Early Web Chess History and Graphics

It's all very nice and all, knowing how to discover sites about Early Chess on the Web, but what real value does it have? One good example is from my page on C17: Zonal Qualifiers 1995-1997, where I managed to locate a copy of the 'Regulations for the 1997/8 World Championship', which in turn let me determine how the different participants qualifed for the event.

With creative use of Archive.org's asterisk ('*') feature, it's easy to find related pages on the same domain. For example, GM Ian Rogers' report on Events of Day 1 / Round 1 starts,

The first day of FIDE's new World Championship in Groningen saw most of the top seeds struggling to show their superiority, with the spectators treated to a full quotient of hard-fought, high-level games.

Another good example is just browsing the many early web sites that have long since disappeared. Like many people, I'm particularly interested in images related to chess. In an early incarnation of Archive.org, most images on an archived page weren't displayed, but this has long since been remedied.

I found ('rediscovered') an early version of the Diaz Cartoons, which are now featured on Chessvibes.com. Another page which I hadn't seen before is La galerie des dessins et caricatures de Eric Petit

These low resolution drawings and cartoons are free for use on the web. (Mention the author Eric Petit. A link to this gallery would be appreciated.)

Thanks, Eric. Will do!

SportsVerlag designs No.4

I was particularly happy to rediscover Alan Cowderoy's Chess Graphics 'a collection devoted to all aspects of chess graphics', a wonderful site on its own for browsing. If the image in the upper right corner looks familiar, I chose it as the logo for my site on the World Chess Championship back in 1997. For more about the early days of chess on the web, see my page on The Rise of Internet Chess.