More Gems from Jersey

Michael Goeller, the Big Brain of American chess bloggers, the Streatham & Brixton of the New World, has done it again. Emanting from his perch in suburban New Jersey, Michael’s latest confection of a post provides a guide for the perplexed on the subject of “chess publishing,” which nowadays increasingly means creating a chess Web site and putting a lot of cool stuff on it, like position diagrams and whole games in Portable Game Notation that your readers can punch through move-by-move with the mouse.

Since I do some primitive chess publishing here, I’ve been asked by friends and colleagues to post something similar by way of providing advice to the technically disinclined. Michael has beaten me to it, however, and he is better qualified for the task to boot.

If you have a chess site or blog or even the faintest aspiration of someday having one, check it out. While you’re at it, see this, too.

Top Chess Site Publishes Blog Roundup

Goran Urosevic of Chessdom.com has put together a roundup of assorted chess blogs, including such A-listers as Michael Goeller, DG of Boylston Chess Club, Dennis Monokroussos, Streatham & Brixton, Elizabeth Vicary, and Polly Wright.

This humble blog is also privileged to be among these eminent celebrities, for which I'm grateful. Thanks to Goran for showcasing your colleagues, to DG for getting the word out, and to Chessdad64 for calling the original alert to my attention.

Now He Tells Me

Michael Goeller is a chess blogger par excellence; it’s hard to think of anyone who plies the craft with more finesse and sophistication. While the rest of us fill our columns with the usual fluff— gossip, cross tables, the odd grip-and-grin photo, and our failures to scale Mt. De la Maza,—Michael’s blog the Kenilworthian is full of real chess, analyses and annotations of important games, openings, variations, novelties and so on. I picture him laboring for hours and even days over pithy posts like “Urusov Analysis - 3...Nxe4 4.dxe5 Qh4,” and “Refuting 5...Nxe4 in the Scotch Four Knights.”

Michael’s latest contribution to high-end content aggregation is a collection of sources and links on the Traxler/Wilkes Barre counter attack, some of which he gets from Dennis Monokroussos.

It’s great stuff; I only wish he’d published it before FM Aleksandar Stamnov sprang the Traxler on me in this game at the North Avenue Chess Pavilion earlier in the summer:



Yes, I know: serves me right for playing the Fried Liver Attack against a master. Notice that every move White (moi) made beginning with 7. Ke2 was not only wrong but probably the worst one possible in each position. Anyone can blunder, even Kramnik, but to do so repeatedly and spectacularly takes a special gift, you must admit.

Thanks, Professor Goeller. I will attend to the lesson promptly.