First Chess Improvement Blog Carnival: January 4, 2011

The first edition of the Chess Improvement Carnival will be on January 4, 2011. You can make submissions here. Deadline for submission is New Year's Day January 1, 2011.

Because it is the first edition, I'm accepting any post from the past year, so it will actually be a 'Best of 2010' carnival! It can be about tactics, strategy, humor, book reviews, annotated, games: anything relevant to the theme of chess improvement.

How it works
You can submit a post of your own, or posts from other people that you think deserve wider readership. It can cover any aspect of chess improvement. If you aren't sure if a post is "good enough" to submit, then err on the side of submitting it. I will filter out spam or irrelevant posts (e.g., a post about full body scanning at airports). As long as it is about chess improvement, it is the right subject (if it is chess news, then it isn't the right place).

The carnival itself will be a post with an annotated list of the accepted submissions.

Volunteer to host future carnivals
My plan is that we have a chess improvement carnival the fourth day of every month. If you are interested in hosting a future carnival at your blog, email me (bluedevil [dot] knight [at] yahoo.com).

Chess improvement carnival

Happy Thanksgiving folks!!!

I'm gonna initiate a chess improvement blog carnival. The way it will work: every month (or two months depending on demand), we will have a chess improvement blog carnival which gives an annotated list of the best entries from the last month. I hope we can have a different blogger host the carnival each month, but I will host the first one.

There used to be a general chess blog carnival, but it is discontinued, plus it wasn't focused on chess improvement but was more diffuse and focused on politics, news and such as much as improvement.

More details next week. If you have ideas for a logo, let me know.

What is happening to the chess blogosphere?

Who is posting regularly, what is going on out there? I haven't followed things, need to update my blog, sidebar, etc.. Let me know in the comments what you think (the three people still reading this anyway :).

As far as maintaining a 'ring' of sites, someone in comments to previous section pointed out that they end up with a bunch of dead sites, so it is better to have someone in charge of maintaining lists and such, trimming out dead sites, and blocking spam/ad sites from getting in.

It took about an hour a week to maintain the Knights Errant lists and membership. It worked out pretty well. We had a great group, and it helped a lot to have someone actively promoting it, and acting as a semi-official face of the aggregate. Once I stopped, Glenn Wilson did a good job but eventually he had to move on, and after that the Knights Errant slid into oblivion.

Some kind of ACIS (Adult Chess Improvement Seekers) idea is better than the Knights Errant, as the only thing people have in common is a desire to improve at chess, no obsession with de la Maza's circles. No requirements or anything other than maintaining active site to stay on the list. And of course, technically it should be 'CIS' (Chess Improvement Seekers) as children can get in on the action too. I was hoping it would really blow up.

Someone should volunteer to take over the ACIS stuff, I would be happy to give advice and help with starting an ACIS blog, a place to inform people and maintain a list. If I was still into chess, I would do it but I am very focused on work, baby right now.

I could also change the Knights Errant blog to link to the ACIS blog.

Or am I just being Quixotic, thinking there is a place to pool our improvement blogs into a loose coalition?

Or maybe we shouldn't limit it to improvement blogs, but have a chess meta-blog that keeps track of all chess blogs by category? That would be nice, but an infinite amount of work. It's better to have a coalition of people that want to be a part of it, that way the person keeping the list doesn't have to go out searching for content; it comes to her/him.

What do people think?

Takchess back?

One of the great Knights Errant of yore, Takchess has a new post up at his blog. Hey Tak, great to have you back. The Knights are dead, but have been replaced by a new group of adult improvers, the ACIS of evil, list maintained by Blunderprone.

Note: Apparently blunderprone has taken a break from blogging. Have the ACIS of Caissa discussed who will take up the gauntlet?

I'm thinking we should start a more traditional web ring, of chess improvers. These groups are dying as fast as they are born these days.