Site Stats and Images

In a recent post, Site Stats and Adsense, I used the server log on my personal domain to look at the relative popularity of my web pages. Similar techniques can be used for images. I did this a few years ago in Photos of February (March 2015):-

One thing I've always wanted to do -- but never found the time -- is to analyze the popularity of the various images stored on the site.

I don't want to repeat that exercise here, other than to mention the most popular photo for May 2017:-

The Match That Never Was (September 2012)

The log can also be used to follow the progress of a new post by tracking its corresponding image. Let's take, for example, my first post from May 2017 that used an image -- May 1967 'On the Cover'. -- and follow the progress of that image from the moment of its creation. (Because it's the information provided by the link which is most important here, I'll give the URL of the referring page without converting it to a link.)

The first call of a new image is always from its directory. This is because I check the image after uploading it, in case it was somehow damaged in the process (it happens). I then copy the full URL and add it to my new post.

• http://www.mark-weeks.com/cfaa/

The next call of the new image is by the mechanism that distributes it to social media. For this CFAA blog, I see five accesses by dlvr.it, where a short URL expands to the full URL of the new post plus the parameters utm_source=dlvr.it & utm_medium=facebook.

• http://dlvr.it/P2yc0M

After this the new image starts to be displayed on a single page for the new post or on the home page of the blog, where the most recent post appears first.

• http://chessforallages.blogspot.com/2017/05/may-1967-on-cover.html
  
• http://chessforallages.blogspot.com/

Some time later, the image is called from various content aggregators. Here's one that appears regularly...

• http://newsblur.com/site/1749928/chess-for-all-ages

...and here's another that appears to be worth exploring:-

• http://www.rightrelevance.com/search/articles?query=chess%20player

After more posts have been added to the blog, the original post starts to show up on pages of 'Older Posts'.

• http://chessforallages.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2017-05-04T17:39:00%2B02:00&max-results=7

Since I also use my m-w.com domain to store images for my other blogs, the same process applies to them. Here's the most popular image on my World Chess Championship blog for the month of May.

Che Guevara at the Havana Zonal (January 2014)

And here's the most popular image on my Chess960 (FRC) blog for the same period.

Finding Top ICC Chess960 Players (November 2013)

That last chess960 image, as simple as it is, was just as popular as the top CFAA images, even though the C960 blog gets about 10% of the traffic that CFAA gets. Why this popularity? My server log only tells me that nearly all of the accesses were from Google. For example, the first access of the month was from

• https://www.google.com.ph/

That's pretty much normal for an investigation into site statistics. An answered question nearly always leads to new questions.

The Chess Remedy?

Ever since I started this series on 'The Sociology of Chess', it seems that whenever I work up a short list for Video Friday (last seen in Kasparov Talks at Google), there's at least one clip that delves into some aspect related to sociology. This latest one starts,

The youth of this generation, particularly those in the inner cities, are suffering from a failing educational system and high amounts of addiction. Politicians, social activists, and various charity organizations have been working to stop this epidemic for [many] years. What if I told you that the answer was simple? What if I told you that the answer was chess?

Caleb Varghese: Chess - A Social and Educational Remedy (16:21) • 'Published on Jun 16, 2017'

This might not be the best presentation I've seen on the 'Chess in Schools' topic and it might contain some questionable facts, but it covers more territory than most such presentations do. Here is a list of the slides used:-

• Originally played by warrior class and aristocracy
• 'The Art of War' by Sun Tzu
• Strategy and tactics
• Understanding reactions to every action
• Chess solution to addiction?
• A village in India
• Playing chess improves critical thinking skills
• Magnus Carlsen plays blindfold simul against 10 Harvard lawyers ('highest ranked chess players in the world'?)
• Chess makes you smart
• Extracurricular activities supplement academic studies
• Chess evens the playing field
• Chess promotes discipline
• Get chess in schools
• It's your move

For more about the context of the presentation, see English 10P Talks Reveal a Wide Range of Student Interests and Passions! (thewheatleyway.org; Old Westbury, Long Island, New York; 1 June 2017).

Kasparov Talks at Google

The short list for this edition of Video Friday was eventually further shortened to two Kasparov clips. The first was a MasterClass trailer. If you have a Facebook account and if you have ever shown any interest in chess, you have probably been presented this clip more times than you can count on your fingers and toes. If not, it's here: Garry Kasparov Teaches Chess | Official Trailer (youtube.com; MasterClass). The second Kasparov clip on the short list was more interesting.

Garry Kasparov: "Deep Thinking" | Talks at Google (38:50) • 'Garry Kasparov and DeepMind’s CEO Demis Hassabis discuss Garry’s new book, his match with Deep Blue and his thoughts on the future of AI in the world of chess.'

At the beginning of the video, moderator Hassabis mentions his review of GM Kasparov's most recent book, 'Deep Thinking', where I think he means Artificial Intelligence: Chess match of the century (nature.com). Kasparov replies,

Thank you very much for your review and also for all the protection against all the tech guys who criticized me for not being an expert.

