Site review - World Champions (Open Directory)

Continuing with our list of chess history sites...

Chess History on the Web
http://members.tripod.com/~Mark_Weeks/Chs-hist/chs-hist.htm

...the next site to be reviewed is...

Open Directory Project - World Champions
http://www.dmoz.org/Games/Board_Games/C/Chess/People/All_World_Champio
ns/

...This fits in well with a topic I've touched in two of the last few
articles -- the best Web-based source of information on the world
champions. Why do I have this obsession with the world champions? An
email correspondent once put it best, 'The world champions *are* the
history of chess'.

The main page of the Open Directory Project (aka 'dmoz') is at
dmoz.org. Its 'about dmoz' link informs us that, 'The Open Directory
Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of
the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community
of volunteer editors'. Created in 1998, it's been integrated into
several search engine services, among them Google. A good article
written last year on the history of the Open Directory can be found
at...

Humans Do It Better: Inside the Open Directory Project
http://www.onlineinc.com/onlinemag/OL2000/sherman7.html

...While preparing this current review, I noticed that the Open
Directory needed an editor for the chess category and all its
subcategories. I applied for the World Champions subcategory a year
ago, and was turned down (which confirms how sensible they are in
their choice of editors!), so I won't bother again. Why not try
yourself? Note that you can also apply for one or more subcategories,
which should be less work than the full category.

I applied for the World Champions subcategory because they were
seeking an editor and because I thought I could easily improve the
quality of their links. After all, many of the dmoz links point to my
own world championship site, which even receives a star in
the 'Tournaments' category. A few days after applying I received an
email...

'Dear Mark Weeks, Thank you for your interest in becoming an Open
Directory Project editor! After careful review, we have decided not
to approve your application at this time. Your willingness to
volunteer is greatly appreciated and perhaps we will be able to
utilize your talent in the future. Regards, The Open Directory
Project'

...with no obvious way to appeal the decision. The World Champions
category hasn't improved or, as far as I can see, been changed since
that time. I have a few mildly negative things to say later in this
review and I hope they don't seem too much like sour grapes!

---

The category looks like this...

>Top: Games: Board Games: C: Chess: People: All World Champions (47)
>
>World Championship Games (13)
>
>Alekhine, Alexander -- Russia-France (2)
>Anderssen, Adolf (1)
[...]
>Fischer, Robert James -- USA@ (11)
[...]
>Steinitz, Wilhelm (4)
>Tal, Mikhail (4)
>
>Biographies of Chess World Champions, by Iverson Lapp

...'Top: Games: Board Games: C: Chess: People: All World Champions'
shows the hierarchy above World Champions. The numbers in parentheses
are the number of links for each referenced subcategory. Alekhine's
two links are to:-
1) a crosstable (from my site) for the 1927 match with Capablanca,
and
2) a biography at www.chesscorner.com.

The '@'-sign next to Fischer's name means that his links are taken
from another category (specifically, 'Chess People') and that those
11 links are not counted in the category total of 47. The 13 'World
Championship Games' include 9 links to my site for historical matches
plus 4 links to other sites covering matches from the last decade.
The recent FIDE knockout tournaments are not mentioned anywhere.

Every category has an attached 'Description', which for 'All World
Champions' is, 'Many times during chess history there has been
dissent about who the "real" World Champion is. Yet there is often
general agreement about who the strongest player is. This is an
inclusive listing of players considered the best in the world during
their era, as well as all those who have won widely recognized "World
Championship" events.' As you can see from the hierarchy, the
category above 'All World Champions' is...

>Top: Games: Board Games: C: Chess: People (122)
>
>
>All World Champions (47)
>American Popular Players (8)
>
>Anand, Vishwanathan (2)
>Belakovskaia, Anjelina (1)
>Fischer, Bobby (11)
[...]
>Polgar, Zsuzsa (1)
>Shirov, Alexei (2)

Note that Zs. Polgar is listed here, but not under World Champions,
although she was the Women's World Champion from 1996 to 1999. The
highest category for chess is...

