Continuing with our tour of giant chess sets of the world, we move from New Zealand -- where we found Chess Set Available for Use -- to Australia.
Last Man Standing © Flickr user Kaptain Kobold under Creative Commons.
'Part of the giant chess set in Crown Street Mall, Wollongong.'
All of the auctions featured in this fortnightly series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price, like the most recent post, Austin and Eames, have been for collectibles. On this post I'm bucking the trend with an item whose title was 'DGT SENSORY CHESS BOARD BLUETOOTH / WIRELESS version'. It sold 'Buy It Now' for GBP 448.00, 'approximately US $721.95' according to eBay's currency conversion.
DGT, whose acronym stands for 'Digital Game Technology', is well known within the chess world for its line of digital chess clocks. The description of the eBay item was taken from the DGT product page, DGT Bluetooth Wireless e-Board (digitalgametechnology.com)...
Some special features of the DGT wireless e-board.
- 10+ meters Bluetooth true-wireless communication, 40+ meters successfully tested indoors with high quality dongle.
- USB wired communication (3.5 meter mini-USB cable included)
[...]
...and a web search on 'special features of the DGT wireless e-board' returns many sellers of the board around the world.
That 'DGT Bluetooth' page also has links to the installation manual and a high level look at how 'small tournaments can use this board for broadcasting games', the starting point for a FAQ -- Support > FAQ > Boards -- which includes a video clip showing the board in action. If that's not enough and, like me, you also want to know how the board communicates with external chess playing software, see DGT Electronic Board Protocol Description.
I added a new category -- Posts with label Downloads (see the list of all labels on the right sidebar) -- to tag my posts which offer any kind of a download. For now this means only PGN files, but could eventually encompass other types of files.
For most of the book reviews linked via Chess Product Reviews, I first assembled a corresponding PGN file containing only the game scores of the games found in the book (no annotations or other notes). This let me perform simple analyses like 'years spanned by the games' -or- 'percentage results for White & Black'. Most of these PGN files are still sitting in my archive, but I will release them when I feel comfortable doing so.
Many players don't realize it, but the list of games in a book is copyrighted material, as are all notes to the games found within the book. The moves to the games, as played by the players, can't be copyrighted, but the selection of games is under copyright, just like the list of recipes in a cookbook is copyrighted.
Many PGN files for specific chess books have been available for years from Gambitchess.com at Gambit Chess - DB Books, and I won't duplicate any material that is already there. My aim is to make PGN files available for books which haven't already been done by someone else. Gambit Chess also maintains a list of publishers who have requested that their titles not be available as PGN files.
Copyright Notice: Some Publishers asked me to remove some DB Books for which they hold the copyright. Please don't send me DB Books from:
• Gambit Publications Ltd.
• Everyman Chess
• Cadogan Chess
• Pergamon
• British Chess Magazine
• Sahovski Informator (Chess Informant)
• Thinkers' Press, Inc.
• Chessco
I know it's hard to understand why any publisher would not want related PGN files distributed. It makes playing through the book's annotations and analyzing the games so much easier, that it is definitely a plus for understanding the book. Nevertheless, copyright is just that -- the right to make copies -- and if an author or a publisher doesn't want a PGN file made available, it's their call. I might try to contact some of the publishers listed by Gambit Chess in order to learn their reasons for forbidding copyright, but in the meantime, there's no alternative but to respect their stated preference.
Here are a few more PGN files that I've assembled in the past and am making available now.
Note that it's fairly easy to assemble your own file if you have a few basic computer skills. For me, it averages less than a minute per game to build the file. I'll add more PGN files whenever I think it's useful to do so.
Continuing with 18 Memorable Games, the next game is no.53 in Fischer's 60 Memorable Games and no.74 in Kasparov's Predecessors IV. GM Evans' introduction to the game in 60 Memorable Games said,
Normally, two Rooks for the Queen is a good trade -- better than good when it produces a setting in which the scope and power of the Rooks may be formidable. But Portisch's judgement is faulty, he fails to take into account the weakness of his Pawns.
Once again, the PGN is given here with the punctuation of both Fischer and Kasparov.
[Event "Piatigorsky Cup"]
[Site "Santa Monica"]
[Date "1966.??.??"]
[Round "11"]
[White "Portisch, L."]
