Web Watch

2 June 2003

One of my favourite site is Chess Café, which always has interesting chess stuff. Today I found there that 1st of June was a birthday for not few than four Grandmasters - Leonid Shamkovich (1923), Mihai Suba (1947), Nigel Short (1965) and Georgy Timoshenko (1966). This gave me an idea to show tactical positions from their games in our today quiz. GM Timoshenko (Ukraine) should not be confused with former second of Kasparov GM Timoschenko, who now resides in Slovakia. By the way, I think it was Nigel Short who gave me that 'Who is the first Irish GM?'  puzzle. Anyway, a new feature on the Chess Café website is a column by Mig (Michael Greengard), who talks on how best use Chess Base and Fritz. One of most entertaining chess writers on the Internet is undoubtedly Tim Krabbe. He keeps Open Chess Diary on his Chess Curiosities website. The latest entry (of May 30) is called 'Chess and Go' - well-worth a visit! On the Chess Base website you can read more about Tim himself, who recently turned 60. Chess FM website is certainly the most interesting of the chess sites which appeared recently. One of its regular features is Chess & Books talk show with Fred Wilson, who also has his own website. Fred's next guest on Tuesday June 3^rd. will be Dr. Frank Brady, who was the first editor of Chess Life magazine, and the creator, editor and publisher of the highly-regarded and much sought-after brief-lived ChessWorld magazine. He is also, famously, the author of "Profile of a Prodigy", a biography of Bobby Fischer. Tune-in to the live broadcast Tuesday at 9:00pm ET and replays on Tue. at 11:00pm ET and Wed. at 12:00pm ET.

Another site, which started recently (January 2003), is Correspondence Chess Server (CFC). It is a commercial project - the server offers prize tournaments and other services to its members, as well as discount in certain online chess shops.

CFC championship with start on the 1st of July - with 30,000 euro for first prize! Several FIDE-GMs, for example Lutz, Volkov, Fridman, Zarnicki, Tyomkin, etc, play at CFC. The server also started a shop with annotated CC games, opening surveys, ebooks where the material is offered online, paid online, downloaded at the server and the author gets instant payment on his CFC account (money could be transferred then to normal bank accounts) - check it out!