Rob Kruszynski
The Internet is an amazing resource, but do you know that it has truly revolutionised chess? Once you have downloaded ChessBase Lite with its 30,000+ game database, what else can the Web offer you? Here are my SEVEN ESSENTIAL FIVE-STAR WEBSITES - meaning at least one visit every week for an addict like me! :
TWIC (The Week in Chess)Published once a week by the indefatigable Mark Crowther. An excellent source of international news and top-level games. About 1000 games in three formats (pgn and two chessbase formats) can be downloaded every week, as well as results cross-tables in text format. For many top players this one site provides 90% of their regular web chess needs. Accessed via the London Chess Centre site which also has reviews of just-published chess books and software and sends out the free e-zine, Chess Express .
About 50 US$ to subscribe per year - half that for full-time students. The biggest chess club in the world, now with well over 20,000 members! You can play bullet, blitz, or slowplay, take part in tournaments, watch games in progress (these have been live from tournaments e.g. Linares, or matches e.g. Kasparov v. Deep_Fritz) or simply chat on any one of the 50+ channels. A wealth of features, including a library of over a million games (organised by player and by ECO code) that have been played between club members above Elo 2300 in the ICC rating system. Warning: very addictive.
It is not hard to see why this is an award winning site! It is well organised and easy on the eye. Excellent monthly contributions spanning almost every area of chess from each of fifteen columnists incl. Tim Harding, Hans Ree, Yasser Sierawan, Susan Polgar, Mark Dvoretsky, Karsten Muller and Gary Lane. Nigel Davies has just joined as a contributer. Very good bulletin board, endgame and book-review sections. The archive section is a goldmine and includes downloads of excellent articles by past contributors. It is free - but for how much longer ?
This site has grown seven times faster than predicted - despite there being a subcription fee. Material (annotated games) is added weekly which is in relation to opening developments, with almost all openings covered. Thirteen specialists have divided these up amongst themselves : GM John Emms covers the Nimzo and Benoni, GM Joe Gallagher the King's Indian, GM Aaron Summerscale 1.d4 specials (Veresov, Tromp. etc), GM Gary Lane the Anti-Sicilians, GM Nigel Davies symmetrical King pawn openings, GM Tony Kosten the English, Reti, and so on. New download features just added so that any of the 8,000 plus annotated CP games can be downloaded via their ECO codes. A discussion group (Forum) group within CP started a few months ago and now has 216 members who together have made over 600 contributions. There are a few of mine there and onr is in relation to this little known line in the Alekhine : 1.e4 Nf6 2. e5 Nd5 3. c4 Nb6 4. a4!? d6 5. a5 Nd7 6. e6 !?
Demonstrates the true power of the internet. I find myself using this site more and more! You can interrogate its 2,000,000+ game database, and download up to 50 games at a time in pgn format. You can set up a position and get results statistics (%W,%=, %B) for any position that occurs in the database.
The colourful and well-organised home of ChessBase and Fritz, with downloadable ChessBase Lite, patches and updates. Also news for the broad range of ChessBase products. Up-to-date hot news/gossip section. Very useful database facility (ChessLive) which can reveal additional games to those downloadable via ChessLab.
Well, sometimes you just have to know if there's an article available on the Web about the "The Portuguese Opening" or perhaps a refutation for some line in "The Barry Attack". Or has someone commented recently in some newsgroup about "The Elephant Gambit"? Google - best used in its advanced form - can tell you.
Happy surfing!
Rob Kruszynski