As a chessplayer I find it hard to see a more important event than the Chess World Championship. Today I was cruising chessblogland and I found on Susan's Blog a letter from FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov.

The letter issued by his office and translated very poorly is in essence one big excuse for his not showing up to the Championship. He managed financially to make it to the Women's World Championship but now when the best in the World is being decided he's nowhere to be seen. GENS UNA SUMUS indeed.

No doubt he's skipping on the Championship for other reasons. Why couldn't he just state those? Why does he have to lie and say 'FIDE can't afford a coach plane ticket'. It's a pointless lie that's a symptom of a bigger disease that plagues FIDE. I'm disappointed but I'll go play some chess and get over it.

That's right friends ... Mark Dvoretsky the scientific and thorough author of the instant classic "Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual" has now tackled the more complicated portion of chess ideology. I can't wait to see this one myself. I hope it will be a more useful teaching tool than a technical manual.

Here's the annoying part of this particular post ... I got the release information from Chessvibes. At some future point I'm going to make advertorial deals with publishers or some such thing.

I'm not a self-made man by any means but I wonder how the creator of Chessvibes came by his cyber presence. I'll have to ask him. (to be continued ... maybe ... if I feel like it)

On Franco Romagnoli's Facebook Group called "Chess Bloggers" (which may predate my efforts in the venue but hasn't been very active due no doubt to Franco's lack of time) Franco posted his personal list of top five chess blogs.

http://www.chessbase.com/
http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com
http://www.chessdom.com/
http://www.chessvibes.com/
http://www.echecs.com/

I think this list is probably correct although I must admit my ignorance of echecs (which is no doubt more European focused than other chess sites ... I'd probably put the Streatham & Brixton blog as number five ... but some might disagree).

Franco has asked me to take over Admin duties for his group and I reluctantly accepted. I had hoped that the presence of two groups on facebook might create the grounds of a friendly competition but that may not be agrreable if I become the head Admin of both groups.

Anyway, I don't know what I'll do with my newfound powers but I'm thinking it's coming time to start the carnival back up again and I have a base of operations complete with 250 members. I'm a devious thinker ... it's why I love chess.

It has finally been announced by the English Chess Federation that their selection for website of the year is Chess Devon. While I applaud the Streatham & Brixton blog for congratulating the winner I have personally evaluated both sites and have concluded that while Chess Devon provides good content it's layout is a bit sloppier than the S&B blog ... I would have voted for S&B for that fact alone but visibility may not be a major criteria for the ECF.

At any rate both sites are wonderful and show a real movement by these English chess clubs. They're pouring onto the internet and they're coming strong ... I'd like to see American clubs do that (or my new friends in Italy).

The boys wanted for the slaying of GM Sergei Nikolayev as well as nine others have now been charged, sentenced, and put behind bars.

The oldest of the boys is twenty years old and it's ashame they wasted their lives in such an ethnically charged and foolish fashion but their choices have consequences.

At any rate ... Ythe chess games of Sergei Nikolayev have proven incredibly difficult to find ... chessgames.com has a big fat zero.