Chess
I don't usually like photos of animals being depicted doing human-type things but this photo just tickled my sense of humour as it's so realistic. The human looks for all the world like Brion James (Leon Kowalski in the original Blade Runner movie). Sadly, Brion passed away from a heart attack on August 7, 1999 at the age of 54.
Here is a site that offers a great many PGN games for free. Apparently more than one game can be stored using the format. The first PGN file that I downloaded contained six games of Philidor. It's amusing to compare the plethora of resources available now to what was available back in the 60s and 70s. Back then, for a time, I was involved in correspondence chess (using snail-mail) and I subscribed to a chess journal that used the classical or descriptive notation (P-K4) as opposed to the algebraic system (e4) in use nowadays.
I note that my copy of José Capablanca's "Chess Fundamentals" boasts algebraic formatting, even though it was written using descriptive notation. However, my copy of Emanuel Lasker's "Common Sense in Chess" is in the original notation. I never warmed to the algebraic notational system as it began its dominance in the 1970s. There is also a figurine system in which the letters of the algebraic system are replace with symbols, thus making the notation more language agnostic e.g. ♞c6 instead of Nc6.
See my blog post on how to embed a chess game in a website or blog (Google Sites seemingly doesn't allow the javascript to be inserted).
The website below is useful for seeing player ratings and it is updated quickly to reflect the most recent results in chess tournaments.
Here is a photograph of the first game that I ever recorded (back in 1981). For the story regarding this game, see this blog post.
Useful sites:
ChessPuzzle.net solve chess puzzles, track your progress and improve your play.
Paul Morphy: site dedicated to presenting all that is known about Paul Morphy
Chess History: no longer updated as of March 2020 but full of interesting information.
chess.com number one rated chess site, I play live games here
chessbase.com this is a good site for the latest information about chess events; you can also play games against Fritz or against human opponents in private chess room.
chessgames.com: contains a database of chess games that is freely accessible and downloadable
Ward Farnworth's A PREDATOR AT THE CHESS BOARD: a Field Guide to Chess Tactics
Chess ideas:
The Hedgehog (a pawn formation in chess adopted usually by Black that can arise from several openings).
Novelties:
Chess Variants from Wikipedia
Alexa rating of chess sites in term of popularity. Here are the current top ten as of May 1st 2020
Agadmator is the most popular YouTube channel for coverage of chess games.
