Chess Links, Chess History

A few weeks ago, in My Name in Bytes, I re-discovered Chess-links.org, 'Top chess websites sorted by popularity (rating by alexa.com)'.

There I am at no.91, mark-weeks.com, sandwiched between book publisher everymanchess.com and long defunct whychess.ru. [...] My real interest in the list is centered on the top-10 sites.

Another interest was the categorization of the sites. My site has little icons categorizing it under

• 'History' (presumably for the World Championship pages),
• 'Statistics' (for some old pages that I haven't looked at in 15 years), and
• 'Learn Chess' (for 'Chess for All Ages' Instruction).

Unfortunately, there is no related functionality to return all sites under 'History' or all under 'Statistics'. I decided to make a little tool to do this myself, based on the site's Top-500 list (which has 600 sites). Here, for example, is a summary of the list's sites that are categorized as 'History'.

• uschess.org
• chesshere.com
• thechessworld.com
• ecforum.org.uk
• mark-weeks.com
• digitalgametechnology.com (DGT)
• chesshistory.com
• chess-poster.com
• kenilworthian.blogspot.com
• monroi.com
• olimpbase.org
• rybkachess.com
• marshallchessclub.org
• chessdryad.com
• britishchessmagazine.co.uk
• idahochessassociation.org
• chessmail.com
• shulmanchess.com
• newsaboutchess.com
• blindfoldchess.net
• colorado-chess.com

That's definitely a mixed bag. There are a few sites that are unquestionably about chess history (e.g. chesshistory.com and olimpbase.org), a few that return to the subject frequently (ecforum.org.uk and rybkachess.com), and a few head scratchers (chesshere.com and thechessworld.com).

After looking at the Top-500 list for a few hours, I have the impression that it is maintained somewhat haphazardly. Many of the blogs on the site are no longer active (like kenilworthian.blogspot.com above). Perhaps the 'head scratchers' include descriptions from an earlier incarnation of the domain name.