Odds and Ends

Now that we're heading into the Christmas season, you know what that means: less time for blogging. When time is limited, a good starting point is routine maintenance, which in my case means first updating 'Events on the Agenda' on the sidebar.

While doing that I came across a list of Women's Grand Prix events tacked onto the end of FIDE's announcement Women's Grand Prix in Nalchik, 25 Apr - 8 May 2010. That particular event came and went long ago, but the last event on the list hasn't -- 'The 6th Grand Prix will take place in Santiago, Chile, on 27th October – 9th November 2010.' -- and I have no record of any further announcements on the subject. The FIDE Calendar 2010 still lists the original dates and venue. As for the FIDE Calendar 2011, it lists four events in a forthcoming 'Women's FIDE Grand Prix Series'.

If you're wondering what FIDE's long term plans are for the World Championship, the same 2011 calendar lists 'World Cup 2011; Khanty Mansiysk, Russia'. This would be the first event in the next cycle of which the format is currently unknown. If wishes were fishes, I would ask that the 2011 World Cup be followed by a series of Candidate matches, with those followed by a real World Championship match. That would bring us back to the sort of cycle we had before Ilyumzhinov eliminated the Interzonals and started tinkering with World Championship knockouts.

After updating 'Events' I added a new ad to a January 2010 post on Chess Ads - Paul Masson. I managed to overlook it while writing the original post and this makes me wonder if I haven't overlooked others. The series of George Koltanowski solving tourneys was a high point for chess sponsorship in the U.S.

Later in 2010, after writing a post on '50 Great Blogs', I received word of a similar list called 'Top Computer Chess Blogs'. Most of them have nothing to do with computer chess and more than a handful wouldn't be consider 'top blogs' by any objective source, but they're still worth looking at.

Finally, I made a small addition involving Brad Darrach and Edward Winter to my most recent post, The Bobby Fischer Saga (cont.). It's a link to an atypical article by Winter, full of his usual venom but lacking in the detailed dissection for which he is so highly regarded. I liked Darrach's book when I read it a few years ago, although I was more impressed by the prose than by the content. It looks like I should reread it and pay more attention to the content.