Annual Survey

For a while I wasn’t sure if I wanted to join in the well-known end-of-the-year navel staring: the annual surveys. But simply too many great things were going on in the first year of Chessvibes (formerly Doggers-schaak), so looking back is actually a good idea.

It all started on 6 February. At first, the goal I had with my blog was to publish analysed games of myself. This was an experiment, with which I wanted to answer the question whether a blog is suitable for discussing chess games. The answer is yes, I think, although the chess world might not be fully ready for it yet. Anyway, soon I started to enjoy to post about other topics too. The theme chess improvement came by more than once, but more and more I started to write about international chess, usually with fragments of nice games I saw.

Chess for Zebras
The first highlight came quickly. In that first phase I was, together with Arne Moll, who’s now a regular contributor to this site, busy writing a lengthy review of the great book Chess for Zebras by Jonathan Rowson. It’s worth a read and you’ll recognize lots of situations. That I was enjoying the technical aspect of websites as well, can be seen in the fact that I was crazy enough to give that review a site of its own.

Freedom
The big advantage of a blog is of course the freedom you have. You can really do whatever you want. In my case this results in a variety of pieces, sometimes close to journalism, sometimes close to a column. In the former category, I had a true scoop, when Timman had resigned in a won position. Thanks to a MSN connection with one of the participants in Reykjavik, I was the first to bring this news. In the category columns I especially like this one. In that same week rapanui wrote a beautiful story about an encounter with Alexandra Kosteniuk. Meanwhile we’re already in april, and I had transferred to a new domain. New editors joined me: forest (Edwin Woudt) and oak (Yuri Eijk). Forest has published quite some nice stuff in the meantime, for example about Magnus Carlsen. With his first article, oak confirmed that this site is visited by GM’s as well: GM Erwin l’Ami posted an extensive comment on oak’s pawn ending.

Turin
The second highlight were the videos of the CPB Lightning Chess Tournament: hilarious images with complete two-minute games. I wasn’t using YouTube yet and unfortunately these videos don’t work anymore. (If somebody is able to view them, please let me know.) It was clear that this was something new and appreciated, so I decided to make many more videos.

Quite soon after this, the next highlight came. (I can’t call it something else – if you’re fed up with this ego tripping, do switch channels!): forest and peter in Turin! We visited the Olympiad and we can now say: we were there. At the Bermuda Party, the victory march of Aronian & co, the fighting chess of Nijboer, the loss of Bessel Kok… The month June ended with another video: an impression of the Dutch Championship in Hilversum.

ACT
In July I played in a tournament myself: the Amsterdam Chess Tournament. Ever since my blog I can’t walk around as player anymore; everywhere I’m also a (potential) reporter. When IM Sebastian Siebrecht was explaining his draw against Jan Timman on a demo board, I put that on film too. I can recommend that one! Co-editor rapanui also participated in the highest group of the ACT, he also suffered from the burning heat and he also published a post with fragments during the tournament!

In Augustus I was on holiday in the US. I had made 24 posts that were published automatically every day. Together they formed a contest with a real prize. The winner was Robert Kikkert and he could pick a book at New in Chess.

Early September had a kind of highlight, when I managed to make my site bilingual. As from 4 September almost all articles can also be read in English. Now I’d better start improving my English…

Kramnik-Topalov
Meanwhile, forest started to like reporting more and more and he played for journalist during a rapid tournament. And in the meantime I had transformed to such extent that I wanted to cover the international chess news as much as possible and as quick as possible. Especially during the Kramnik-Topalov match (during Toiletgate that is), I was quite active, stimulated by other blogs but also because I started to realize that the world of chess doesn’t have that many chess news sources. Besides some Russian sites, only Chessbase had uniqe material. And it was contagious: rapanui and forest too were doing great. It was nice to notice that amongst others, Hans Ree had appreciated our reporting.

Essent
The last highlight which cannot stay unmentioned was of course the Essent Tournament in Hoogeveen, where peter, forest and oak played and operated the camera. Because again, the videos did the job. The articles were mentioned more than once by big international sites such as TWIC, Chessbase, Susan Polgar and Mig Greengard. Later this succes had a small follow-up. In the video with the post-mortem of Polgar-Mamedyarov, Mame was showing an important line, which he used to trap Shirov a few weeks later. In other words: we’re talking about theoretical novelty that was already known, but only on YouTube!

The Blunder
One of the moments from 2006 we’ll never forget, was of course Kramnik’s Blunder. It led to new teamwork by rapanui and peter, when we quickly brought the article with an overview with blunders by other famous players. The two of us also did the report on Karel van Delft’s 50th birthday. And from early December I’ll mention the big in memoriam of David Bronstein and a large piece about Rybka.

All together it’s unbelievable how much has happened in a bit less than eleven months. Naturally, I wasn’t expecting this, when on 6 February I was thinking: okay, lets start a blog and put a game online. I was simply enjoying it more and more to write articles. It’s not only the thrill of being quick with news, but also a slight disappointment about how chess news is brought on the internet. Because I always want to learn from something, I add as many game fragments as possible to my texts - something I miss elsewhere. And actually I’m working on a site that looks like how I want it to look like. In a way, I am Chessvibes’ (formerly Doggers-schaak’s) biggest fan. As long as I can find what I’m looking for, the site is OK. And luckily more and more people think so too. Because the fact that by now 750 visitors come to my site each day, is great too of course. Thank you for staying with me, as it does stimulate to continue like this!

A happy new year! When amongst others, GM’s Erwin l’Ami and Karsten Müller will contribute, when many great things will happen during Corus and when, if everything goes according to plan, tomorrow will start with a big surprise already…