Waking Sleeping Dogs

In addition to all the active chess blogs which I read, I keep a list of over 250 inactive blogs in Bloglines just in case they start posting again. It turns out that in the month of January, over 20 of these inactive blogs have published their first new post in a while. In most cases, the topic was the same ... the death of Bobby Fischer. Apparently, this historical event served as wake up call to many who had a chess blog in the past; though now I suspect, most of these blogs will roll over and go back to sleep again.

Two makes a chess blog genre

First there was Claywizard Chess Sets and now, Greybishop's Chess Set. Greybishop takes us through his efforts to fufill his dream of creating a superhero chess set that doesn't suck.

The US Chess League Blogosphere

In one of her recent US Chess League recap articles, Chess Life Online's Jennifer Shahade wrote:

Each year, the USCL's popularity grows. This year's highlights include an explosive USCL blogosphere, (way too many to list here...

Well, I'm up for the challenge!

Let's start with some taxonomy -- I've broken USCL blogs down into two major categories:

1. Affiliated - Blogs that are written by and/or represent specific teams, players or USCL officials
   
   
2. Unaffiliated - Independent blogs which provide coverage of the league and/or specific teams. Unaffiliated blogs come in two flavors -- blogs which are dedicated exclusively to USCL coverage and general (chess) blogs which include coverage of the league

In addition to blogs, there are a few websites which cover the USCL. In the past, the commissioner has used the term "blog" fairly loosely. Therefore, I'm uncertain whether any of these will be eligible for the USCL Blogger of the Year award.

Affiliated - Team Blogs

Carolina Cobras Blog - Some photos and an annotated game, but no new posts since 9/13

New Jersey Knockouts - Offers live blogging of Knockout matches, annotated games and player profiles

San Francisco Mechanics - Last year, this was a very active blog with many entertaining posts. They've been somewhat less active in 2007. Since it's been proved that blogging coverage is a prerequisite for success in the league, this might explain their average results so far

Seattle Sluggers - Inside scoop from Sluggers' players and Manager Eddie Chang. You'll find even more Sluggers talk at the Northwest Chess Forum

Tennessee Tempo - Here you'll learn that making jokes about the Tempo's misfortunes is unprofessional, but spewing personal attacks at bloggers and fans isn't

Affiliated - Player Blogs

Johnny B's Chess Connection - Dallas' IM John Bartholomew provides weekly reports on the team's matches in his general chess blog

Shakmaty Bereolos - FM Peter Bereolos is a long time chess blogger and player for the Tennessee Tempo. In the past he has annotated his league games and this season he has started live blogging Tempo matches

USCL news and gossip - It's hard to know where to place New York Knights alternate Liz Vicary's blog. She has mostly focused on generating humor from the dark and seamy side of the league, but has received the most reaction from a fight she picked with a Boston Blitz reporter over her game with NM Chris (is Awesome) Williams

Affiliated - USCL Official Blogs

This category might be a bit of a misnomer since it has never been completely clear what Arun Sharma and Ron Young's relationship with the league is. Nevertheless, last year they were referred to as "official prognosticators", so until I learn otherwise that's what I'm going with.

US Chess League News - Arun Sharma provides predictions and weekly qualitative power rankings, while Greg Shahade posts the Game of the Week articles here

FM Ron Young's USCL Predictions - Just what it says

Unaffiliated - Dedicated USCL Blogs

A Carolina Cobras Fan - This fan hasn't had anything to say since September 1st

USCL ChessCenter - OrangeKing offers predictions, qualitative power rankings and his own version of the MVP award rankings

USCL Groupies - From the same writer as A Carolina Cobras Fan, this blogs purports to focus on "trash talk" and "cute guys." I guess she couldn't find too many, since she stopped posting

Unaffiliated - General (Chess) Blogs

BlueEyedRook - Provides on-site coverage of the Philadelphia Inventors

Bionic Lime Thoughts - Another blog which is hard to classify since it is written by the individual behind the New Jersey Knockouts blog -- perhaps we should consider it "Semi-affiliated." The tart, green one is the brains behind the completely misnamed Famous Original Power Rankings

Boylston Chess Club Weblog - BCC Weblog has been providing independent coverage of the Boston Blitz since the very beginning, often to the chagrin of the players and Manager Matt Phelps

JG's Master Quest - JG obliterated the official USCL prognosticators in 2006, but is having a tougher go of it this year

The Kenilworthian - One of the finest chess blogs in the 'sphere, Michael is covering the New Jersey Knockouts this year

The pHtest - Author Paul Hoffman has been sharing the ups and (mostly) downs of the New York Knights

Websites

Boston Blitz - The Blitz have certainly set the standard for team websites; you'll find bios, articles, games, photos, video interviews with players and a live feed of one game a week

Chess Life Online - Provides weekly articles recapping league action

Queens Pioneers - Fairly light content so far, but give them time -- they are an expansion team, after all.

