Chess Directories

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You may not have seen it on prime time TV news or sports, but the
latest edition of the FIDE World Championship Knockout is now
underway in Moscow. After two rounds, the original 128 aspirants in
the unrestricted event have been reduced to 32 names. Some very
strong players have already been sent packing.

In round one, Zhang Pengxiang (China) defeated former World Champion
Anatoly Karpov (Russia). Former title challengers Nigel Short (Great
Britain) and Viktor Korchnoi (Switzerland) were eliminated,
respectively, by Daniel Campora (Argentina) and Lev Psakhis (Israel).
In round two, top-10 Peter Leko (Hungary) and the world's strongest
woman player Judit Polgar (Hungary) were eliminated by Ashot
Anastasian (Armenia) and Vadim Milov (Switzerland).

The 64 women seeking the women's title now number 16. In round one,
five-time Women's Champion Nona Gaprindashvili and two-time candidate
Ketevan Arakhamia, both of Georgia, were eliminated by Marta
Zielinska (Poland) and Dagne Ciuksyte (Lithuania). Round two saw two-
time title challenger Nana Ioseliani (Georgia) defeated by Joanna
Dworakowska (Poland).

For more news see the official site at...

World Chess Championships 2001/2002 :: News
http://wcc2001.fide.com/

...The 6th round ends mid-December, and the men's final starts 17
January 2002.

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In my last review I looked at the Open Directory (Dmoz) category for
World Champions. Dmoz has a parallel category for chess history at...

Top: Games: Board Games: C: Chess: History (10)
http://dmoz.org/Games/Board_Games/C/Chess/History/

...where '(10)' is the count of sites in the category. In this review
I'm going to look at Dmoz along with other chess directories to
develop a new list of recommended chess history sites. The goal will
be to double-check my own master list of history sites at...

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

...and determine if I've overlooked anything. I assume that, by now,
almost everyone knows the difference between a directory and a search
engine, so my first task is to develop a short list of chess
directories. Dmoz again provides a useful start point with...

Top: Games: Board Games: C: Chess: Directories (10)
http://dmoz.org/Games/Board_Games/C/Chess/Directories/

...a strange mixture of sites, some of which can hardly be considered
directories : 'Chess Lab - An online chess database of 2 million
games' serving as a good example.

Included on the Dmoz list is my favorite chess directory...

Chessopolis
http://www.chessopolis.com/

...managed by Andy Serpa. The site has been maintained for at least
three years, a long time for a chess directory. The home page
announces '[November 26] New links added', the sixth time that the
list has been updated this year. Chessopolis includes a 'History /
Trivia' category.

Those of you who have websites know that one of the major jobs is
getting & keeping your site visible in the various directories &
search engines. I'd always found this task so frustrating and
unsatisfying that I stopped doing it three years ago. This means that
when I moved my world championship site two years ago from a free
server to a paid server, I did almost nothing to signal the address
update to places where the site was listed. I simply changed the
pages on the old server to redirect visitors automatically to the new
server. That way, any links pointing to my old address still
delivered visitors to the new address.

I can almost hear you saying, 'So what! What does that have to with
chess history?'. As luck would have it, my laziness gave me the
opportunity to measure how fast an address change is propagated
throughout the search sites. These are, after all, the sites that
help all of us find relevant information on the Web. When they are
out of date, we risk not finding the site that would best satisfy our
current information search

My first conclusion was that directories are never updated unless the
site owner requests the change. Chessopolis points to my newer
address in its 'Archives / Game Collections' only because I had a
brief correspondence with Serpa. He asked me to change my own link to
his site on my 'Web gadgets' page, where I list a number of chess
directories. After complying with his request, I requested similar
treatment, which was quickly granted.

My second conclusion was that while some search engines update site
addresses quickly, others never do an update. It all seems to depend
on the technical strategy behind the different engines. Google was
one of the first search engines to use my newer address. This is one
reason why I rely on it so heavily for my own searches -- I'm
confident that the addresses it returns on a search are as up-to-date
as current technical and commercial constraints allow.

You might be surprised to learn that -- more than two years after the
change -- some very well known search engines still point to my old
address, while the new address is missing. For those engines,
maintaining a current list of Web addresses is apparently not a
priority. I'm not yet prepared to name names, but one of these days
I'll analyze the data which I've accumulated and publish my list
of 'search engines filled with obsolete links'.

Getting back to the Dmoz list of chess directories, another of my
favorites on the list is...

Chess Encyclopedia
http://maskeret.com/mecca/index.shtml

...by Maurizio Mascheroni. I've been acquainted with this site for
more than four years, and have watched it go through a number of
design evolutions, all positive. Along with a well maintained
directory, it provides a number of features under 'Who, When and
Where' -- Who is Who, When and Where, Timeline, Today in the history -
- which are relevant to chess history.

Using the Chess Encyclopedia's 'Quick Search : A speedy method to
search in our links database', I searched on 'chess history' and
received a list of 1924 matches, far too many to handle in this
review. The list of 'Main categories' includes a history category
with 32 links, up from 31 only a few weeks ago, proof that the
directory is maintained. As for my own site, the Chess Encyclopedia
still points to the old address, because I've never requested a
change.

Another well known directory...

InternetChess.com
http://www.internetchess.com/

...has fallen on hard times. At one time it was maintained by Harris
Nizel and was the best chess directory on the Web. It appeared for
sale on eBay sometime in the first half of 2000 (I neglected to note
the exact date) where it failed to meet its reserve price. It then
appeared with a new look a few months later.

