From: "World Chess Championship", INTERNET:newsletter@mark-weeks.com Date: 00/03/01, 14:23 Re: Chess History on the Web (2000 no.5) The next review, following the Chess History bookmarks, is for the World Champions by Tryfon Costas Gavriel. The site is listed in the bookmarks at address... http://www.insight.demon.co.uk/Technical_Articles/worldchamps/worldchamps.htm ...and calls itself the 'Barnet Chess Club on-line evolving suite of World Champions papers'. It lists the 13 official world chess champions from Steinitz through Kasparov and links to full biographies for the first four champions plus Fischer. The first biography, on Steinitz, was released around the end of 1998, after which the others appeared on an irregular schedule. I assume that all 13 champions will eventually be covered. The domain www.insight.demon.co.uk (also www.chessclub.demon.co.uk) is a page with a single line, 'Click here for Barnet Chess Club!'. It points to http://www.gtryfon.demon.co.uk/bcc, which is a main page titled 'Chessworld.net'. Indeed, www.chessworld.net is another address for the same site. A click on the 'Culture' link goes to a different index [culture.htm] of the five world champion biographies. A Webmasters page tells us that the Barnet Chess Club is located in North London, UK, & that the Barnet pages are maintained by Gavriel & Janet Edwardson. Gavriel is a member of the Chess History discussion group. He's only posted there once -- to announce the release of the Capablanca page -- but has posted more frequently to the rec.games.chess groups. In addition to the biographies, the main index page links to the 'World Champions Java Browser' for 'a selection of the games' of each champion. The particular browser used here is by Eduardo Suastegui. The page says 'Please visit his web site for details of this technology and to give feedback', but clicking on the link produces a 'File Not Found (Error 404)' message. The java browser page contains links to the games for each of the 13 champions & lists the corresponding file size. I wanted to compare at least one of the Barnet game collections to the corresponding UPITT PGN file. When I tried to do this, I ran into technical problems manipulating the Barnet files, didn't have time to solve them, & gave up. A simple count of games in the two directories... Barnet: http://www.insight.demon.co.uk/tutordec98/ UPITT : ftp://136.142.185.47/group/student-activities/chess/PGN/Players/ ...shows... Barnet:alekhine.pgz 2259 games UPITT:a_alekpg.zip 2259 games Barnet:fischer.pgz 856 games UPITT:fisch-pg.zip 853 games Barnet:spassky.pgz 343 games UPITT:spass-pg.zip 2416 games ...I noticed that Barnet's Fischer file contains 18 games played in 1990 by other than Bobby Fischer. The UPITT file also has 19 games not played by Fischer, so the two files are essentially the same. The Spassky file is the only file of the three which is significantly different. Going back to the main index page for the biographies [worldchamps.htm], I noticed a few factual errors -- Fischer is listed as champion from 1975 to 1985; Alekhine is listed only for 1927-35 (there is no mention of 1937-1946); & Karpov is called the 'current FIDE world champion'. I don't want to exaggerate the importance of these mistakes, which usually arise from copy & paste operations rather than from ignorance. Unfortunately, the site is riddled with small errors like these, which lead me to believe that much of the material has not been checked before release. The Karpov remark is simply out of date, unless Barnet believes that Karpov's claim to the FIDE title is legitimate. I decided to take a closer look at one of the biographies. I chose Alexander Alekhine's biography, which is at address... http://www.chessclub.demon.co.uk/culture/worldchampions/alekhine/alekhine.htm ...The page is 75K in size and is peppered with photos. When I printed it, I received 18 hardcopy pages on my printer. This must be one of the single largest sources of material about Alekhine available on the Web. The Alekhine page starts with a link to the r.g.c message announcing the release of the material on 1999-12-18. This is a clever idea which links the content of the page to a discussion about the content, thereby drawing on the unique power of the Web. The first response to the announcement raised the issue of Alekhine's WWII 'anti Jewish propaganda' and continued over 37 posts. The second response was from someone apparently having browser trouble and drew no further responses. Those are the only two responses. The index of the Alekhine biography includes:- - Personal Background - Match/ Tournament History - Game philosophy - Literary contributions - Other activities - Quotes - Games - Research references and credits - Relevant web sites - Revision history - Further reading which are all internal links to sections of the same page. With the exception of the page on Fischer, the bios for the other four champions are similar. The index for the Fischer biography is a small page which links to several other pages. [Match/ Tournament History] has many links to pages dedicated to one of Alekhine's games. The first is Alekhine - Marotti from the 1922 London tournament, which uses another Java browser, this time related to ChessBase software. At a high level, the structure of the Barnet pages matches the structure of the book 'World Chess Champions', edited by E.G. Winter and published in 1981. Both the site & the book are separated into biographies of the different world champions. I compared Barnet's section on Alekhine's [Match/ Tournament History] with the list in Winter's book, where the chapter on Alekhine was written by Bernard Cafferty. Not surprisingly, the two lists are very similar. Cafferty's list of 'tournament and match records' includes three events which Barnet doesn't mention -- a tournament in Paris (1914) and matches with Capablanca (1913) & Evenssohn (1916). Barnet lists four tournaments which Cafferty doesn't mention -- Moscow (1907), Moscow ii (1909), Venice (1929), & Nice (1931), but also lists Manheim [spelling?] (1914) & Dresden (1936) twice. Alekhine's two volumes of 'My Best Games of Chess' don't mention any of the discrepancies, except Nice (1931), which is listed as 'Consultation Games' (+4-4=0). Kotov's biography of Alekhine lists all the tournaments, but neither of the matches. There are a few differences in dates -- a match with Nimzovich (Barnet - 1913; Cafferty - 1914) & a tournament in Moscow (Barnet - 1916; Cafferty - 1915). At least one tournament is given with a completely different