05.12.2006
Alexander Kentler. CROSSROADS. WE ARE THREE YEARS OLD!
Three years is a solid age for electronic mass media. Just a glance at the Russian map of chess sites will be enough to appreciate it: on the contrary to the GOELRO plan where the lights that had already been shining were added by the new ones there is a total disorder in the chess electronic field. The sites come and go, some of them for ever some just to reappear once again…
In the past three years we may firstly enter on our credit side the fact that the site has acquired the constant readers of more than 80 countries. Of course the main merit belongs to our constant authors. I’d like to mark out the excellent chess researcher Mark Dvoretsky. We have published about 30 works of his including several fundamental ones. The publications of Victor Korchnoi, Evgeny Sveshikov, Yury Razuvaev, Mark Taimanov, Viorel Bologan, Ilya Odessky and Vladimir Barsky aroused great readers’ interest. Always original and unexpected are the articles of the writer Victor Toporov. Once starting to read Genna Sosonko’s brilliant essays you just can’t tear yourself away. Remembered by our readers are the interviews with Vladimir Kramnik, Victor Korchnoi, Peter Svidler, Alexander Khalifman, Sergey Rublevsky, Alexander Motylev and many other well-known players.
During the last year we provided on-line comments on the games of the most important international events including the tournaments for the world title. Here we are firstly thankful to our commentators GMs Konstantin Sakaev, Vassily Yemelin and Sergey Ivanov. In the days of on-line translations the amount of spectators was so high that our site simply couldn’t stand the load. At present time we are realizing a technical re-equipment and hopefully to the beginning of series of great tournaments of the year 2007 our users will get an opportunity to observe these events easily.
It’s impossible to imagine our site without a column “Game of the Month”. Notkin who is in charge of it for two years does his duty with loving care. If someone foolishly thinks chess becomes boring and insipid – go to Maxim’s treasury! In the section “Portrait of a Chessplayer” we have already presented Morozevich and Leko, Ivanchuk and Shirov, Anand and Topalov, Khalifman and Bareev, Kasimdzhanov and Sutovsky… Kramnik is waiting for his turn.
One of the important parts of our work is the surveys of the large-scale events which by our request were prepared by Konstantin Sakaev, Sergey Ivanov, Denis Yevseev, Sergey Ionov, Andrey Lukin, Alexey Lugovoi, Nikita Vitiugov, Alexey Bezgodov, Ivan Smykovsky, Sergey Klimov and others.
We try not to forget about the history of
We have to bow low to Vladimir Alexandrovich Bazhenov for the very existence of the site. I’d like to express my gratitude to Vladimir Balakirev who shovels a pile of technical problems, to our interpreters and to everyone who ever worked for the site.
We are facing the tasks of making the site more attractive in outward appearance, to improve the navigation and to recruit new interesting writers. We’ll keep on working!
