June Chess Life

Received the June issue of Chess Life (CL) today. This is the first issue with the redesigned look. I have seen the articles and the new design so many times on the USCF's site www.uschess.org, that there wasn't much new. The design is a welcome change, although I miss the columns by Evans and Byrne.

Of the features specific to the CL print version, the diagrams of chess positions have suffered. The standard size diagrams need a border, while the puzzles have insufficient contrast between the light and dark squares. The magazine desperately needs color. Only the four cover pages use full color, while the blue used throughout the articles quickly becomes monotonous.

I counted four full page ads for the USCF. Why weren't these used for the Evans and Byrne columns? I understand that they had already been paid before the magazine went to press. Included with the 80-page magazine was a 48-page catalog which I quickly detached and tossed aside.

Overall grade: B+.

***

A full page ad for...

darrencallahan.com
http://www.darrencallahan.com/

...caught my eye, as it was certainly intended to do. On the site's news page I found: '05/18/2006 "DOCUMENTIA" PRINT AD! Don't ask how this came to happen, but national chess magazine Chess Life is running a full-page advertisement for "Documentia" in their upcoming May / June 2006 issue.'

Since I've never looked at the sites mentioned in the classified ads, I decided to look at the June issue's ads. Here are the sites in order of appearance...

Tri-State Chess
http://www.tristatechess.com/

Castle Long Publications (chess960)
http://www.castlelong.com/

Chess on DVD (formerly ChessVideo.com)
http://www.chessondvd.com/

The URL www.store.ebay.com/toby-chess returned an error message: 'Sorry, no information is available for the URL'. Not very clever, is it? After a few minutes work, I discovered out that the address should be:-

eBay Stores > Toby Chess
http://stores.ebay.com/Toby-Chess

House of Staunton
http://www.houseofstaunton.com/

Italian Gambit System by Jude Acers
http://www.italiangambit.com/

Chess Thinker
http://www.chessthinker.com/

www.wtharvey.com
http://www.wtharvey.com/

A.G. Pader
http://agpaderart.com/