Sweet Validation

Living Chess History Lives!

I am very pleased that people are starting to chip in with their own memories, recollections, anecdotes, games, what have you – to fill out my “near-term” historical outlines.  The process is working and almost snowballing and I must say the wordpress blog format is ideal for this fill-in-the-blanks exercise that spans time and space.  The nice thing about chess history is that it includes gamescores, good and bad moves, memorable situations, as well as personalities, photos, interesting places, …. all very historical!  We are at an interesting cusp here – the pre-Chessbase (computer? what the heck is that?) and the post-Chessbase (computer-heavy) days.  Many of the games you’ll see here are pre-Chessbase (but by all means, add them to your database!).  Since there are some big names, such as GM Larsen, GM Dzindzihashvili, etc., no doubt many game hunters will indeed want to increase their electronic storehouse.

The Notion of Game Replay

I received a request from Mr. Friedel at ChessBase to have all the games at this site replayable via a Javascript widget, the type you might see in a generic ChessBase output file or US Chess Online.  I am working on it, but wordpress has certain constraints (it strips out 3rd party iFrames).  For now, I will just use a mixture of text and well-placed diagrams as you might see in a book.

Special thanks to early respondents

Ian Findlay, Jeremy Barth, Jon Jacobs, Bruce Leverett, Lonnie Kwartler, John Fedorowicz, Barry Popik, Joe Lux, Ben Finegold, Elizabeth Vicary, Gregory Kaidanov, Ken Regan, and a few anonymous New Englanders.

All I can say is, keep the memories coming.

-MG 10/18/07