Yesterday, July 20th, 2006, five $100 gift certificates were awarded to newsletter subscribers, product reviewers, and customers at random! Congratulations to the following winners from May and June 2006!

1. Shirley Miller
2. Nathaniel Smith
3. Gus Faddoul
4. Matthew Strine
5. Ken Grant

You could recieve a $100 gift certificate too! For some reason that people love $100 certificates. Here's a few ways to qualify:

1. Receive an entry for every short product review you write
2. Place an order
3. Join on the newsletter

With one round to go in the Norwegian Championship, taking place in the town of Moss one hour south of the capital Oslo, 15 year old prodigy GM Magnus Carlsen (2675) is on his way to becoming Norway's youngest national champion ever. Beating 3rd ranked GM Rune Djurhuus (2462) in round 8, he is now a full point ahead of his main rival and former trainer, GM Simen Agdestein (2575) before the 9th and last round Saturday 04:00 EDT (4:00 AM ICC time).

Agdestein, who holds the current record for becoming the youngest national champion at the age of 15, was defeated by Carlsen in round 7 in a very interesting game in the French Defence where Agdestein's exposed king was the decisive factor.

The 15 year old has now secured at least a playoff as he is one point ahead of Agdestein. However, he is surely interested in clinching the title once and for all. He lost the playoff in 2004 to tomorrow's round 9 opponent GM Berge Østenstad (2480) and Agdestein in 2005.

Standings After Round 8

1      7.0  Carlsen
2      6.0  Agdestein
3      5.0  Djurhuus Sahl Østenstad
4-10   4.5  Bae Johannessen S.Gabrielsen 

The ICC is having live relay coverage of the event. You can find more details about the tournament on the ICC tournament page or on the official web site (Norwegian).

You can also download all of the games played in the tournament.

As the rumours fly, the love-hate relationship grows. Bobby Fischer remains to be the world renowned, yet entirely enigmatic chess player. Whether or not his antics were aimed at publicity, his name still remains the household standard of a chess genius. Some thought his reappearance would be legendary, that he would write more pages in the recordbooks of chess.

Today the name Bobby Fischer holds much less respect among the well informed. Bobby's radical forms of expression have defied logic and turned his chess genius into a question of sanity.

STILL... who wonders if this same Bobby, 34 years later still holds the chess abilities that he claims? Remember, this is Bobby Fischer, the chess great. It might seem like a past life, but it's still Bobby Fischer.

We now might dismiss our prejudices and let another match form between him and one of today's chess greats, namely Anatoly Karpov. While it might only ride on the name of Fischer, it will certainly draw attention from ever chess player that has ever heard of Bobby. Deep down each one still has that unanswered question lingering.... can Bobby Fischer still play chess?

BIG NEWS! A match is potentially forming between Bobby and Karpov. We are following the story and are keeping in touch with the organizers to bring you more details as it develops.

Frank Camaratta, one of the best known chess set designers in the world has taken his art to a new level and designed a chess set just for this match. This chess set was placed in a chess bag from The Chess House and presented to Bobby recently. So yes, you can actually buy the same style of chess bag that Bobby Fischer owns. lol.

Above, the organizers admire the chess set. Frank himself appears 2nd from the right.

A new article on algebraic chess notation is available online. This chess notation article introduces and explains the most common method of writing dow n chess moves. You can download and print the PDF version of the article and distribute it for your chess students.

There are many good reason's for writing down your chess moves. Chess notation enables you to record your games for playback later. That day you played a superb game of chess... wouldn't you like to be able to play through it later and show your friends? Recording the game with chess notation enables you to study, replay, or show the game later!

Chess Assistant 9 vs. ChessBase 9. Which one is better? which one should you use? The programs are very different. Though they serve the same purpose of analysing databases of games, helping you study chess, both are very dis-similar in design.

Though both programs are the leaders in database chess software, ChessBase is recognized as the premier product. It is reliable, powerful, and the standard of many top chess players.

Chess Assistant has a reputation for occassional bugginess as the Russian developers hurried to stay apace ChessBase products. Chess Assistant does lead in terms of an easier, more intuitive interface. Their product is easy to understand, while some have complained that ChessBase requires some getting used to.

The ChessBase 9 software is in my opinion still the leader by a narrow margin, but you will pay less for ChessAssistant 9. The newly released Chess Assistant 9 (June 2006) is available in Mega, Professional, and Starter versions.

Algebraic Chess Notation is today's universally accepted chess language. Though there are other styles, algebraic notation has been accepted as the standard by the international chess organization called FIDE. FIDE governs all world-class chess competitions.

There are many good reason's for writing down your chess moves. Chess notation enables you to record your games for playback later. That day you played a superb game of chess... wouldn't you like to be able to play through it later and show your friends? Recording the game with chess notation enables you to study, replay, or show the game later!

Many players like to record their chess games and later enter those games into chess database software which allows them to further study and analyse their game. The chess software will analyse and point out mistakes or places where they could have played much better moves. It's a great way to improve your chess play. It's almost a secret weapon since a remarkably small percentage of chessplayers utilize this concept of chess improvement - and the tools are right there!

Here's a tutorial you can reference to help learn the Algebraic Chess Notation. There's even an online video illustration of the chess notation.