United States Chess League - The official league website

**********

No post at BCC Weblog about the chess blogosphere would be complete without a discussion on cross-linking. As you may have noticed, all of the blogs mentioned above are linked on the sidebar. Most are listed under "US Chess League Coverage" -- (w) indicates a website and (u) denotes that the site covers topics other than the USCL. I left long-time residents of the sidebar like BlueEyedRook and The Kenilworthian where they were and in this case used (u) to indicate that they were general chess blogs that also cover the USCL.

It is linking like this across a set of related blogs which creates and fosters a sense of community. For readers, it creates a useful supplement to the article listings at official league website. So what do you say USCL bloggers? Why not add a list of USCL blogs to your sidebar today.

BCC Weblog provides independent coverage of the United States Chess League. It is not affiliated with the USCL or the Boston Blitz.

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.
  

Nomenclature

1. I usually wait for a new chess blog to have at least 5 posts before I subscribe to it (so many are 1 or 2 posts and out). However, I liked the title of this one so much, that I signed up immediately. Hey Chessdad, make sure all your shots are up to date.
   
   
2. Likesforests' Become a Chess Expert has been renamed The Endgame Tactician.
   

I Give Up!!

I was browsing Technorati the other day and discovered that there are over 100 new chess blogs which I don't currently have listed here at BCC Weblog. All this activity occurred in just the past 4 weeks or so. Quite simply, chess blogging continues to grow at an exponential rate.

While I have endeavored to maintain the most complete listing of chess blogs on the web, this explosion has stretched my capability to do so to the limit. My current process for maintaining this list requires simultaneously updating the Other chess blogs post, a set of RSS feeds in Bloglines, and a separate Excel spreadsheet which I use to maintain last post dates. This has become too cumbersome and has to change.

As a result, I am announcing a major change to how the chess blog listings will be handled here. On the sidebar under Chess Blogs, you will notice a new link "More Chess Blogs." This link will take you directly to my Bloglines blogroll of active chess blogs. While this change will greatly simplify the administrative work required to maintain the list, it comes with several downsides for readers:

1. All of the Other chess blogs are not as easily scan-able as they were in the listing post. You will need to drill down into sub-folders and, in general, use more clicks than were required before.
   
   
2. There is much less categorization than before. For example, foreign language chess blogs are no longer grouped by language and categories like Commercial and Podcasts are no more. I could have created sub-folders for all these distinctions but it would have made the listings cumbersome and increased the on-going work for me.
   
   
3. Chess blogs without RSS feeds will no longer be listed anywhere, unless they are on the sidebar.
   
   
4. I'm no longer listing Inactive blogs. It just isn't worth the effort since I can't imagine there are too many readers who spend their time reading older, shut down blogs.
   
   
5. My new approach will make it more difficult to identify Other chess blogs which become Inactive. As such, I will go through this exercise much less frequently and possibly not at all. As a result, over time the "Other" categories will include a growing number of Inactive blogs.

Obviously, I don't consider this situation to be ideal, but the alternative is to give up on maintaining the listings (which may ultimately prove to be necessary if the explosion of new blogs continues).

I will continue to maintain, monitor and prune the sidebar as I have done in the past and it should remain constantly up-to-date. Therefore, blogs on the sidebar will be substantially more accessible and current than those in the Other categories. Given this, I thought it might be time to run a sidebar fire sale. Do you want to have your blog listed on the sidebar of BCC Weblog? For an unlimited time, the price has been reduced from $0 to absolutely FREE!

This blog follows a "Give and Get" policy (you can read more about it here). Linking BCC Weblog on your blog gets you a link here. To jump start this process, I went through the Other chess blogs listings and identified 16 high quality chess blogs which include a list of chess blogs, but do not currently link here. I have temporarily added them to the sidebar under the "Candidates" heading. In the next few weeks, if they add a link to BCC Weblog, I'll secure them a permanent spot on the sidebar. Otherwise, there will be no hard feelings, but they will be sent back to reside with the unwashed masses in the Other listings.

