Compartmentalising

About 6 months ago I split my blog in 2. This part remained dedicated to chess whereas material regarding coffee and other things in my life moved to a personal blog here. I have been able to post to both blogs, though this one stays updated more regularly, probably because chess is such a big part of my life. And I'm not the only one who splits their blogs. One of my favourite chess bloggers, Alexandra Kosteniuk has 2 sites, one of which is more personal to her, while the other deals with more general issues.

Well, I've decided to go one better (or should that be worse) and I'm splitting my blogosphere into 3! Besides this blog which will continue to deal with chess generally, and my own personal chess experiences, and my non chess blog, I am starting a blog to deal with chess in my city, Melbourne.

This third blog comes about because of a need for this thing in my area. To be honest, the state association's website is woeful. I went to look for some information about chess club's the other day, and couldn't find any. Chess Victoria is an organisation made up of a group of affiliated clubs and those clubs aren't even listed on their website! This didn't use to be the case, so I'm not sure what is happening. Chess Victoria used to link to their affiliate clubs, or at least acknowledge those clubs existed, although they never went further and mentioned non affiliated places where people could play chess, such as the State Library of Victoria.

Now if I was new to chess and wanted to play, or a chess player who was new to the area, one of the first things I'd do was visit some prominent chess sites, and there should be none more prominent than the state association's site. And from it, I would find out very little. The reason I know this information is that I know people who have done exactly that. They have visited Chess Victoria's website and come away with nothing. These same people then contact the chess shop I work at asking for information about chess in their area, although I guess many more don't bother and the chess community loses a group of possible new members.

Anyway, rant over. Just to say that much of the local chess content that this site has been covering will now cross to the Melbourne Chess News site, where I hope to compile a comprehensive list of links, a database of games, and a set of news stories about chess in Victoria and Melbourne.