Does that mean the book is not for tech people? I'll come back to that question when I get the chance to read the book. One of the comments to the clip informs,

Demis Hassabis was once the second strongest under-14 chess player in the world (Elo 2300), behind Judit Polgar.

As for 'Talks at Google', I featured another episode a few years back in a Video Friday post titled Computer Chess 'Comedy' (July 2013), about the movie 'Computer Chess'. GM Kasparov appeared in an earlier Google talk, Garry Kasparov | Talks at Google (youtube.com; 'Uploaded on Nov 18, 2010'), when he was invited because of his own article on Diego Rasskin-Gutman's 'Chess Metaphors' in the New York Times Review of Books.

Fischer and Chess Review 'On the Cover'

Earlier this month, in June 1967 'On the Cover', I asked the question

Chess Review: how many times through the years was Fischer featured?

This led to two posts where I didn't answer the question...

• Young Bobby's First 'On the Cover', and
• Young Bobby in Chess Life

...but now I can give a partial answer: 15 times through the beginning of 1964.

Those 15 covers include the 12 shown above plus three marked with an asterix ('*') in the following list:-

• 1956-01: *; see 'Bobby's First "On the Cover"'
• 1956-12: 'Game of the Century'; 3rd Rosenwald
• 1957-04: 'Meeting of Extremes'; match with Euwe
• 1958-02: 'Youngest Champion'; U.S. Championship & qualification to interzonal
• 1958-05: 'CBS had a secret'; Garry Moore and 'I've Got a Secret'; see also The Best Fischer Clip Ever (February 2008)
• 1959-02: * (same photo as 1958-02); 'Champion Again!'; 5th Rosenwald & U.S. Championship
• 1959-03: *; 'Composite View of U.S. Championship', (incl. same photo as 1958-02)
• 1960-02: 'Anti-Climax'; U.S. Championship (Rosenwald Trophy), 3rd straight win
• 1960-12: 'The USA Team'; World Team Championship, 1960 Leipzig (NB: word 'Olympiad' not used)
• 1961-02: 'Fourth Straight Year'; the accompanying article explained, 'Known officially as the Lessing J. Rosenwald Tournament for the U.S. Chess Championship and Frank J. Marshall Trophy, 1960-1961'
• 1962-04: 'Fischer Forges Forward'; 1962 Stockholm Interzonal
• 1962-05: 'Fischer Lauded at the Marshall Chess Club'; winner of 1962 Stockholm Interzonal; also shown are Caroline Marshall and John W. Collins
• 1963-02: 'Champ Fifth Time'
• 1963-10: 'U.S. Champion Splurges in Swisses'; Western Open & N.Y. State Open
• 1964-02: 'Study in Concentration'; U.S. Championship (+11-0=0)

With March 1964 'On the Cover' (March 2014), I started a monthly look at the covers from 50 years ago of both Chess Life and Chess Review (CR). Fischer on a subsequent CR cover was first documented in July 1965 'On the Cover' (July 2015). The 'On the Cover' series has two more years to run, after which I'll make a final tally of Fischer CR covers.

Thomas Emery

One of my first posts this year, January 1967 'On the Cover', demanded a follow-up:-

'Thomas Emery Trophy', 'Thomas Emery Awards dinner' -- who was Thomas Emery and what was his connection to the American Chess Foundation?

The June 1957 issue of Chess Review (CR) carried a two page feature 'Thomas Emery: Amateur Extraordinary' by T.A. Dunst. It started,

An amateur chess player who stands off U.S. champions, assorted grandmasters, ex-world champions and the like, is certainly a rara avis. That distinction belongs to genial Thomas Emery of New 'York, who, at 62, is a man of many interests, including world travel, the study of medicine and delving into the mysterious topography of the chessboard.

When Frank Marshall in 1942 wrote My Fifty Years of Chess, summing up an international chess career and 27 years possession of the United States chess championship, the book contained a great deal more of Thomas Emery than the preface which he supplied; for the friendship between the two men was of the Damon - Pythias variety, and they spent endless hours in philosophizing and in analyzing openings, endings and middle-game intrigue.

Half about Emery's life, half about Emery's approach to chess, the article focused on his three major interests: his military career, his medical career, and his chess.

Thomas Emery, Chess Review, June 1957, p.177

Of his military career,

Emery, a native New Yorker, stems from ancestry which is about 80 per cent English. He attended tutoring school in England, where the brother of a schoolmate named Buffer became a member of the British chess team in 1910. Young Emery threw himself into chess about this time and, within a year, was taking the team player's measure.

Soon after the United States entered World War I, Emery found himself in the Officers' Training Camp at Plattsburg. Scoring 98 per cent in his studies, he was called to Washington to be commissioned a captain at the age of 21 in the Quartermaster Corps. [...] Emery turned down the captain, and enlisted in the U.S. Marines, in which organization he served with distinction. Because of his knowledge of French. he acted as interpreter. He was wounded in 1918 and later recommended for bravery. He was honorably discharged in August of 1919.