The rotating banner ads at the top of each page had been replaced by
links to 'The Week In Chess' (TWIC), plus other sites. The bottom of
each page mentioned 'copyright to Chess and Bridge Ltd.', the same
company name displayed on www.chesscenter.com, where TWIC lives. Most
importantly, the page announced that, 'InternetChess.com joins the
Brain Games Network [...] InternetChess.com will be the prime BGN
vehicle for transmitting the moves of this epic [Kasparov - Kramnik]
clash when it takes place in London over October and November.'

Today, well over a year after I noted the facts given in the previous
paragraph, the page still announces 'InternetChess.com will be the
prime BGN vehicle [etc.]' and carries the same pre-match publicity.
The bottom of the page now says, 'copyright to Brain Games Network
[...] Last updated 13/11/00', with no mention of Chess and Bridge
Ltd. Game 15, the last game of the Kasparov - Kramnik match, was
played on 2 November 2000, almost two weeks before the last update
was made to the page.

Similarly, the links in the directory seem not to have been updated
in a long time. It wouldn't surprise me to discover that no changes
have been made since Harris Nizel was in charge. Its link to my site
in 'Software and Game Collections' points, of course, to the old
address.

A directory which seems never to have been updated since its launch
three years ago is...

Chessking
http://www.chessking.com

...by Ari Burton. It also uses my old address in its 'Chess Events,
News, & Other Chess Information Sites' list of links. There are other
directories like Chessking, but they've all followed the same life
cycle -- launch it and leave it.

The four directories that I've just discussed are all relatively
small because they are specific to chess. Another common type of
chess directory is a single piece of a much larger, general purpose
directory, like the Dmoz link at the start of this article. The chess
sections of some other well known directories are...

Yahoo
http://dir.yahoo.com/Recreation/Games/Board_Games/Chess/
http://dir.yahoo.com/Recreation/Games/Board_Games/Chess/History/

LookSmart/AltaVista
http://altavista.looksmart.com/eus1/eus52213/eus141139/eus141155/eus14
2480/eus142488/
http://altavista.looksmart.com/eus1/eus317828/eus317852/eus142480/eus1
42488/eus547077/

About.com
http://chess.about.com/
http://chess.about.com/msub30.htm

...where I've included the address of the chess history section
beneath that of the general chess section. In my opinion the best of
this class of chess history directories is the last, which I reviewed
in Chess History on the Web 2000 no.7 (dated 2000/04/15); the review
can still be found at...

About.com's Chess History by David Dunbar
http://members.tripod.com/~Mark_Weeks/Sit-rvws/2000-08.txt

...Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have been updated since my
review more than a year and a half ago.

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For the chess directories having a subdirectory specific to chess
history, what can be said about the sites they reference? I captured
each directory's links to the different chess history sites and
loaded them all into a database for further scrutiny. The following
table shows the number of chess history sites linked by each
directory:-

12 About.com
28 Chessopolis
10 Dmoz
9 Looksmart
31 Maskeret Chess Encyclopedia
8 Yahoo

For example, the chess history directory in About.com lists 12 sites.
I then resolved addressing differences and, from the initial list of
98 addresses, produced a list of 13 sites referenced by more than one
directory:-

6 http://www.excaliburelectronics.com/uschf.html (-)
6 http://www.netcologne.de/~nc-jostenge/ (*)
5 http://misc.traveller.com/chess/history/ (*)
5 http://www.chessarch.com/arch.shtml (*)
5 http://www.goddesschess.com/
5 http://www.ishipress.com/origin.htm (-)
3 http://truth.wofford.edu/~kaycd/CHESS-GO/bf-moral.htm
3 http://www.chesshistory.com/ (*)
2 http://www.chessbaseusa.com/NY1924/ny1924.htm
2 http://www.galandor.org/resources/articles/games/chess2.asp (?)
2 http://www.geocities.com/oldinchess/index.htm (!)
2 http://www.princeton.edu/~jamesw/chess.html
2 http://www.xs4all.nl/~timkr/chess/chess.html (*)

As you can see, the first two sites on the list are referenced by all
six chess directories in the initial list. I haven't listed the
titles of these sites, because most of them can be deduced from the
addresses, and the rest you can visit yourself if you're interested.
Sites marked '(*)' are already on my master list of chess history
sites and have been the subject of previous reviews. Sites marked '(-
)' were on the list and were reviewed, but were removed for some
reason. The site marked '(?)' has disappeared. The sites not marked
have been left off my list for various reasons.

The site marked '(!)' is the only site on the list that I'd never
seen before. A Spanish language site located in Argentina, its name
is 'Old in Chess' and it's a good candidate for inclusion on my
master list. The content is still somewhat skimpy and it doesn't
appear to have been updated since July, so I'd prefer to see that
it's really alive before adding it to the list.

In addition to the sites listed by more than one directory, I found
50 sites referenced exactly once. Eight of these are already on my
master list, while one more was removed from the list because it no
longer exists. Of the remaining sites that I had never seen before,
four caught my attention...

La storia degli scacchi - 'The first site of chess art and culture
on Internet'
http://carmelo111.supereva.it/

Der Webseite von Harald E. Balló
http://www.ballo.de/

'Chess facts, chess links, great games, chess history, glossary,
great players, ...'
http://www.chess-poster.com/

'40 photographies d'objets et scčnes rares et plus de 50 textes
originaux'
http://www.chessgalaxy.com/

...These all deserve a longer look. That makes five new chess history
sites in five different languages -- a good catch for a few hours
work! I'll have more to say about these sites in a future review.

Bye for now,
Mark Weeks

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

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

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at...

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

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