[Black "Fischer, R."]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "E45"]
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!?'} 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 b6 {FIS: '!'} 5.Ne2 Ba6 6.Ng3 {KAS: '!?'} 6...Bxc3+ {FIS: '!'} 7.bxc3 d5 8.Qf3 O-O 9.e4 {FIS: '!?'; KAS: '?!'} 9...dxe4 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'} 10.Nxe4 Nxe4 11.Qxe4 Qd7 {FIS: '!!'; KAS: '!'} 12.Ba3 {KAS: '?!'} 12...Re8 13.Bd3 f5 14.Qxa8 {FIS: '?'; KAS: '?'} 14...Nc6 15.Qxe8+ Qxe8 16.O-O Na5 17.Rae1 Bxc4 18.Bxc4 Nxc4 19.Bc1 c5 {KAS: '!'} 20.dxc5 bxc5 21.Bf4 h6 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'} 22.Re2 g5 23.Be5 {KAS: '?'} 23...Qd8 24.Rfe1 Kf7 25.h3 f4 {KAS: '!'} 26.Kh2 a6 {KAS: '!'} 27.Re4 Qd5 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'} 28.h4 Ne3 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'} 29.R1xe3 fxe3 30.Rxe3 Qxa2 31.Rf3+ Ke8 32.Bg7 Qc4 33.hxg5 hxg5 34.Rf8+ Kd7 35.Ra8 Kc6 0-1
Fischer's use of '!' on his second and fourth moves is unusual; on 2...e6 he commented, 'To throw White off-balance. I felt Portisch was just too well-versed in the Kings Indian', and on 4...b6, 'Other moves have been analyzed to death'. Considering that the Nimzo-Indian 4.e3 variation is still going strong 45 years after the Portisch - Fischer game, Fischer's death certificate for the Nimzo-Indian was issued prematurely.
The game was also annotated by Portisch in the tournament book. He gave 11...Qd7 a '!', 23.Be5 a '?', and 25...f4 a '!'. To play through the complete game, see...
Lajos Portisch vs Robert James Fischer; Santa Monica II. Piatigorsky Cup 1966
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1044015
...on Chessgames.com.
Is it the board? The pieces? The champagne? The players? The time for reflection? The judges? The arbiter?
The Perfect Game of Chess (2:54) • 'Sun Yat-Sen, God, a dog, and a time gnome conspire to make chess history.'
'Who wins the perfect game of chess?' [Hint: Watch out for the gavel.] No, I don't get it either...
The book 'ENDGAME' by Frank Brady (Crown Publishers, 2011) has finally hit the stores and judging by the number of reviews, it will be one of the greatest successes in the history of chess publishing. I've certainly managed to get considerable mileage from the book, using it as the basis for seven posts across my three blogs, with this current post to be added to the list.
If you're curious what the rest of the blogosphere, not to mention the entire online world, is saying about 'ENDGAME', the blog Jim West On Chess has been keeping tabs on the activity for both Brady's book and the new documentary 'Bobby Fischer Against the World'. It's hard to believe that having a Fischer book and a Fischer film released at the same time was a coincidence, but considering that January was three years to the month since Fischer died, maybe that's the time it takes to have a substantial work emerge from the primordial ooze of the creative process.
My last contribution to the surge of interest was to assemble a new file containing the game scores from both versions of Brady's first book on Fischer: 'Profile of a Prodigy' (PGN). The first version (David McKay Company, 1965) is based on the file found on Gambit Chess - DB Books, containing 75 games. The second version (Dover Publications, 1989) is a new file containing 90 games, of which the first 43 were also published in the 1965 version. The two game collections represent one expert's subjective choice of Fischer's all time best games and deserve to be promoted.
I learned so much from examining the stats for my chess960 blog -- see Stats and More Stats -- that I decided to do the same for my two other blogs. Google's Blogger.com offers statistical breakdowns over five time periods: Now (last two hours), Day (ending with the start of the current hour), Week (ditto), Month (seems to be the last 28 days), and All time (starting '2010 May', although I see nothing before July 2010). Since it's always useful to know what interests your site's visitors, it's a subject I'll return to from time to time. Let's look at the most popular posts for the month of January 2011 and for 'All time'.
Chess for All Ages
I'll start with the top three posts on this blog for January, listed together with the month when I wrote the post:-
This blog, 'All time':-
It's curious that most of these posts are several years old, contradicting the general perception that blog visitors are most interested in current topics. Only two January posts make the top-10 list: The Brady Bunch and Levenfish's Rook Endings. I have no idea why the 'King Kong vs. Godzilla' ranks in both lists. Do non-players associate chess with monsters?
World Chess Championship
Here are the top three posts from the World Championship blog for January:-
World Championship blog, 'All time':-
The 'Whither the World Championship?' post appears first on both lists and has more than three times as many views as the second ranked post on the 'All time' list. It's a long post with most of the text copied from the 2009 Executive Board minutes. I suspect that its many, varied keywords give it a good ranking on searches related to FIDE politics. If you're interested in FIDE doings, there is an index page on Fide.com at FIDE Minutes.
Chess960 (FRC)
Chess960 blog, January:-
As for 'All time' stats on my chess960 blog, I covered them in 'Stats and More Stats' linked at the beginning of this post. It's encouraging that the posts on the January list were all written in January. It confirms my impression that interest in chess960 is increasing slowly. Eventually we'll learn if this is just wishful thinking on my part.
***
As I mentioned earlier, I'll try to do occasional posts on my blog stats over the next few months. Web stats, which at first sight often appear random, can show remarkable regularity over time. Interpreting the numbers can reveal many stories about what people are seeking.
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