When did they do their opening prep?

This might be the biggest thing to hit the chess blogosphere in awhile. ChessGirls isn't another one of those chess beauty sites exactly. Instead, it provides coverage of the Dutch team at the 2007 European Club Cup for Women. However, it seems that whenever the team of WIM Marlies Bensdorp, Arlette Van Weersel, WFM Laura Bensdorp and Martine Middelveld weren't busy playing chess, they were doing photo shoots and filming footage for a video production.

The New, New Thing

With the chess blog listing infrastructure rebuilt to accommodate my new approach, I've begun adding new chess blog finds again. Here's a round-up of some interesting recent additions:

• Chess Behind the Scenes at InstantChess.com has to be the most fascinatingly boring chess blog on the net. Post after post describes support interactions between users of the InstantChess site and the Admin. Here's a recent post on how to start a game:
  

  A player wrote in today and told me he didn't know how to get an opponent. I told him to click "play" or "start game". He wrote back and told me how much fun he'd had playing chess, and thanked me for helping.

  Each post follows this familiar format -- a player wrote in with a problem, I helped him, he thanked me. As a set of individual items, this blog makes a reasonable natural substitute for Rozerem. However, as a whole, I find this blog to be a fascinating study of the "life" of an Internet Chess Server Admin. He/she must answer both complex and simpleminded questions with accuracy and compassion and must accept grateful thanks as the primary reward. I, for one, would not make a great Admin.
  
  
• If there is anything rarer than a female chess player, it must be a female chess blogger. I'm sure many of us lament the day last year when Perceptual Pawn went silent (Of course for solace, one can still look at Cecilia's picture). Yet, as of late, this sub-segment of the chess blogosphere has been growing rapidly. There are three women listed in the GM section of the sidebar, Jennifer Shahade blogs at USChess.org, and the Diary of an Itinerant Chess Player and Chess, Goddess and Everything have been around for a bit less than 6 months.
  
  Now, you can pull up another chair to the coffee table for Castling Queen Side. Check out Polly's post on the top 10 signs that you're having a bad tournament.
  
  
• Have all the really creative ideas for chess blogs already been taken? Apparently not. Claywizard Chess Sets - How to make one offers detailed posts on how to make your very own clay figure chess set. Who wouldn't want to own one of these hand crafted masterpieces?
  
• Of local interest, our friends down the road at the Metrowest Chess Club have recently joined the blogosphere. In a related note, Harvey Reed's vision for intra-club correspondence server chess competition seems to be coming to fruition. He recently started a blog for the fledgling New Met League.
  
  
• Finally, don't be too disappointed when you discover that Affairs of Chess does not report on the personal indiscretions of chess players traveling on the international circuit.
  

Can a Tiger change his stripes?

Just when Braden Bournival should be trying to get beyond his past transgressions and rehabilitate his reputation, he instead demonstrates how not to make friends in the chess community. At USChess.org, Jennifer Shahade points out his comments regarding the US Women's Championship:

They might as well just flip a coin to decide who is going to win each game, because when women play chess the results are completely random.

Jen's brother Greg had an appropriate retort:

I'd feel a lot better if I was betting on you vs IM Krush in a coinflipping contest than if you were playing a chess match.

You can read all the fireworks here by scrolling through the comments.

Women can't be bothered to play chess

At Pure Pedantry, Jake Young reviews a research paper by Christopher Chabris and Mark (not my cousin) Glickman entitled "Sex Differences in Intellectual Performance: Analysis of a Large Cohort of Competitive Chess Players." Mr. Young's post is a bit of a challenging read itself, so I didn't even try to read the research paper. However, the primary conclusion of the paper (as summarized by Young) is fairly interesting.

This data strongly argues that the difference in performance of women in chess is ... a problem of participation. The problem is not that women can't play chess well. The problem is that enough women who play chess well are not choosing to play chess.

Makes sense to me.