The current candidates are: The Back Rank, BCM Chess, Become a Chess Expert, Blog of a Chess Nut, Burning Castles, caught in the fire, Checkmate, ChessExpress, Gila Chess Patzer, Hardcore Pawnography, Knight Skewer, Mida's Chess Corner, Patzer's Corner, The pHtest, SonOfPearl's Chess Blog, and Strong Among the Weak. Don't fret if your blog is not listed here. You too, can secure your spot by linking to this blog. Just let me know that you did so by e-mail or by leaving a comment on this post.

Chessdom Interview Part 2: Trends

Chessdom: You are maintaining an impressive list on your blogroll and bloglines. What are the trends in chess blogosphere?

DG: Well, the first trend is the explosive growth of the chess blogosphere which makes it almost impossible to keep up. As of today (6/11/07), my listings include 259 Active blogs (which have posted at least one item in the last 45 days), 209 Inactive blogs, and another 132 blogs which were Inactive for more than one year, went 404, or were highjacked. In Bloglines, I am subscribed to over 520 chess blog feeds and receive between 100-200 posts per day (of course, Susan Polgar’s blogs account for 10-20% of the daily volume). It’s a lot of skimming to find the small handful posts worth a read, a comment, or that might make good fodder for a post of my own.

And the onslaught continues… I add new blogs every week and could probably do so daily if I wanted to. To make this point, I accepted a bet from About Chess’ Mark Weeks where he challenged me to find 5 chess blogs he had never seen before in two hours. I found about 5 times that many in only one. The good news is that there are many more interesting, unique, high quality chess blogs available to find; the downside, however, is that you have to weed through many mediocre ones, often covering the same old ground, to find them.

Another trend is the increasing use of video in chess blogs – both posting of content found on sites like YouTube and self-produced chess videos. I remember how unique it was when Chris Kilgore posted a homemade video on his blog a couple years back. Now dozens of chess bloggers do it. Chess Vibes has produced a very high quality, “semi-professional” blog largely based around their unique chess video content. There’s even a community site specifically focused on developing and sharing chess videos.

One other trend I might note is the use of advertising on chess blogs. In the early days (you know, 2004-2005!), we used to have long debates about the appropriateness of putting Google ads on chess blogs. Today, that debate is over; almost everyone has them. However, if my experience is a guide (and I think it is) then no one is getting wealthy from them (no one except Google, that is).

*****
You can read the entire interview here.

Hard times for the sidebar

This month's cleanup of inactive chess blogs took a heavy toll on the sidebar. No longer listed are Patzer's Mind, Globular, JG's Master Quest, Strong In Mind, Chess Vault, and The Chess House. Several of these were active, high quality blogs in their day. Hopefully some will find their way back to the sphere.

Among the Knights Errant, co-founder Sancho Pawnza has been quiet for awhile. In addition, Temposchlucker, who previously announced he was done, was removed from the active list. Of course, new Knights are always joining the path like recent additions The Common Man, Korsmonaut, and Hisbestfriend.

Beyond the sidebar, 15 other blogs went silent including Strong Among the Weak, ChessVista, Chess Boxing Club Berlin, and The Chessmill. No need to fret though, as new chess blog finds continue to be added to the listings. Besides those found during "The Bet", recent additions include The Chess Buzzard, Secrets of Grandpatzer Chess, Kenyan Chess Blog, Lansing Chess Club, The Chess Archives, Steve's Correspondence Chess Adventure, and Potentially boring chess blog.

Stream of Blogiousness

• It's nice to see that disgraced talk show host Don Imus has landed a new gig -- involving chess, no less.
  
  
• Ben is back! Thanks to a post on Heather Swan's Blog, I found IM Ben Finegold's new blog.
  
  
• Having caught a bit of the poker bug myself, I found this Chess Vibes' post on the attractiveness of poker to chess players quite interesting -- until they spoiled it at the end with an advertising pitch.
  
  
• Steve Eddins offered a thoughtful and thought-provoking response to Patrick's Chess For Blood closing post.
  
  
• I've finally decided to throw in the towel on Nezha. I must admit that I actually enjoy reading his posts on the trials and tribulations of job hunting in Japan. However, interview tactics and chess tactics are not one in the same. You can now find his blog listed in the Kibitzers section.
  
