Web Watch

1 June 2003

Weekends are perfect for surfing the Web, which has much to offer to a chess fan. Today I would like to share with our readers a few useful leads. The Art of Chess Exhibition In CT-934 we published press release about forthcoming exhibition match between GM Sergei Karjakin and David Howell (London, 28 June). The match will mark the opening of the exhibition called the Art of Chess at the Gilbert Collection. Alone with the press-release, Chess Today received a lot of additional information about the exhibition. As it is not possible to publish all of that here, I recommend you to visit its website, where you can find interesting and well illustrated story about history of chess sets. I would like to quote from the site: "From my close contact with artists and chess players I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists." - Marcel Duchamp One website which is getting better and better is ChessBase.com, which has a lot of frequently updated content. Here are some of the latest stories: 'Ratmir Kholmov, the 'Central Defender', 'Move over Judit, here comes Kateryna! ' and 'Chess for psychopaths'. The site also has a story on the future documentary on Kasparov vs. Deep Blue. A new interesting interview with Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan appeared on the website of IM Jeremy Silman. The Mechanics' Institute Chess Club in San Francisco has an interesting website. There you can find newsletter by IM Donaldson and several games annotated by GM Yermolinsky, including recent exhibition game Yermolinsky-Shulman. I like the MI Chess Club a lot and played there several times. It is probably the oldest existing chess club in the USA, with rich chess history. IM Donaldson recently wrote the following in one of MI newsletters: "The staff of the Mechanics' Institute recently completed the first of a two volume series on the history of the Mechanics' Institute Chess Room. The fruits of their research are available on a CD which includes almost 90 pages of text, approximately 10 photos from the MI archives and over 150 games in ChessBase format. Visits of Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine and Euwe, are among the highlights. The price of the CD is $10 + $1 for shipping. To order, send a check payable to the Mechanics' Institute for $11 to:
Mechanics' Institute, Room 408, 57 Post Street, San Francisco, CA, 94104." I guess this offer is valid for US residents only. Finally, I was glad to find that our paper got a pretty positive review at the Seagaard Chess Reviews website.