Chess24.com
My previous post, The Start of the Scholastic Boom, reminded me of a topic that has been on my todo list for several months already: take a closer look at Chess24.com. Like most chess news addicts, I'm constantly on the prowl for new sources and this site has been on my radar since I bookmarked Carlsen: "Kramnik's play was too emotional" during the Candidates Tournament in March.
Why put it off for so long? Every time I visited the site -- usually in a hurry to do something else -- I was greeted with a signup screen and nothing called 'News'. In fact, it's under the link called 'Read', but even that page, Chess news from chess24, is not as straightforward as a person in a hurry would like. It turns out that you don't need to sign up to read the Chess24 news (although I did) and I added the link to the list of news sites I visit at least once a week.
The connection between my post on 'Scholastic Boom' and the home page Welcome to chess24.com! is Macauley Peterson. Next to his occasional comment on this blog that always goes straight to the core of an issue, I've mentioned his work in posts like Q: Who Makes the Best Chess News Videos?, FEB in May, and Preparing Today's Live Stream. Macauley was the CJA's 'Chess Journalist of the Year' in 2008, and on his Twitter account @Macauley64, now lists his occupation as 'Content Director for chess24, at Cisha GmbH in Hamburg, Germany'.
Again going back to March this year, thechessdrum.net announced Chess24.com launches Olympiad website!. If you go to www.tromso2014.com, you'll see that it resolves to a chess24.com address that tells us, '01.08 - 14.08.2014; The world's fourth largest sporting event'.
Joining Macauley in creating content on the site is Colin McGourty, author of, for example, an article titled Karpov prepares for Fischer. If you're familiar with his work, you might know that he was also known as 'mishanp', first on chessninja.com, later on his own site chessintranslation.com. This was followed by a stint on whychess.com. His specialty is translating Russian language material.
Chess web sites come and go. The Olympiad next month will likely be a make-or-break event for young chess24.com. A few years ago, whychess.com was an equally promising site. Now it is a phantom site endlessly repeating the latest news for the 2013 World Cup, also held in Tromso, nearly a year ago. Yes, chess24.com also offers online play, but so does chess.com, not to mention a host of smaller, well-respected play sites. I'll be following the new site regularly, both on its news page and on its social media offshoots:-
Here's wishing the entire team a successful and enduring run.
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