your own online chess shop in 5 minutes

Fancy yourself as an online chess retailer? Let me tell you about 3 (ok, 2.5) ways to do it; and one, if you've got a fast connection and even faster fingers, really is just about possible in 5 minutes. One of them I've tried, one I wouldn't contemplate, and I'm giving serious thought to the other 0.5.

Route 1: You want the potential to make the biggest profits; you have time and money to invest; you are willing to risk heartache, despair, family breakdown and sleepless nights.

This is the one I wouldn't contemplate, and it involves going the 'whole hog': researching the market, analysing your competitors, registering a domain, building your own sleek online store (not as difficult as it sounds with the great templates and simple front end of a product like shopify becoming available), negotiating with wholesalers, holding stock, managing delivery, dealing with customers, promoting the business, etc., etc.

If this you, give me shout under my 21 Thoughts guise, and if I can't persuade you not to, I'll do my best to help you.

Route 2: The 5-minute route

Thanks to an offering called Zlio you can now build your own online shopfront without any of the hassles of actually having a shop. Register, choose the products you want to offer from a range of other vendors, e.g. Amazon and buy.com, and let them deal with all the rest. You get a commission on each sale that you share with Zlio.

The downsides: it's only available in France and the US at the moment (UK coming soon), chess supplies from the available vendors are limited, and you still have to promote it and get visitors to your store.

If you are serious, my advice is make it niche and promote, promote, promote. Let me know how you get on.

Route 2.5: Don't!

If you already have a blog or website, take the simple route and host adverts (be an affiliate) for an existing chess store, e.g. the London Chess Centre, that pays commissions on customers you send to their shop.

Good luck and happy monetizing!

Great sites to play chess online for free

If you are looking for a great site to play online chess, I have a couple of recommendations and best of all they are both free of charge.

Buho 21 is based in Spain and offers the cleanest and best interface I have come across. Register, download the java application, and you'll be playing chess in no time. There is an active community of strong players, mainly from Spain and Latin America, and getting a game is no problem. There are a couple of downsides, the server was a little unreliable earlier this year, and the number of master players tends to be limited.

Following the server problems on Buho 21, I started playing at Chess Assistant. This is the playing site of the Russian chess database vendor. The interface is cluttered and non intuitive at first (like the ICC), but repays your perserverance. This is definitely the site if you want to play masters and even grandmasters on an almost daily basis. Finding an ad-hoc game can sometimes be slow, but there are countless tournaments you can enter throughout the day.