Web Watch

13 September 2003

by GM Alex Baburin

There are so many chess-related websites now that it's simply impossible to keep track of what's going on there. But fortunately there are people who send us interesting links and I would like to thank in particular our reader Luiz Roberto Da Costa for sending me lots of them!

We recently published Chess & Tennis article in Chess Today. There the game Becker-Kasparov was mentioned. Not exactly a masterpiece by Boris, as you can see it online. Talking further about tennis and chess, one should read the story of ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) — I hope that the newly formed ACP will be that successful!

Well-known chess author IM Jeremy Silman has his site at the new address - www.jeremysilman.com. There you can read book reviews and interviews, get chess instruction, learn about films or take a spiritual journey - Jeremy is clearly a man of many talents!

Chess Café always has plenty of interesting material. Today I would like to draw your attention to two articles: Dvoretsky on the Em. Lasker ñ Ed. Lasker game (New York 1924) ñ some very interesting, though necessarily heavy analysis there - and this is still just part 1! Then you have an interview with Denis Yevseev, who must be one of the highest rated IMs in the world, with 2589 FIDE rating. And I suspect that reading Chess Today contributed to his success! (

Some people might have heard that Pope John Paul II composed a few chess problems. However, according to the article by Tomasz LissowskiÝit's all a hoax!

Lars Balzer offers more than 2000 MB of compressed chess data (game databases) on 3 CDs from his site!

The Chess Base website has the story on the French Grand Prix de Sénat TV Mag rapid tournament, where 16-year old Marie Sebag made it to the final!

If you want to see chess featured on paintings, stamps and cards, search no more! We know a site, which even has chess on the phone cards! We hear you saying that you (unlike Karpov!) aren't interested in stamps or phone cards ñ it's money you are after! Well, we still have something for you then! ( This site shows coins, celebrating the Bled 2002 Olympiad. Some might also know that Paul Keres is (or at least used to be!) on Estonian banknotes (5 krona). Can get Estonian money or want bigger piece of paper? Then try Chess Poster website!

If you read Russian, you might check out another view on why the Ponomariov-Kasparov match was called off. The author (Oleg Tikhonov) believes that this is all down to Karpov's influence! ( OK, crafty Anatoly persuaded Ruslan to come up with a few (innocent) amendments, but how did he manage that Kirsan did not accept them?!

Chess Today got some good words from IM John Watson in his recent TWIC Book Review.