>Top: Games: Board Games: C: Chess (780)
>
>Books (15)
>Correspondence Chess (30)
>Directories (11)
>History (10)
>News and Media (11)
>Organizations (2)
>People (122)
>Problems (22)
>Regional (189)
>Scholastic Chess (16)
>Shopping@ (132)
>Software (211)
>Tournaments (26)
>Tutorials (44)
>Variants (48)
>
>See also:
>Arts: Performing Arts: Theatre: Musicals: Chess (6)
>Games: Internet: Browser Based: Board Games: Chess (64)
>
>This category in other languages:
>Bulgarian (2)
[...]
>Swedish (36)

---

Returning to the 'All World Champions' category, there are 18
champions listed:-

Of these, 4 are usually considered unofficial world champions:-
-- Philidor, Francois Andre Danican (1)
-- Staunton, Howard (1)
-- Anderssen, Adolf (1)
-- Morphy, Paul (3)

The 13 official world champions are all listed:-
1 Steinitz, Wilhelm (4)
2 Lasker, Emanuel (3)
3 Capablanca, Jose Raoul (5)
4 Alekhine, Alexander (2)
5 Euwe, Max (1)
6 Botvinnik, Mikhail (2)
7 Smyslov, Vassily (2)
8 Tal, Mikhail (4)
9 Petrosian, Tigran (1)
10 Spassky, Boris (3)
11 Fischer, Robert James (11)
12 Karpov, Anatoly (5)
13 Kasparov, Garry (22)

And the 18th is Kasparov's current nemesis:-
-- Kramnik, Vladimir@ (4)

Missing, for whatever reason, are the most recent FIDE champions:-
-- Khalifman (1999)
-- Anand (2000)

If you're new to the subject, you might be wondering who declared
those 13 players to be the official champs? Well, the honest answer
is that nobody did, at least for the first five. The opportunity to
have a real world champ presented itself when Morphy died in 1884.
While he was alive, no one else could realistically claim to be the
strongest chess player in the world. Morphy himself couldn't be
granted this honor, because he stopped playing after the 1850s.

Steinitz beat Zukertort in 1886, and was assigned number 1 in the
series. Subsequent champions each beat the preceding champ in a fixed
match, until Alekhine passed away and took the title with him.

After receiving a green light from the Soviet Chess federation, FIDE
supervised the job of determining number 6. Each new champ emerged by
beating the reigning champ until Fischer refused to defend his title,
when FIDE again kept the line going. The system chugged on like this
for another 18 years until Kasparov challenged FIDE's authority in
1993.

Saying that the title belonged to the titleholder, not to the
titlegiver, Kasparov opened the door for endless arguments between
titleholders, titlegivers, and their respective followers. The smoke
still hasn't cleared. Until it does, I'll continue to number the
champs chronologically, which gives:-
14 Khalifman
15 Kramnik
16 Anand

As you can work out yourself, the champions with the most links are:-

22 Kasparov
11 Fischer
5 Capablanca, Karpov
4 Kramnik, Steinitz, Tal
3 Lasker, Morphy, Spassky
2 Alekhine, Botvinnik, Smyslov
1 Anderssen, Euwe, Petrosian, Philidor, Staunton

I looked at each of Kasparov's 22 links and discovered that 17 of
them are still active. Of these, 5 cover the 1999 Garry vs. the World
MSN game, 4 are biography pages, and 2 are UPITT game files. The
other 6 cover different events, including the 1996 & 1997 matches vs.
IBM's Deep Blue. The most recent event is the Braingames match vs.
Kramnik last year.

I also became curious about how many pages the numbers of links
represent out of the total number available. I ran a Google search on
each name plus the keyword chess. For example, a search on 'chess
Anderssen' returned 'about 1,610' pages. Here are the results for all
champions:-

2,020 Philidor
5,950 Staunton
1,610 Anderssen
4,150 Morphy
4,050 Steinitz
6,110 Lasker
5,570 Capablanca
5,930 Alekhine
4,170 Euwe
4,820 Botvinnik
3,220 Smyslov
11,500 Tal
2,660 Petrosian
4,760 Spassky
21,100 Fischer
14,100 Karpov
41,100 Kasparov
5,550 Khalifman
15,900 Kramnik
18,700 Anand

---

The most obscure category on the World Champions page is a link to...