Chess and Gender

Jo22 writes about the unique pressures she faces as a female chess player:

It reminded me of every Tuesday evening, when I play chess with various people at a local pub. I am nearly always the only woman playing. Every time I play a newcomer, or when men (they are usually men) are watching my games, I invariably feel an intense pressure not to lose...

The pressure I feel is that if I lose, my opponent or the people watching won't think, "she can't play chess", but "women can't play chess". It's a very uncomfortable pressure and it annoys me that men don't have to experience it.

Searching for BCC Weblog

Sorry, but this post does not star Ben Kingsley as Bruce Pandolfini....

November 13th marked the two year anniversary of this blog. As a result, I now have access to quite a bit of data on visitors, referrers, and search terms. Today, I thought I might share the search related information.

As the blog's content has continued to grow and its page rank increased, more and more visitors have arrived through search engine queries. During the first year or so search engines accounted for less than 15% of visitors; more recently, the number is definitely above 25%. For the full two years, searches account for 23.3% of visitors with known referrals.

The top 5 or so search terms that lead surfers to BCC Weblog bring few surprises, but as you continue down the list interesting insights emerge as to what attracts visitors here. Here are the top 25 search terms for this blog over the past two years:

1. chess (19.0%) - I bet this came as a shock!


2. club (3.5%) - No surprise.


3. boylston (3.0%) - ditto


4. blog (2.7%) - ditto


5. and (2.5%)


6. the (2.3%)


7. beauty (1.3%) - Finally things get more interesting. Beauty and the Geek first made these pages when the show's production company called the club looking for "chess geeks" to try out for the show. Then, as you may recall, one of the show's contestants -- Joe Block -- was introduced as a chess champion and chess was included in several episodes. Well it turns out that a mediocre FOX reality series has much broader appeal than chess to the point where it can become a major driver of visitors to a chess blog.


8. geek (1.3%) - See "beauty"


9. bcc (1.0%) - Surprised this wasn't higher?


10. erikson (0.9%) - I have one post which includes a picture of a statue of Leif Erikson. I never realized he was so popular.


11. tricks (0.8%) - The blog gets a lot of searches for "chess tricks." They must be disappointed when they click on the link in this post.


12. pastrami (0.8%) - Maybe Philadelphia should have renamed their team the Pastrami. Masterminds is nowhere to be found in the list.


13. wamala (0.7%) - Given that this story broke only a couple of months ago, it is amazing how quickly it has shot up the list.


14. leif (0.7%) - See "erikson"


15. boston (0.7%) - People searching for "chess club boston" often find their way here.


16. severine (0.6%) - See "wamala"


17. blogs (0.6%) - Not much to say here.


18. rules (0.6%) - Many people search for "rules and regulations of chess." I'm sure they are not particularly happy when they get this.


19. weblog (0.5%) - Just goes to prove that "blog" is more popular than "weblog."


20. knights (0.4%) - Mostly "Knights Errant", but the chess piece itself generates some traffic.


21. regulations (0.4%) - See "rules"


22. krasik (0.4%) - Either he's the most popular member of the Boston Blitz or this is how he usually linked to the blog during the 2005 season. You decide.


23. dedijer (0.4%) - Everyone likes to look at a pretty face.


24. lief (0.4%) - A lot of people have trouble spelling the Viking explorer's first name.


25. sanja (0.4%) - See "dedijer"
    

Take it to the bank

Hope at Humor Hangout has put together the pieces of the puzzle and concluded that there must be money to be made in chess. For example, consider chess equipment:

...if there are shops that cater to people who are willing to buy chess pieces made from pewter or brass or marble (those all sound very pretty and weighty and handsome) and chess boards made of high gloss polyurethane (that sounds really elegant), there must be a lot of money in this activity.

And, why don't you hear much about women chessplayers?

...because women are so good at chess that they are able to retire on their winnings early in their careers and thereafter leave the field to the men.

Finally, we all know why chessplayers are smart:

...because they have figured out a way to make a lot of money while sitting down most of the time.