Welcome to BCC Weblog Customer Support

BCF member Mike Henroid is looking for some assistance from the weblog readership:

Can you put up a post asking where the best place is to play free on-line chess against a computer? I am trying to find a good site for a 75 year-old super beginner who doesn't want to play against humans of any level.

Apparently FICS was a bit overwhelming for him. I think he probably also needs something a LOT less accurate than Crafty or Fritz.

Any suggestions?

Chess on ice, for real

What is the next big event in Turin, Italy now that the Winter Olympics are history? The Chess Olympiad.

The 2006 Winter Olympic Games blog notes that the Olympiad matches will be taking place in the same venue that hosted the speedskating competition.

Protect the Children

From the New York Times:

CROSS-GENERATION CHESS, Sunday at 9 a.m., with free matches between mature and young players and music by the cellist Frederick Zlotkin, at the Marshall Chess Club, 23 West 10th Street, Greenwich Village. Registration: (917) 822-3141.

What do you think the chances are that this event was sponsored by NMBCA (The National Man Boy Chess Association)?

A novel use for chess clocks

From the Newark Star Ledger:

Legal strategy is often compared to a game of chess. But in a state court in Atlantic City next month, the comparison will take on new meaning.

In a bid to limit New Jersey's next Vioxx trial to just three weeks, Superior Court Judge Carol Higbee will use a pair of chess clocks to closely track the amount of time each side has to make its case. And neither side will have lots of time to declare checkmate.

Lawyers representing two men who claim Merck's Vioxx painkiller caused their heart attacks will have a total of 40 hours, not counting opening and closing arguments. Lawyers for the Whitehouse Station-based drugmaker will have 35 hours.

So donate your old chess clocks to a local court and help speed up the hands of justice. Of course, they won't need as many as they think as soon as they learn that a single chess clock per courtroom is all that is required, not a pair.

Growing Again

For the past few months, most of the action on the Knights Errant list has involved blogs going into hiatus. Therefore, it was a pleasant surprise today to find a new blogger looking to the join the group (to be technical, King of the Spill seems to have been the first to find him). Please welcome Blunder Prone, the self-named Troubled Knight.

And while we are on the topic of additions, the active listings have continued to grow. Take a click over and you'll find several additional French chess blogs, another Japanese listing, blogs written in Estonian and Tamil, and even a few chess blogs I can actually read like The Sage In The Tower, The Kings Pawn, and Rocky Rook.

Update: You can now find Rocky Rook on the sidebar -- give a link, get a link.

And Easter is more than a month away

Our second resurrection in as many days -- Andis Kaulins started the Magnifichess blog on May 29, 2004 but stopped after 11 days and 17 posts. Nevertheless, he has been mentioned at least once as an early pioneer in this medium. Today, more than 20 months later, he published his 18th post.

Is he back for good? Who knows? In any case, Magnifichess has earned itself at least thirty days on the active listings.

Don Q returns!

There's a new post on Mandelamaza and while it's not likely to be the start of a trend, any musings from the inaugural Knight Errant are worthy of our attention. Don informs us that he has restructured his sidebar "to make [the site] more of a permanent/static record than a blog." I did something similar when I indexed 2004 Boylston Chess Club Championship.

For those of you who haven't taken the time to read the Mandelamaza archives, this new sidebar will greatly ease your task by taking you directly to the most relevant posts. In particular, I would encourage you to read the items listed under "General Silliness" which include some of the funniest stuff ever written in the Chess blogosphere.

Welcome back Don, if only for a moment.

You can always move somewhere else

I'm guessing girlinlove16 is from Ontario, Canada but you never know.

hamilton is idiotic....

you know ur from hamilton when... drug testing the chess players is a great decision [but] drug testing the ghetto-gangsters isn't.

What's your favorite chess piece?

Jessica makes the case for the trusty steed:

I like the Knight. It has the best move -- a surprising "L" that one often takes for granted, even forgets. And the elegant neck of the piece; it's most aesthetically pleasing with marble, I'm sure. Very noble, and what masculine should be.

Want to be a mobile online chess mogul?

Now you can...

[The] latest online gambling websites to be offered on ... E Bay are a mobile multiplayer poker platform and and a mobile multiplayer chess game called ChessEverywhere.

