Displaying a chess board

For a week I've been blabbering on about this, that, and the other thing. It's time for some real chess.

It's almost impossible to discuss chess without using a chess board. Given no other option, I could just use a FEN string to represent the board, but the web is a visual medium. It's better to show a diagram when discussing a chess position. To do this I'll have to address a few minor technical issues:-

• Choosing an image format - I'm going to start with the same format I use on About Chess and its related Forum: copy/paste from ChessBase Lite to Paint Shop Pro 3. Fellow cheapskates might recognize the thread uniting those two choices of software. There are certainly classier methods of displaying a chess board, but I don't want to tackle too much on this first attempt. I can always review the decision later. As for file format, line art displays well in GIF format.
  
  
• Hosting the image - I see that blogger.com (the tools side of blogspot.com) has an image hosting service. Once again, I don't want to make this first image effort more complicated than it has to be. I'll use the same technique that I use on the About Chess Forum and host the image on my own mark-weeks.com domain.
  
  
• Writing a post in HTML - This should be a no-brainer, but since computer technology has a knack of biting you when you least expect it, I won't try anything fancy.

Here's the first effort...

...It appears to have worked! Writing in HTML was incredibly clumsy. I usually prepare my work offline and then paste the HTML into whatever tool I'm forced to work with. In this case the blogger.com software insisted on changing my HTML to suit its own purposes. I'll need to become more familiar with it to avoid wasting time. All in all, I'm pleased with the first result.

In tomorrow's post I'll explain why I chose that position.

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A few minutes later...

I see on the published page that something has added a thin line around the image. When I look at the HTML source in compose mode, I don't see a BORDER attribute on the IMG tag. The only odd thing I see, other than rearranging the order of my IMG attributes, is a stray slash before the closing greater-than character. I'm not familiar with that and will have to investigate. While composing the post, the image displays without the thin line. Strange; not really WYSIWYG, is it. I'll look at the source for the published page when I have a moment.

Olympiad tickets

By a happy coincidence, my travel plans were such that for a few days I would not be far from Turin while the Olympiad was being played there. How could any chess fan pass up a once in a lifetime chance to visit the greatest chess show on earth?

The official site...

37e Olimpiadi degli Scacchi : Torino 2006
http://www.chessolympiad-torino2006.org/eng/index.php

...had instructions for buying tickets to enter the playing area...

'Silver Ticket : 5.00 euro - availability: 1500 tickets per day; With this ticket you can access the trade fair area, the technical area for live comment on some of the top games of the day, and the galleries and walkways around the Parterre, the playing area.

'Golden Ticket : 20.00 euro - availability: max 300 per day; In addition to the possibilities given by the Silver ticket, this ticket gives direct access to the Parterre to follow the games from close up.'

...That sounded great and I decided to buy two Golden Tickets, one for me and one for a friend, also a chess fan, who would be traveling with me. I sent an email inquiry to the designated agent ('Blubs viaggi'), waited a week without response, and then sent a follow-up. This time I received a response after a few working days. Along with a form for ordering tickets ('Step 1'), the response mentioned the following payment instructions.

'Step 2 - Payment; The payment can be made in one of two solutions:
'a. CREDIT CARD : To pay with a credit card we need absolutely by fax:
1) Authorization to debit the card the entire amount of the tickets, credit card issuer and number, and the expiration date.
2) The signature from the owner of the credit card.
3) A photocopy of the credit card (front and back)
4) A photocopy of two different identifications (for example: drivers license and passport)
N.B.: For the payment with credit card we charge 2,5% commission of the entire amount. (because when you pay through card we have additional cost).

'b. SWIFT BANKING : To pay with Swift, a copy of the bank statement by fax with the following explanation: "payment tickets for Chess Olympiad", and your name.'

I discussed the credit card conditions with my friend and we agreed that the requested documents were more appropriate for buying a luxury item than for buying two tickets to a sporting / cultural event. In this era of rampant identity theft, no prudent person would send all of those documents to a complete stranger. I also inquired into the cost of a Swift bank transfer and determined that it would add at least 50% to the cost of the tickets.

I then sent off a third email to Blubs viaggi suggesting either a cheaper form of European bank transfer, a postal money order, or direct electronic payment via another friend who lives in Italy. That email was never answered. My friend and I decided that we would let the opportunity pass. Reserving hotel rooms for four in Turin (our wives would be joining us on the trip) was not attractive if there was no guarantee of visiting the Olympiad.

I am really curious why the payment conditions were so onerous. It would have been a wonderful chance to visit a unique chess event.

A note about blogrolls

Just like you have to send mail to get mail, you have to give links to get links. If outgoing links breed incoming links, why don't I link to other blogs? The answer is that I do, but not here. I don't have the time to maintain them here.

I currently have around 750 external sites listed on About Chess. Along with hierarchical navigation under 'Topics' in the left column of each page, I maintain an alphabetical list of all categories...

About Chess Site Map : A to Z List of All Resource Categories
http://chess.about.com/library/ble90ndx.htm

...I add at least 1-2 sites per week to those categories. To keep track of which sites I've linked and where they are in my hierarchy, I maintain a database of sites. Along with the 750 sites that I link, I have another 1250 that I don't link. Many of these are sites that no longer exist, but many others are sites that I've chosen not to link, always for a good reason.

On top of this I have an off-database list of sites that I haven't decided to link or not. I review this list from time to time to see if a site merits a decision. Many of these are new sites where I want to see if they have staying power. People will send me any number of messages demanding that I list their site, but no one ever sends a message when a site disappears. I've observed that new sites have a higher mortality rate than old sites.

