Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Some changes to this blog

A few changes have been made to this blog.

1. To make things easier, anonymous posting has been allowed. I've done this to assist blog readers that may not be very internet savvy but whose remarks would nevertheless be interesting. If this becomes a problem, then I will switch settings back to requiring a google account to post on this blog.

2. Posts can now be emailed to a friend if blog readers wish to take advantage of this feature. Just click on the envelope with the small arrow on it at the bottom of the post you wish to e mail to a friend. You will need to provide your friend's e mail address, your own e mail address, and your name. Google/blogspot will do the rest.

3. If you scroll to the very end of this page then you will find a very interesting quote by the late David Bronstein. Bronstein was a one-time challenger for the World Championship and was one of the greatest players NOT to be world champion (along with the likes of Paul Keres and others). He edited one of the greatest tournament books in the history of chess; I mean the book Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953. I may add other quotes to this one or replace it by other famous quotes from the history of chess. Enjoy!

4. I am planning to make use of Nikolai Pilafov's Chess Viewer Deluxe on this blog if it is possible. This will take some time, however. In the meantime, "Game Replayer" from ChessVideos.tv works well enough, although a game viewer with annotations as well would be even better.

1 comment:

Chess Manitoba said...

Only in the last 6 months did I learn that Boris Vainstein is due significant credit for Zurich 1953.

Here is a reference (not where I first learned of it, but interesting anyway) http://www.chessclub.com/mailing/2006/12b/news.html
“I’m more than just 12-12 and Zurich 1953” once Bronstein bemoaned. He was, of course, referring to his infamous 1951 match with Botvinnik and the rightful accolades he received for arguably the finest of all chess books ever produced, the Mezhudunarodny Turnir Grossmeistrov blow-by-blow account of the 1953 candidates’ tournament (published in 1956, and translated into English in 1978 as The Chess Struggle in Practice, and then a year later by Dover publications, entitled The Zurich International Chess Tournament, 1953). The one thing that annoyed Bronstein most about the book was that he never wrote it! It was only later, taking advantage of greater freedom under Gorbachev’s spirit of Glasnost and perestroika did Bronstein readily admit to writing only the annotations to all the games; but nevertheless, a timeless body of work with its straightforward explanations of strategies and how players think during a game. His unnamed co-author was long-time friend and colleague Boris Vainstein, who wrote all the invaluable informative background material, round-by-round narrative and introduction to the games - but for political reasons, was prohibited at the time from putting his name to the book."