Subject:
      Site review - Chess Curiosities
Date:
      1999/07/22
Author:
      Mark Weeks <100046.2106@compuserve.com>

The sixth review, covering the next Chess History bookmark, is for 'Chess
Curiosities' by Tim Krabbé. The main page is at
http://www.xs4all.nl/~timkr/chess/chess.html. It has links to a number
of articles, each article examining a topic which Krabbé has personally
researched. The articles cover various aspects of chess --
personalities, games, moves, studies, computers -- usually in
combination.

The best word to characterize this site is 'entertaining'. It addresses the
amusing side of chess & chess history, the side where Caissa'a elves play.
You'll find many things here that you never knew & that you won't find
anywhere else. Once you know them, they won't make you a stronger player
or change your life, but they will give you a deeper appreciation for the beauty
& mystery of chess. It's the kind of page where you can click on any link &
discover a page on some topic that may never have interested you. Now that
you're confronted with it, you wonder why it never interested you. Krabbé has
a talent for finding those topics.

A few articles are in Krabbé's native Dutch language, which I understand only
a little. I don't know of any Web services which can translate Dutch language
pages into English or another language, so these will remain undiscovered to
most of us. As with many Dutch nationals, Krabbé writes with a clarity and a
command of English that outshines many native English & American
speakers.

When I first looked at the page, I noted the titles of the different links. When I
went back a few weeks later, there was at least one new link as well as some
subtle differences with the other link anchors. The page is alive and
maintained.

The first link, 'Open chess diary', is a series of short articles, many of which
are probably in a long germination phase on their way to becoming full
articles. The 'Games page' covers the material on other pages, but has links
to ZIPped PGN files & allows for online viewing using Chess Tutor.

There are another ~30 articles linked from the main page. 'Alekhine's five
Queen game' is the famous game given by Alekhine in 'My Best Games of
Chess 1908-1923', which he covered in his notes to Tarrasch - Alekhine,
St.Petersburg, 1914. Krabbé gives background to the origin of the game,
refutes Alekhine's claim that the 26th move was a clear win, & tries to show
where White missed a real win. 'On Fischer' comments on the Philippine
Bombo Radyo interviews with Fischer, including the ways in which Fischer's
tirades touch Krabbé personally. 'Stiller's Monsters' covers the computer
generated endgame databases which seem to be raising as many new
questions as they are answering old ones.

'Dear Pitt Chess Club' discusses an error in a UPITT file. It concerns a 1967
game Krabbé played against Timman. The game was a draw, but is recorded
in the file as a win for Timman. I know that this is a problem with UPITT. I have
found & fixed many errors in their game collections, including an Interzonal
which had the colors for the players reversed and which gave the wrong player
as having won. Although UPITT is one of the best resources on the Internet,
no one can blindly accept all of the game scores which are found there.

You may rightly ask what difference it makes if opening variations contain
inconsequential move transpositions (1.e4 e6 2.d4 instead of 1.d4 e6 2.e4)
-or- if sealed moves are missing for adjourned games which were not
resumed. Some errors are more important than others. Krabbé's complaint,
where a tournament result is wrong, is more serious,
distorting chess history.

I suppose that the UPITT administrators could set up an area for errata, where
researchers could record discrepancies between their material & other
sources. This does not address the real problem, which is to resolve the
discrepancies. I have often seen differences between game scores in different
books & magazines. Determining which source is right is not trivial. In
Krabbé's case, he played the game, so he knows, but in many cases the
authorities are no longer with us.

Technically speaking, the pages have few bells & whistles. They are clean,
neat, &, with the exception of the Java viewer, load quickly. There is one link
anchor ('Loman's move...') where the link is missing. The page source shows
a link, but my browser doesn't display it. Maybe it has something to do with
the accented character in the anchor.

There is a snippet of HTML which occasionally appears on the fifth line if the
page. While preparing this review, I noticed it, I commented on it, noticed that
it had disappeared, removed the comment, noticed that it had reappeared, &
wrote this comment. This time it stays.

Many of the pages use a double frame, splitting the page vertically, with
vertical scroll bars. Diagrams to the positions are shown in the left frame; the
discussion of the diagrams is in the right frame. Since both frames can be
scrolled independently, the diagram can be kept in view even though the
accompanying text may require scrolling.

An animated GIF at the bottom of the main page shows the moves of an
endgame study. It moves a little too fast, at least for me, to
appreciate the first time, but repeats endlessly. When the page is refreshed, a
new study is loaded.

The site could perhaps use an embedded search engine, but it's not entirely
clear that this would add any real value. This is not a site where people come
to get all the information on a specific topic. It's a site where people come to
wonder at the curious in chess.

Respectfully,
Mark Weeks