I should also mention that I don't particularly enjoy maintaining links to external sites. It's a time consuming job that few people appreciate. About.com is decreasing its emphasis on these links and doesn't require that I link to all chess sites on the Web. They ask only that I link to sites that complement my own articles. As a public service, as well as for my own benefit in keeping track of interesting chess sites, I do more than this.

My personal database of chess sites includes a separate table for chess blogs. This table is the source for the occasional article that I do on blogs. I publish my list of blogs via links from this page...

Chess Blogs
http://chess.about.com/od/chessblogs/index.htm

...where I encourage visitors to inform me of any blogs that I might have overlooked. Several times a year I visit all of the active blogs listed in my table and note the date of each blog's most recent post. This determines the active blogs for the next cycle of visits.

Finally, there are several blogs that do a good job of keeping track of other blogs. Instead of maintaining my own list here on 'Chess for All Ages', I prefer to link to the experts. Since I also consult those experts to maintain my private database, I should find out if they stop keeping their list up to date.

The bottom line is that you shouldn't be upset if your blog is not listed here. The chances are very good that I have already visited it many times!

The other M.Weeks

There is another M.Weeks in the chess world....

Manuel William Weeks
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=12055

...People sometimes point to something about him and ask me if it's me. My answer is always, 'No, it's not me, it's the other M.Weeks'. I suppose he gets the same questions from people pointing to something about me.

For the record, my full name is Mark Alan Weeks. A few of my tournament games have also found their way into the mega databases. I'm not particularly proud of them and I won't say which ones they are.

The advantage of being confused for another chess player is that opponents will study his games, thinking that they are preparing to play against me. The disadvantage is that the results of the other player might be confused for mine. This happened once before FIDE assigned player IDs. I took a hit for 30 rating points even though I hadn't played a FIDE event in years. I'm fond of saying that if I had played I probably would have lost even more, so I escaped with only a scratch.

Where I play

The last time I played a rated USCF game was at the 1984 World Open in Valley Forge, PA. The last time I played a rated FIDE game was at the 1990 Paris Open in Paris, France.

As many keen amateur players eventually discover, serious OTB chess is not compatible with the demands of a family and a career. Wanting to get back into chess play, I started playing email chess in 2001. I joined a free tournament that the ICCF set up to celebrate its 50th anniversary...

EM / J50 / P198
http://tables.iccf.com/email/j50/j50p198.htm

...and have been happy with email chess ever since. It is a good complement to the demands of the real world. Moreover, it allows me to penetrate to the deep secrets of a chess position in a way that is not possible when playing OTB.

While I still play in the ICCF, I have also tried many other email chess services. I should have a lot more to say about email chess in future posts.

Why 'Chess for All Ages'?

Everything has a name. There's no way to avoid it. Things that don't have names don't exist. People can't talk about them, point to them, complain about them, or anything else that people do about things that have names. Which is everything.

I set up this blog to enter a comment on another blog. The process of registering as a bona fide commenter (commentator?) led me through a process that required setting up a new blog whether I wanted it or not. This often happens in the computer world. You start to do one thing, which leads to another thing, which leads to another thing, and suddenly you are at interrupt level five, solving problems that have nothing to do with the original task. When you finally finish level five, you step back through the sequence of interrupts to accomplish whatever it was that started them. Which was? Name the blog.

The blog naming procedure required me to create a subdomain in the blogspot.com domain. In less technical terms, I had to replace the [something] in [something].blogspot.com with a name of my choosing. There was a nice built-in function that let me try different [something]'s until I found one that hadn't been used. All of the obvious names had been taken: chessblog, chessguy, chessmaster, chessexpert, and a dozen other chess related names that popped into mind at interrupt level four.

Then I remembered a feature that I do from time to time on About Chess. There's an index here...

Chess for all Ages
http://chess.about.com/od/chrono/a/cc00cfaa.htm

...I finished creating that index an hour ago at interrupt level six or seven to explain why I chose this blog name. I started to create it last summer to keep track of the different About.com 'Chess for all Ages' posts. I found last summer's aborted effort on my hard drive, added links for a few 'Chess for all Ages' pieces written since then, and published the whole thing as a new index. I categorized it as a ChessChrono, a name I invented at interrupt level five for another little project.

The 'Chess for all Ages' posts on About Chess are far from being the most popular articles on the site. They are buried so far down in the site statistics that I've never noticed them when browsing the stats. Their lack of popularity isn't a problem for me -- chess itself is far from the most popular topic on the planet -- but they happen to be among my personal favorites.

Everyone who is interested in chess news uses Google News with a search on chess. Along with thousands of stories that have nothing to do with chess ('the football game was a real chess match'), the Google News search uncovers all sorts of local news stories where chess plays a central role. These are stories about senior citizens who have started a chess club in the local library, or grade school teachers who have discovered that chess makes their students think and keep quiet, or high school chess teams that have just won an important team event in the state capital.

I have often been impressed by the many ways that chess affects everyday people in everyday situations. Since the Google News stories are rarely interesting enough to merit a story highlighting them individually, I often pull several of them together under the 'Chess for all Ages' header.

Chess needs its heros. It needs its skunks. It also needs all the people like you and me, neither hero nor skunk, people who will never win the national championship, the regional championship, or even the local club championship, people who just enjoy playing chess.

I never returned to the blog I wanted to comment at interrupt level zero. I was smitten by blog fever, by 'Chess for all Ages', and that's where I'll be for the near future.

Another head?

I need a blog like I need another head. Now that I think about it, another head would be useful to keep the first one from getting out of control. It might have kept me from setting up this blog.

Too late!