  
• Alec is giving up on online chess playing due to the prevalence of cheating opponents and other bad behavior.
  
  
• The Washington Post has annointed GM Alexei Shirov the Don Quixote of Chess. Those of us who know the original, realize that the prestigous newspaper has been duped by an imposter.
  

Blog Terrorists Strike Again

IM Ben Feingold's blog and Rob's Chess Blog have both been hijacked.

Be careful out there.

DG wins with eighteen to spare!

Read Mark's gracious concession post. The 1972 Fischer - Spassky World Championship match souvenir will make a fine addition to the Boylston Chess Foundation archives.

Related Post: Collecting on a bet

Collecting on a bet

In my post "How many chess blogs are there anyway?" I laid out the following proposition:

..."In the next two hours, I bet I can find 5 chess blogs you've never seen before." Any takers?

While most of the chess blog reading community didn't seem interested in taking me up on it, About Chess' Mark Weeks decided to play:

You're on. I'll trust you to use only two hours, and you'll trust me when I say whether I've seen them or not. My database has 275 entries, of which 127 were active in the last six months. Please give me a heads-up when you're ready. - Mark

Now, I had originally proposed this as a bar bet, so I wasn't really anticipating going up against one of the few other individuals in the entire world who actively maintains a list of chess blogs. Therefore, this needs to be viewed as probably the sternest possible test of my proposition. I nevertheless gladly accept the challenge in the spirit of "if it's not hard, it's not worth doing."

As Mark points out, trust is key to this exercise. On my side, I will actually complete the exercise live on BCC Weblog. I will list new chess blog finds at the bottom of this post and include the elapsed time starting at 0 and going to 120 minutes. If you are so inclined, you can keep checking back in real time to make sure I don't add anything after the two hours have elapsed. For Mark's part, he publishes his chess blog database on the web for all to see. While it may not be perfectly up to date and while he may have come across other chess blogs which he didn't list for one reason or another, he will need a compelling explanation if he claims to have seen all the blogs I find yet not have them in his list. All that being said, I have every reason to believe that this exercise will be pursued on the up-and-up by both sides. I'm sure Mark agrees.

Mark added one more stipulation to the challenge:

P.S. I'll accept no more than one blog not written in English!

Now I'm not sure why we ought to be discriminating against non-English chess bloggers, but since I don't have any other takers I'll gladly accept his conditions. Should I come across more than one non-English blog I will list them below, but recognize that only one can count towards the quota of five.

What are the stakes? That's not been discussed, though after I win I'm sure Mark will come up with an appropriate prize. Am I feeling a bit cocky? I'm absolutely brimming with confidence that I will prevail. In fact, I'd be surprised if I even need to use the second hour (I sure hope I don't end up eating these words!).

Keep checking back; I'll be starting soon...

Starting now!

I wanna get better at chess! (3)

Hypermodernity Chess Blog (7)

Snodland Chess Club (9)

Chess Opening for Blitz!!! (11)

Diary of an Itinerant Chess Player (13)

That's five in thirteen minutes, but I'm going to keep on going in case Mark has seen any of these before.

Mida's chess corner (16)

Chess In Canada's Capital (17)

Abend's Chess Blog (18)

World Chess Championship Blog (19) - Actually Mark will know of this one since it is his. Apparently he started it last month.

Chess Apocalypse Now (23)

Dan's Correspondence Chess Blog (24)

CHESS COACH , ajedrez a la orden (26) - Spanish

Bangladesh Chess (27)

Eastern New York Chess Association (28)

Jerry Chess (29)

VICKI chess engine (33)

Zeb Fortman II Chess Blog (34)

Fischer Random Chess Email Club (36)

The Chess-ucation of Raths (38)

Chess Monographs (39)

FCPL Chess News (41)

Chess Tiger Chess Rimau - World Chess Entertainment (44)

Chess by Andy (46)

Texas Chess Association (47)

MagicMadness' Chess Blog (55)

Chessalicious (58)

OK, that's an hour. I'm calling it now with 60 minutes to spare. Mark, do I have at least five you haven't seen before? Let me know what I've won :)

How many chess blogs are there anyway?

I'd been meaning to get to this topic for quite awhile, but with all the caption contests, chess poems, USCL expansion news, Wamala updates, chess pie recipes and obscure references only marginally related to chess, who can find the time?

