Tips and Tricks

Make that A Tip and a Trick, each from two of my favorite web sites. First, here's a tip about Chess.com, where there is a lot of great content that is available whether you're a member (it's free) or not. The page Chess.com Daily Columns points to the latest columns, instructional or otherwise, by Chess.com's pool of well known GMs and IMs. The newest columnist to join the team is IM Jeremy Silman, who took over the Q&A niche where Your Questions Answered By Andrew Martin (last column: no.16) left off.

As for the trick, Chessgames.com User Profile, a forum maintained by Chessgames.com admins, recently announced a new method of linking to its games.

Here's a small feature which won't mean much for most users, but it may help some webmasters and book authors who want to link to games at Chessgames.com as concisely as possible. We call the feature "shortcut URLs". From now on, if you type a 7-digit chess number code immediately after chessgames.com/ you will go straight to that game.

For example, game #1008361 is Bobby Fischer's famous Game of the Century (D Byrne vs Fischer, 1956). Previously to link to this game you would need to go here:

      www.chessgames.com/perl
            /chessgame?gid=1008361

But now, with shortcut URLs, you can write this:

      www.chessgames.com/1008361

Once you click on the shortcut URL you will be instantly redirected to the longer version. The main purpose of this feature is to encourage printing URLs to our games in printed media. We want the web addresses as short as possible in cases where people are expected to type the link in by hand.

You may also find it helpful to use shortcut URLs in private email correspondence, as some mail clients are notorious for screwing up long URLs.

Try it by entering www.chessgames.com/1008361 into your browser address bar. Works nice! Since I often link to Chessgames.com when I discuss a historical game, I'll be using the feature myself.