Monday, July 21, 2008

Links and Things

A few new blogs have appeared in the chessosphere and their authors have taken the trouble to let me know about it--or, in certain cases my Sources have informed me of developments:

RT Solo checks in with Chess and Stuff.

"My name is Todd. I like looking for chess-related stuff on the Internet and happened, one night, to come upon a blog called "chess confessions" that was talking about "zombie chess"! It was so funny I had to check out more posts on the blog and eventually discovered there is a group of chess bloggers who call themselves the "Knights Errant" (a Don Quixote reference) and subscribe to a method of chess improvement called the Seven Circles, espoused by this guy Michael De La Maza in his book Rapid Chess Improvement. The method involves going over large segments of tactical puzzles daily until you've mastered them, then moving onto the next segment, or Circle, of puzzles.

I was intrigued and studied up on the author MDLM and his proponents and detractors. It struck me as funny that some people took all this stuff so seriously and got into really heated debates about the matter. I haven't decided whether I am going to try the Circles, but I did decide to start my own chess blog!"

Score one for Blue Devil Knight!

Also recently joining the chess blogging world is hiddenleaf and his Chess Chronicles.

"Just another chess blog about a pawn wandering to the other side of the board."

Finally, my friend and OTB foe from the Reno Chess Club, Eric Shoemaker, has rechristened (or redefined) his blog again, now Man of the West, formerly Pale Rider formerly Opening Laboratory formerly Best Games formerly...I don't even remember all the names, but this time Eric, please, if you're going to change things at least leave the old archived posts up. The world has lost a lot of interesting material!

I'm putting up these links on my sidebar list and moving some of my old friends who haven't posted in a long time to a new "On Hiatus" section. If you get back to posting let me know and we'll relocate you. If you're new to the chess blogging scene, though, don't forget to stop in to the blogs on hiatus, some of them have a lot of great content, but their authors are just a little busy with so-called "real life" right now.

11 comments:

Our Sword said...

Hey, thanks for the introduction and the link, I appreciate it! I live about 4 hours from Reno so maybe someday I'll see you in a tourney!

Anonymous said...

I noticed that you had read the Edmar Mednis book, Strategic Chess. That is almost on deck for me to read. Have you ever read his endgame book, Practical Endgame Lessons? I have been thinking about purchasing it.

Have a great day!

Tommyg

Unknown said...

Hi Robert, I'll try and be more consistent and not to worry, the old posts are not coming down.

Eric

Anonymous said...

Hi I have also just started chess blogging

Nice blog you have i hope my blog will be as good as yours.
Richard

Robert Pearson said...

I will get chessex and tommyg's blogs linked shortly. Thanks for your comments!

Hiddenleaf said...

Hey,

Thanks for the air time :)

Actually with my blog it's score 2 for BDK. I wrote that somewhere in response to a comment RT Solo wrote, but I'm not sure at whose blog I did that.

When I got interested in chess again I found the chessconfessions.blogspot.com and gettingintochess.blogspot.com, the latter is these these found at www.squirelchess.com). Especially BDK's blog interested me because he so cleare came all the way on the road I still have before me: from nearly scratch!

The final step to my own blog was the list I made for personal use from BDK's review vids. Someone asked for a list in the comments, so I just copied mine in the comments.

Anonymous said...

I think chess is very good game as it teaches you to plan your moves and play the game.I think game improves your your minds thinking.

Anonymous said...

Gotta tell you the truth here...upon seeing "chessex", I thought it was some sort of spam link (chess + sex). Yeah, I'm dirty.

Blue Devil Knight said...

Huzzahh!!

You can't escape my reign of evil authoritarian seven circles fascism.

Good to see you still providing useful links to other blogs. I'm definitely out of the loop at this point, as I am usually on top of these things.

For the record, I'm still playing almost daily. Solely blitz, just for fun, all gambits, but I have hit a new blitz rating high (nothing to write home about: 1266). My guess is that my slow games will be awful when I first get back into them.

I figure I'll put yearly or bi-annual updates on my blog from here on out.

Anonymous said...

LOL on your quote header. I completely forgot about that.

Our Sword said...

RLP: A quick question...where is that chess set labeled "The beauty of chess" available?

LEP: chessex isn't about chess and sex? I had the same thought!