This story begins at the end of December on Susan Polgar's blog where she posted "The chess blogging boom." Susan wrote:

If you go to google and type "Chess Blog", about 2,130,000 items come up. If you type "Chess Blogs", about 1,760,000 items come up!

Those are of course staggering numbers, but just like the discussion of how many chess players there are in the world, rational thought and rigorous analysis can be brought to bear. So when one of Susan's anonymous commenters said, "I'm amazed that there are so many chess blogs", I thought it would be helpful to provide some clarity on the issue. I wrote:

Don't confuse the number of Google hits with the number of chess blogs. Many of the pages Google is listing probably don't even have the two words next to each other.

I would estimate that there are about 250-350 active chess blogs (where active = at least one post in the last 30 days).

Mr. Anonymous would have none of it:

"Don't confuse the number of Google hits with the number of chess blogs."

I believe Susan more than you.

It was all I could do to stop laughing. For this guy, Susan Polgar was the oracle of all truth and knowledge. It was posted on her blog so it must be true. To be fair, Mr. Anonymous would have no reason to know who I am, but had he done just a bit of research (e.g., checked my blogger profile and clicked over to this blog) he would have realized that I'm probably one of a very small handful of people on the entire planet who is in a good position to try and answer the question in the title of this post. Besides, anyone with a rudimentary understanding of search engines would realize that they are not a particularly useful tool for measuring things like the number of chess blogs. I posted a response to that effect:

"I believe Susan more than you."

Then I'm sorry to say that you would be wrong. As a test, go to say page 30 of the Google results for chess blogs and randomly click on one of the listings. Odds are it will not be a chess blog.

Thankfully, both Susan and another commenter came to my defense.

I didn't think much more about this encounter until Mark Weeks continued the discussion at Chess for All Ages:

A post titled The chess blogging boom ... caught my eye because it showed some typical confusion about counts on Google searches. A comment by DG ... corrected the misunderstanding and continued, 'I would estimate that there are about 250-350 active chess blogs...'

This number seemed high to me. I typically count about 75 blogs updated in the previous month plus another 40 active in the past six months. Since DG usually knows what he is talking about, I'll have to compare the BCC blogroll with my database of blogs.

It occurred to me that I needed to provide some explanation and the methodology behind my estimate. Here goes: While I maintain a database of all the blogs listed on BCC Weblog and continuously update their active/inactive status, I do not assume that I have a complete list of all chess blogs at any point in time. Why? Because new chess blogs are created everyday and on any given day if I want to find a few new ones I have several surefire ways of doing so. In fact, I could probably win a few bar bets with the following proposition, "In the next two hours, I bet I can find 5 chess blogs you've never seen before." Any takers?

OK, so if my database isn't complete then I need to estimate how much of the total universe of chess blogs it likely represents. I put boundaries on the problem -- it seems to me unlikely that there are 50% more chess blogs than I have in the database (i.e., I have found only about 2 of every 3), but reasonably possible that I'm short by 20% (i.e., I've found close to 4 of every five). One can certainly quibble with my estimates, but I think they are plausible.

Now at the time of Susan Polgar's original post I had ~ 220 active chess blogs listed. 220 + 20% = 264 and + 50% = 330, so that's how I came up with the 250-350 estimate I used in my comment.

Where do we stand today? I currently have 243 active chess blogs in the listings. Using the 20-50% methodology results in a current estimate of ~ 290-365.

Mark also suggested that another difference between his list and mine might be that he only tracks English language chess blogs. Certainly non-English blogs (and here I mean the language, not blogs written by people with good dental hygiene :) ) do constitute a sizable part of my database. Of the current 243 active chess blogs, 86 are not written in English while 157 are.

And lest you think we're finally done with this discussion, 10 days later Mark wrote a follow-up post on the topic which included the following:

How do I know when an inactive blog is reactivated? I don't. I trust that someone maintaining an active blog will post a welcome back message or refer to one of the newest posts in a dialog.

I have a solution for this problem. In Bloglines I keep a folder of RSS feeds for all the Inactive chess blogs. If they start up again, their posts pop up immediately. However, I wait until they've posted at least twice in 30 days before moving them back to Active status.

Anyone still awake?

The rest of the story

Like About Chess, I too have noticed a recent trend of defections from the chess blogosphere:

• Temposhlucker's decision to go on (permanent?) hiatus from the ranks of the Knights Errant is a monumental loss, perhaps second only to the day that Don Q did the same.