result in both sources -- Bad Nauheim (1937; Barnet - Alekhine 1st at +11-0=4; Cafferty - 2nd-3rd at +3-2=1) -- there may be other discrepancies, because I'm not absolutely sure I compared every result in the two sources. Alekhine's books list a 'German Quadrangular Tourney' in 1937, giving the same result as Cafferty; there are also two complete games from the tournament which mention that they were played in Bad Nauheim. Kotov resolves the date discrepancies in favor of Barnet & the Bad Nauheim result in favor of Cafferty; the tournament following Bad Nauheim has the same result that Barnet gives for Bad Nauheim, which means that it is a transcription error. Now it's clear that Barnet has copied from Kotov, but has introduced a few errors. This means that my little comparison of Barnet & Cafferty was really a comparison of Kotov & Cafferty. Within specific years the events often have a different order in the Barnet & Cafferty lists. Which is chronologically correct? Here I suspect that Cafferty paid more attention to chronology. Barnet, for example, lists two events -- the 1927 match with Euwe & the 1927 New York tournament -- after the 1927 title match with Capablanca. This is misleading. Alekhine lists the results of the Euwe match & the New York tournament (March) only in his first book; the title match (September++) is listed only in the second book. There are a few other errors. The section on [Literary contributions] says Alekhine's 'My Best Games of Chess 1908-1937' was published in 1927 -- meaning the book was published before the last games were played! This title of the book is, of course, '1908-1923'. The section [Further reading] makes the same mistake. Spelling is a small problem. [Further reading] mentions the 'Fisher-Spassky' match, a mistake which always makes me cringe, especially on eBay where many people hawk 'Fisher' chess memorabilia. There are also references to both Rubenstein & Rubinstein (both Akiba) and to Sämisch & Saemisch (both Fritz). On seeing 'downlad' instead of 'download', I decided to run the page through a free Web checking tool. The only nonchess error was 'downlad', so this is not a big problem. Many great chess players have led unusual private lives. How does Barnet handle the most famous controversies in Alekhine's life?... Q: The doctoral degree from the Sorbonne? A: 'certain sources, e.g. Hooper state that he never completed his doctorate at Sorbonne' Q: The return match with Capablanca? A: 'Capablanca was denied a rematch with Alekhine. His relations with Alekhine his former friend degenerated into a public feud.' Q: The several marriages? A: The only mention is 'In 1921 Alekhine married again - a swiss delegate, Anneliese Rüegg. This is strange because it is unclear what the state of his current marriage was. This new marriage enabled Alekhine to get permission to travel across the Soviet borders. He went to Berlin, soon abandoned his wife, and became a chess professional, never again to return to Russia.' There is mention neither of the marriages to Nadezhda Vasilieff in the 1920's & Grace Wishaar in the 1930's, nor of Alekhine's apparent preference for much older women. Q: The alcoholism? A: 'It was noted that Alekhine had turned up drunk for some of the games in this [1935 match with Euwe].' Q: The anti-Semitic articles? A: 'In 1941 Alekhine wrote a series of anti-Semitic chess articles. Was the motivation of this to collaborate with the Nazis in order to protect his wife and their French assets?'. Q: The circumstances surrounding his death? A: 'In a Lisbon Hotel, Alexander Alekhine aged 53 was found dead in his room with a chess set in his hands'. More could be said here, but it's all speculation. ...Sooner or later, everyone who is interested in chess history becomes aware of these issues. Barnet mentions them without passing judgement; in my opinion this is enough. Each of these topics could always be expanded later into a separate essay. Another fact which caught my eye was, '[Alekhine's] historical ELO rating has been calculated to be 2690.' This seemed low, but the same number is given as Alekhine's best 5-year average in 'The Rating of Chessplayers, Past and Present' by Arpad Elo. The book also indicates that he reached his peak between 1930 & 1935. The same source gives Capablanca's best 5-year average as 2725 with a peak around 1920; Euwe's is 2650 peaking in 1935; Bogolyubow is assigned 2610 with no peak years given. --- While we're waiting for the eight missing biographies to be completed, what other resources for world chess champions are available on the Web? The most important site used to be www.chesschampions.com, but it disappeared sometime last year. I checked to see how many chess pages still link to Chesschampions & was surprised when AltaVista reported 261 links! Old Web sites never die; they live forever in hyperlinks. Barnet links to 'The Game is Afoot' at http://www.pstat.ucsb.edu/~carlson/chess/. This site has biographies of 13 chessplayers, three of which were world champions. It doesn't seem to have been updated since September 1999, so I'm not sure if it's being maintained. I searched the Web for other sites dedicated to world champions and found the following in the English language... History Of Chess http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Ring/4860/history.html "This information is copied from World Chess Champions Website". The Greatest Chess Masters http://cmgm.stanford.edu/~marin/masters.html Covers Morphy (4 links) & Steinitz (2 links). Bill Wall's List of Chess Masters http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/masters2.htm Has 22 biographies, including 10 world champions (plus Khalifman). Gallery of Champions http://library.thinkquest.org/10746/nf_champions.html Has 15 brief biographies including all world champions. GM Ron Henley's Profiles of the World Champions http://www.smartchess.com/smartchessonline/SmartChessOnline/archive/worldchampions/wcindex.htm Brief biographies covering only the 13 world champions. ...That's proof that there is great general interest in the personalities & careers of the world chess champions. --- Although I've called the site 'Barnet' throughout this review, let's give credit where it's due. Tryfon Gavriel is creating the best single resource on the Web for information about the world champions. I hope he continues with the missing biographies & fixes some of the little problems which have crept into his released material. The more accurate it is, the more useful it will be -- to everyone. Bye for now, Mark Weeks