Subject: Chess History on the Web (2001 no.8)
Date: 15 Apr 2001 06:14:00 -0000
From: "World Chess Championship" <newsletter@mark-weeks.com>

'April is the cruelest month'. While that is certainly a matter of
opinion, 15 April is, for me at least, the cruelest day this year. Not
only is it my self imposed deadline for a new number of Chess History on
the Web, it is Easter Sunday, which means school vacations and a family
trip to escape the cold rain marking the end of winter & the start of
spring. It is also the filing date for American tax returns.

There is nothing cruel in any of this, except perhaps for the tax return,
but given mandated priorities, it means no time for chess history. To
compensate, I prepared an overview of recent newsletters and loaded it at
address...

http://Mark_Weeks.tripod.com/chw01d15/chw-1d15.htm

...This summary page covers the 15 numbers since 2000 no.17 (2000-09-01)
and has links to the original reviews as well as to the pages of
supporting material. Many of the reviews focused on various game
collections resident on the Web. Judging from the response I received, Web
based game collections are the number one passion of those interested in
both chess history and the Web.

---

For the next few articles, I'll be taking a look at some chess history
sites which have not been covered in previous reviews. In alphabetical
order, these are...

Breve storia degli scacchi by Andreas Vogt
http://friuli.qnet.it/scacchi/manuale/storia.htm

Chess History Center by Richard Forster
http://www.chesshistory.com/

Culture et Curiosités by Gérard Demuydt
http://www.mjae.com/reyes/culture.html

Schach-Datenbank by Wilfried Günther
http://www.schach-datenbank.de/

Schachgeschichte by Fred Kahl
http://www.schachgeschichte.de/

The Game is Afoot by Terry Crandall
http://www.pstat.ucsb.edu/%7ecarlson/chess/ (no response)

World Champions Open Directory
http://www.dmoz.org/Games/Board_Games/C/Chess/People/All_World_Champions/

...While preparing this article, I was unable to access the 'Game is
Afoot' site, so I may have to skip it when its turn arrives.

---

The quote at the beginning of this review is the well known first line of
T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land' (1922). A hypertext version of the complete
work (with notes) at...

http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/

...renders this difficult poem more comprehensible. I had completely
forgotten that the second section is titled 'II. A Game of Chess' and
contains the lines:-

'And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.'

Eliot mentioned in his notes that this refers to 'the game of chess in
Middleton's "Women beware Women"'. Since this is starting to look like
another excursion into chess history on the Web, I'd better sign off here.

Bye for now,
Mark Weeks