• Losing Goran at Chess News & Events was tempered by the fact that he continues to post at Chess Strategy. Since then, things have improved further with a new blogger taking over the reins of the original blog.


• Patrick at Chess For Blood has decided that he is "due for a break from chess and chess blogging for awhile" and the Underpromoted Knight has decided to make school a priority over chess.
  

Then there is the case of Strong In Mind's Fierabras. About Chess gave you the facts, but only here will you find the story behind the story (thanks to a tip from an unnamed Knight).

As many of you may be aware, J'adoube has been advocating the somewhat provocative position that endeavoring to play moves highly rated by top chess computers (specifically Rybka in his case) is a good path to improvement. This has resulted in some healthy and spirited debate across several posts. However, it seems that somewhere along the way Fierabras' and J'adoube's point counter-point turned heated, personal and anything but healthy. Shortly thereafter Fierabras announced his intent to leave the Knights. It isn't too hard to connect the dots.

Now, I'm certainly not here to point a finger of blame at anyone. You can read the thread and draw your own conclusions. In fact, I believe that a bit of controversy can often be a good thing in terms of generating interest and readership. Nevertheless, as a general rule it would be hard to go wrong taking to heart Sancho's previous "Can't we all just get along" appeal.

Update (3/7): Comment threads at J'adoube's blog are not currently no longer available.

More Knight Moves

As Blue Devil points out, change is constant among the Knights Errant. Some come, some go, some finish, some quit, some disappear, and some get hijacked. In particular, many of the foundational Knights' blogs are now inactive. Of what I generally think of as the original six -- Mandelamaza, Sancho Pawnza, Pale Morning Dun, Generalkaia, Pawn Sensei and J'adoube -- only three remain on the active list (including the General who was just added back after a long period of inactivity). We have not heard from either of the original founders -- The Man and Sancho -- in several months.

Here's a summary of recent changes among the Knights:

• Recently added to the inactive list: Mandelamaza
• Recently moved from inactive to active: Generalkaia
• New Knight: Underpromoted
• Recently hijacked: Grande Merda
  

Grandmaster Kidnapped!

In a virtual sense anyway...

GM Nigel Davies' blog GM Growl (gmgrowl.blogspot.com) has been hijacked.

A Resurrection?

Back in October Dennis Monokroussos declared his blog closed. Since then we've heard nothing ... until today! Check out four new posts on schedule changes for his ChessBase shows, Blogroll changes, new products, and the current state of the World Championship.

Is this just a last gasp or has The Chess Mind been revived? Dennis, care to enlighten us?

Arrivederci Amici Anziani

Some long-timers hit the inactive rolls this month:

From the sidebar - The Chess Mind (now a Classic), BlueEyedRook, ChessVault

Among the Knights Errant - Sancho Pawnza, CelticDeath, The Hungarian Knight

1% inspiration, 99% perspiration

Best of luck to Java Joe on his new project - Chess Castle of Minnesota Blog.

And now for something completely different

To be honest, now that my listings of chess blogs are hovering around 400, it is fairly uncommon that I come across one that is truly unique. I love a new chess improvement blog as much as the next guy but at this point I pretty much know how the story is going to go. Therefore, I was quite interested to come across a chess blog which really is something different. Semyon Gelfer has posted his Chess Stamps and Envelopes Collection which includes the autographs of Lasker, Capablanca, Euwe, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal and several others.
*****
I've added about twenty chess blogs to the listings over the past few days. Fans of The 64 Square Jungle may want to check out Scholastic Chess Gateway written by ChessCafe Scholastic Columnist Steve Goldberg. There is also a new training blog from Down Under (Improve Your Chess!), yet another blog from a member of our neighbor the Metrowest Chess Club (Strong Among the Weak), and of course, several new chess improvement blogs.

Francophiles will notice eight new listings in the French chess blogs category including one who looks to be trying to capitalize on Dennis Monokroussos' departure from the 'sphere. Hopefully this will compensate to some extent for the large number of non-English chess blogs that were recently moved to the Inactive listings, including former sidebar residents Duveltje's Schaakweb, Der Schachneurotiker, and Sjakkforum (although now that I'm thinking about it, there really is no reason to believe that readers of Dutch, German or Norwegian chess blogs have any particular interest in French ones).
*****
I came across a blog I was hoping I would get to list but unfortunately it's not about chess. Nevertheless, it does have a good title -- The Coffee & Chess Guy.