Biographies of Chess World Champions by Iverson Lapp
http://brainsturgeon.com/champions.htm

...The former editor of the category apparently considered this page
to be the most comprehensive page on the Web covering all champions.
It's a short page called 'Final Column', with further links to, among
other topics, Alexander Khalifman and the Chess World Champions
Archives.

The Archives cover exactly the same 18 champions as the Open
Directory itself, except Kramnik is replaced by Khalifman. The
Khalifman page has two paragraphs about the former FIDE world
champion plus links to two Khalifman games which can be viewed
online. The two paragraphs, dated 9/2/00 (2 September 2000 [NB : pre-
Kramnik]), quote Khalifman saying, 'I do not claim to be the world's
best chessplayer, but I am the FIDE World Champion, the only
championship of the world we have now.'

The pages for the other champions use the same format. The 'Final
Column' page also informs us, 'This page is now moving forward and
has been renamed "Chess Talk." Iversen will be submitting chess
quizzes that Pyramid members can try to solve by posting responses in
our new Chess Talk Forum.' When I clicked on the Chess Talk Forum
link, I got a message saying 'Sorry. We can't find the page you're
looking for. Please recheck the URL and try again.'

Who is Iverson Lapp? A Google search returned only references to the
Open Directory and its derivatives. And what is brainsturgeon.com?
The main page informs us that brainsturgeon.com is the 'Home of the
Pyramid Community : The Pyramids are internet gaming leagues devoted
to honest and fair play. Membership is free. Games are played at
Yahoo! and losses reported here.'

The champions page on brainsturgeon.com is certainly a competent
reference, but it's not the comprehensive page on world champions
that I've been looking for. Neither is the Open Directory page
itself. A few other candidates are...

History Of Chess
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Ring/4860/history.html

...which covers exactly the 13 official champions and has copied the
biographies from the chesschampions.com site. If I remember
correctly, these biographies were written by the ubiquitous Bill
Wall. Indeed, when I compared its content with...

Bill Wall's List of Chess Masters
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/masters2.htm

...several of the biographies were almost identical to those found on
the 'History Of Chess' site. Bill Wall's site covers the Open
Directory's list of 4 unofficial champs; 10 of the official champs
(Lasker, Euwe, and Spassky are missing) & Khalifman; plus Blackburne,
Boleslavsky, la Bourdonnais, Geller, Janowski, McDonnell, &
Spielmann. By the way, la Bourdonnais is on many lists of unofficial
champs.

Another site worth mentioning is...

Barnet Chess Club on-line evolving suite of World Champions papers
http://www.insight.demon.co.uk/Technical_Articles/worldchamps/worldcha
mps.htm

...which covers Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, & Fischer. I
reviewed this site early last year in Chess History on the Web (2000
no.5). The biographies are among the most comprehensive that you'll
find, but no new bios have been added since my review.

Another site worth mentioning is...

Chess World Champions
http://www.chesscorner.com/worldchamps/worldchampion.htm

...which also covers exactly the 13 official champions. Its
biographies of the champions are 8-10 paragraphs for the early
champions, but only a few paragraphs for later champions. Each champ
has one game which can be played online using the ICC viewer.
Kasparov is represented by game 16 vs. Karpov from the World
Championship match held in London & Leningrad, 1986, on which
Kasparov spent 20 pages analyzing in his book on the match.

It may just be that the best site is yet to come. Of the two chess
history sites remaining to be reviewed -- 'Chessmetrics' by Jeff
Sonas and 'World Chess Network' by Larry Parr -- the World Chess
Network has some excellent material on the world champions. We'll be
looking at it very soon.

Bye for now,
Mark Weeks

---

[The bookmarks for the sites reviewed in this newsletter may be found
at...

The Chess History discussion group
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/chesshistory

...where you are invited to join and contribute. The list archive is
at...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Chess_History/messages

...and contains copies of previous reviews. To subscribe:-
- by email, send a message to
Chess_History-subscribe@yahoogroups.com, -or-
- by the web, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Chess_History/join

All subscriptions are confirmed with a verification message.]