Following Chess Online

Every once in a while I post about some chess sites that I've seen and really like, so it's time for another one of these. First, the sites that I regularly go to and think are great haven't changed. I take a daily look at Chess.com and TWIC, regularly keep tabs on chessbase, chesscafe, and chess24 as well as following a number of Australian sites and blogs. But that doesn't mean that I don't check out new stuff.

The first thing that has me seeing new things is my Twitter feed. I can't praise it too much as a chess portal. I remember that there used to be chess websites that just had loads of links to other chess sites, and seem to remember one called chessopolis...actually, I wonder if that still exists? Apparently, chessopolis does! Ok, back to the plot. On Twitter I follow a number of chess players, chess journalists, chess writers, and chess sites and they link to other amazing sites. So here we go...

There are a number of Grandmasters who write online, and their material is excellent. I've followed Kevin Spraggett's blog for quite a while now and I'll be following some other GM's as well. Tiger Hillarp Persson's blog is amazing. He doesn't write often, but when he does, the material is unbelievable with deep analysis. Also, I like the name, Chess at the Bag of Cats. Another fantastic GM blog is that of English number 1 Michael Adams. I might be a bit biased here, as I am from England originally. I'm going to be trying more GM blogs in the future as the quality of material is excellent, and the personal comments about their chess experiences is great for a chess fan. I haven't really looked at World Champion, Magnus Carlsen's site yet, though it is an obvious one to consider. (on another patriotic note, Australian Grandmaster, David Smerdon's blog is an entertaining read).

But chess is not just about the top players. There are a lot of people writing about chess who aren't titles at all (I've decided to not claim my CM title!). The best site I've recently found is called old in chess. This site looks at news from 100 years ago and as this is 2014, 100 years ago saw one of the greatest tournaments in history, St Petersburg with Lasker winning ahead of a star studded field including Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch, Marshall etc. The tournament was played in the first half of 1914, so go check out the site and read about a piece of chess history. This is now a big favourite of mine! Much more so than the new playing site FIDE online arena which I'll advise people to go check out for themselves as I don't like much negativity in my blog. I didn't like the site, though it is still being developed so it may become better so check it out as a playing site.

Finally, the absolute stars of online blogging are women, with Grandmasters Susan Polgar and Alexandra Kosteniuk leading the way. I personally have been enjoying the site of another top woman player, Natalia Pogonina. It has regular updates (daily mainly) with great photo's, analysis and stories

Hope you enjoy some of these sites, check out the ones in my links, and if you can recommend any others please do as I'm always on the lookout for new material.