... the successful bidder gets all source code to the cell phone clients and Java server, as well as domain names and the ASP.Net Web sites that support wireless delivery of the products....

The base platform also supports chess in both standalone and multiplayer formats. A Telnet-based interface for connection to Internet Chess Services provides a mobile-to-desktop option.

Language limited blogger needs your help

Does anyone know what language this blog is written in?

Update (12:40pm) - That worked so well that I'm inclined to try a couple of more:

1. I am fairly certain that this blog is written in Indian -- anyone have a different opinion?


2. This one has been listed under Catalan for quite some time, but I've never been sure that was correct. All I know is that it doesn't translate using a Spanish to English translator. Anyone know the truth?

A suggestion for getting chess into the Olympics

Chess is like curling on a board.

Preserving History

en passant Schachblog posted a picture of the chess scene outside the Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square circa 1998. Any chance that is a young Noah Pang challenging Murray? Recognize anyone else in the picture?

Thursday Night Controversy - Revisited

Last night the Board of Directors of The Boylston Chess Foundation took up the issue of re-entries raised in my earlier post "Thursday Night Controversy."

A motion was passed to the effect that since, in the view of the Board, the USCF rules on re-entries are intended to apply only to events with more than one schedule, re-entries would only be allowed at club events with multiple schedules. Since the club does not currently run any multiple schedule events, this effectively eliminates re-entries at all BCF tournaments.

In a related decision, the Board opted to make no restrictions on late entries. Though they did opt to give tournament directors the discretion to limit the number of 1/2-point byes given to a late entrant if the TD believed the late entrant would otherwise have an adverse impact on the competition and/or pairings (the specific example discussed involved a player opting to enter the last round of a four round event and requesting three 1/2-point byes).

Copies of the original post and related comments were shared with the Board members prior to the discussion, making this the first time that the blog and its readers have played an integral role in the policy deliberations of the Foundation.

Chess and the Church

Maybe this explains why many believe that the games attributed to Pope John Paul II are fabrications:

"The Pope can never play chess. If he did and lost the whole of the Catholic Church would vanish in a poof of logic." - nut_meg's friend Spike

Introductory Chess Course For Adults

Three-time Boylston Chess Club Champion and current webmaster NM Alex Cherniack will be teaching a six-lesson course for adults who do not know the rules of the game. Sessions will be held at the club Wednesday evenings 7:00-8:30pm from March 8th through April 12th. The price can't be beat!

Click here for more details.

NM Cherniack (right) prepares to take on GM Christiansen
at the 2006 BCC Herb Healy Open

Photo: Steve Stepak

Not the old Soviet training model

If this is going to be our approach to training girls in chess, then I suspect we might create more female adult players but probably not too many grandmasters and champions.

The All-Girls Chess Tournament is not run like a standard U.S. Chess Federation challenge, with timers and rankings and complicated rules, said Sharon Buttram, chess club moderator at Daniels Run. The format, where the girls play three games each and all receive medals at the tournament's end, emphasizes having fun over winning at all costs, said Buttram.

"It's a silly game boys play, saying, 'Oh, I'm going to beat you,'" said Oak View chess club moderator Roshna Kapadia. Girls respond better to appreciation of the game rather than pure competition, she said.

Read "Chess Queens at Daniels Run" from the Fairfax (VA) Connection.

Caption Contest VI

I've got to go so bad!

Post your caption in the comments.

Source

The burden of history

Australians are still coping with the modern-day effects of being founded by criminal elements:

During the recent spate of vandalism and unruly behaviour around Alstonville, seven chess pieces were stolen from the Summerland House With No Steps' giant chess set.

Read "Chess set theft" from The Northern Rivers Echo.

Chess, girls, study, beer

I suppose it might be a tough choice for some, but when I was in college, chess was the first thing I gave up. For those who didn't, the USCF has reestablished the College Chess League. Thirty-one teams from 18 schools kicked off competitive matches this month on the ICC.

Looking for a local rooting interest? At the moment, the best we can do is cheer for the Huskies of the University of Connecticut. Hey, Mr. College Chess in Boston (aka Bob Oresick), what's up with that?