Of his medical career,

It was during World War II that Emery pursued intensive medical studies, an interest which has never flagged and which is second only to his enthusiasm for chess. He has lectured on hematology at the North Country Community Hospital in Glen Cove and, in 1943, was appointed Senior First Aid Instructor for the whole of Long Island. In this connection. Emery takes justifiable pride in the knowledge that many of his students continued in the field of nursing and medicine. Perhaps, there is a hereditary influence in all this. for Emery's grandfather. Brig.-Gen. Charles Tripler Alexander, was a surgeon under Custer and a chief-surgeon under Sherman.

A few years after CR's 1957 article, the cover of the May 1960 issue of Chess Review featured a photo of the 'Thomas Emery Armed Forces Chess Trophy'. Inside the magazine announced,

On the occasion of the first tournament for the Thomas Emery Armed Forces Chess Awards, scheduled to be held in Washington, D.C. from May 15th to May 21st, the American Chess Foundation salutes:
The Selected Finalists: [12 players named]
Mr. Thomas Emery, distinguished American, internationally-famous chess player and generous patron of the Awards.
The Department of Defense.
The United Service Organizations (U.S.O.) and its affiliated agencies.
The NAVY TIMES for its Special Award.
Mr. I.S. Turover for his Special Award.
-and-
Colonel John D. Matheson, Chairman of the ACF-USCF Joint Committee for Armed Forces Chess, for his magnificent direction of the project, together with those associated with him on the Committee: Col. E.B. Ely; Thomas Emery; Dr. Eliot Hearst; Sgt. Bob Karch ; I.S. Turover and Sidney Wallach.

For more about the series of tournaments, see Wikipedia's United States Armed Forces Chess. Emery is mentioned only once, in passing. The 1957 CR article included three scores of games by Emery: draws with Bisguier and Euwe, and a win against Menchik. It also mentioned three amateur chess players who made their names in other fields.

This brief sketch of an amateur who plays chess in the tradition of Henry T. Buckle, the historian, Moritz Rosenthal, the pianist, and Charles Schwab, the steel king, would not be complete without a word about his wife, Constance. [...]

Does this mean more follow-up posts ahead?

Site Stats and Adsense

In last week's post, Chess Stats Year-Over-Year, I investigated a drop in my site's visitor statistics:-

Those numbers show an increase from to 2015 to 2016 on the old server, then a decrease from 2016 to 2017 on the transfer to the new server. The last number, 'recs/page', indicates that something might have changed in the server mechanism that delivers pages. I'll investigate those numbers in another post.

While I was looking at those numbers, I encountered a few anomalies that raised new questions. I flagged those to my server provider and will wait for a response before I go much further. In the meantime, I noticed a new problem regarding Google Adsense. Here's a screen capture showing the top and bottom of a typical page on my CFAA site.

Improve Your Middle Game (Part 1 - Patterns)

What's the point? I last discussed the top ad ('Luxury Cruises' in this example) in

• Going Mobile : Responsive Ads (August 2016).

I last discussed the bottom ads in

• Mixed 'Matched Content' (January 2017).

The top ad doesn't blend well into the rest of the page. Google ads should be unobtrusive, but this one dominates the content. I should either move it or eliminate it entirely.

The bottom ads are simply wrong. That 'Matched Content' link from January shows a few Google ads mixed with image links to my own pages. All we see in the page pictured above are a couple of Google ads with links to my content missing completely. The problem occurs on a number of my pages, while other pages show the ads and internal links correctly. As far as I can tell, the ad code on all pages is identical. I'll see if this is a temporary error before carrying it any further.

I doubt that these Adsense issues are responsible for the decline in visitor traffic, but they don't help. In any case, I'm spending too much time on them, which is a distraction from the content itself.

Dube and Chotka

Sometimes the series of posts on Top eBay Chess Items by Price are more about price than they are about chess and this is one of those times. The item pictured below was titled 'Dube oil on canvas Still Life with Chess Piece and Coffee Pot' and sold at live auction for US $8500 after 36 bids. The seller's estimate had been US $2000-4000.

The description said,

Dube (Duilio or Dulie Dube Barnabe; Italian, 1914-1961), 'Still Life with Chess Pieces', oil on canvas, 32 x 40 inches, signed Barnabe lower right,

Dube, an Italian-French painter and graphic artist, received his artistic education from Giorgio Morandi in Bologna. He lived and worked since 1946 in Paris where he was strongly influenced by the work of Picasso.

Framed in a silver leaf frame with several liners measuring 46 x 53 inches. Condition Report: In generally good condition with a few superficial scratches and minor planar distortion.

Of the several names appearing in the description, a search on 'artist barnabe' returned the best results. A related image search indicates that chess was not a recurring theme in his work.

***

More Chotka: A previous post in 'Top eBay Chess Items', The Artist and the Artwork (April 2015), featured a painted bronze by Anton Chotka. Over the past fortnight a similar work appeared on eBay and sold for $1300, 'Best offer accepted', on an asking price of $4999.99. A link on the auction page points to another, similar Chotka item on Sothebys.com:-

Estimate: 3000-5000 EUR; Lot sold: 7750 EUR (Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium)

I have no idea why the price for different, similar Chotka pieces varies so much. My 'Artist / Artwork' post showed uncertainty about Chotka's life span. Sotheby's gave 'Anton Chotka, 1878-1928'.