Subject: Site review - Chess Archaeology Date: 1999/06/13 Author: Mark Weeks <100046.2106@compuserve.com> My second subject for a chess history site review is 'Chess Archaeology' by Nick Pope (Jacques N. Pope) at http://www.chessarch.com. This site is an evolution of the material which was formerly on the site of the Michigan Chess Association (MCA), now at http://www.michess.org/index.htm, which Pope also maintains. Since opening the Archaeology site, Pope's own work on the MCA pages is limited to Michigan activities. --- The main page of 'Chess Archaeology' has seven links, although the imagemap and the navigation bar do not have identical links. [Excavations] The Excavations page is a chess history ezine. When I started preparing this post, I found four issues -- February through May 1999, where the May issue listed:- - 'The Blackburne-Zukertort Match, London 1881 (Game 6)' by Nick Pope - 'Unknown Games of Mikhail Tal' by Tomasz Lissowski - 'To Checkmate the Kaiser' by John S. Hilbert A few days later, I found a new June issue with 'The Blackburne-Zukertort Match, London 1881 (Game 7) by Nick Pope'. The 'Game 6' issue had disappeared from the page, although it's still listed under the 'Game 7' link, along with games 1-5. I conclude that the site is alive and well, unlike the Caxton site that I reviewed last week. Pope regularly announces changes to the Chess Archaeology site in rec.games.chess (r.c.g), which is how I first found it. Under the February issue is an article co-authored by Chris Ravilious, who has posted to this Chess History discussion group, as well as to other r.g.c groups. If you are interested, you can see all of his posts from the Deja Power Search page at http://www.deja.com/home_ps.shtml by searching on his email address. [Library] The Library page has links to five 'archives' -- Articles, Database, ECO/Nomenclature, Links, & Research. The 'Articles Archive - Previous Chess Archaeology Excavations' has ten articles, eight of them by Pope. These articles seem not to be linked from other pages on the site. I suppose that they are from former days when Pope published his work under the MCA banner. The 'Database Archive - Games in PGN format' has links to 'Match index', which has games from six 19th century matches, to 'Other games' which lists a single file, and to 'National Database Archives' which lists 25 countries. I looked at the 'Blackburne-Steinitz match, London 1876' in the 'Match index' and found a PGN file with annotations from an 1876 source. I assume that the other files follow the same concept. For the 'National Archives', I looked at Denmark, because I used to live in Copenhagen & played on a first division team in the Danish chess league. Clicking on the link opened the URL in a new browser window, which I didn't pursue. There is a wealth of material behind these 25 links. The 'ECO/Nomenclature Archive - Openings classified by ECO code' has links to five pages, each representing one volume (A-E) of the Encyclopedia of Chess Openings. I open my own games with 1.e4, so I looked at volume B, which has eight links. I selected 'B20-B59 Sicilian part I', which opened a ~30K page, where each of the 40 ECO sections is represented by a two column table with opening moves in the first column & the opening names in the second column. The 'Links Archive - Websites we have exchanged links with' has 12 reciprocal links including this Chess History discussion group. I assume that Pope is tracking incoming hits on his site to monitor referring pages. Each link is represented by a nice image from the target site. The 'Research Archive - Tools, aids, and continuous projects' has one link to 'Allan Savage - Selected U.S. Chess Libraries', which lists a dozen libraries. About half of the resources have links to another site. [Museum] The Museum page has five links classified as Photographs & Drawings. I looked at the five links and found that each is a page of more links. Behind each of these links is a single image. There are no thumbnails before the final image is displayed. Two of the five linked pages have only one linked image. [Journal] The Journal page has links to 'Questions & Answers' and 'Site Log'. The Q&A page currently has links to six questions, the first dated 1999-02-01. Two of the questions have answers. The posts are entered via a mailto link on the Q&A page. The Site Log is a 'What’s New' page starting 1999-02-01, although it didn't list either of the more recent Blackburne-Zukertort articles (games 6 & 7) that I mentioned earlier. [Market] The Market page lists five publications with links. I looked at Pope's 'Harry Nelson Pillsbury - American Chess Champion' page and found three images, which seem to be a scan of the first page of a book plus the covers of the hardcover & softcover editions of the same book. The address of the publisher is at the bottom of the page. There are no prices or explicit information on how to order the books, so no one is ever going to accuse Pope of hardsell ecommerce tactics. [Openings] The Openings page links to the same resource as 'ECO/Nomenclature' on the Library page. [Legend] The Legend page has a few tips on the icons & terminology used on other pages. --- There's no question about it -- Nick Pope is serious about chess history. Five or six years ago, when I was just getting started with chess data, I found a PGN file on Compuserve containing ~200 games of Emanuel Lasker (my numbers here are only estimates). I worked hard for weeks, added another ~150 games, and proudly sent my new file back to Compuserve. A year or so later I found another file on the Net with more than a thousand Lasker games. That file had been prepared by Nick Pope & I knew immediately how much work he had done to assemble it. Pope obviously has access to impressive offline resources. I hope that his Chess Archaeology site will continue to improve and expand. It is already an excellent resource. I do, however, have a few technical nitpicks. All of the pages lack titles, so it's difficult to move back to a specific page already opened in the browser. This also hurts the chance of any page getting a good rank in queries to certain search engines. Then there is the problem that Web surfers have in identifying the pages displayed in a search engine list. The pages could use a bit more color. Pope knows how to use color -- his links page shows that. A little more color on some of the pages would help to differentiate the material. Like it or not, the Web is a visual medium. The site could use its own internal search engine, like the one offered by http://www.beseen.com/mysearch/. A recent post to r.c.g confirmed this... >Subject: Re: CHESS ARCHAEOLOGY [May 13] >Date: 1999/05/17 >Author: Renegade Knight <_Renegade5_@yahoo.com>
Is it just me.... or does anyone else have trouble finding things at "Chess Archaelogy"?? I didn't have a lot of time to spend, but still - I tried, honest, to no avail, to find "Unknown Games of Mikhail Tal". I saw the entry in the site log, I saw the Blackburne-Zukertort match, I saw other stuff by Tomasz Lissowsk... but I didn't see "Unknown Games of Mikhail Tal"... I guess they're destined to remain unknown :-)
The Chess Archaelogy site deserves to be better known. -- Mark Weeks