Chessgames.com Holiday Present Hunt

INTRODUCTION

NOTE: The 2008 Holiday Present Hunt is now over. This page will remain as a historical record.

Between December 10th and December 25th, 2008, Chessgames.com will be sponsoring the second annual Chessgames Holiday Present Hunt. We will give away 64 prizes over these 16 days.

The Chessgames Holiday Present Hunt is sponsored by The House of Staunton, New in Chess, Impala Press, and Chessgames.com.

HOW IT WORKS

Out of our half million chess games, 64 of them have been specially selected to receive a prize-banner at some point during the month of December. Between December 10th, 2008 and December 25th, 2008, sixty-four clues will be slowly released to the public on our Clues Page. These clues are designed to help lead you to the game pages that contain the special winning prize banners.

>> TO THE CLUES PAGE

What kinds of clues are these? Some are visual, some are anagrams, some are mathematical, some are in the spirit of crossword clues, some require a knowledge of chess history, and some are just plain bizarre. To get a feel for the kinds of clues that you will have to cope with, check out last year's Present Hunt.

EXAMPLE BANNER * DO NOT CLICK If you are the first person to discover a game page referred to by the clue, you'll see a special banner ad that reads "Congratulations, you are a winner!" Simply click on this banner to claim your prize.

NO PURCHASE IS NECESSARY; you do not have to be a premium member of Chessgames to participate. However, before you can claim a prize you must have a registered Chessgames account. If you don't have an account yet, take a minute to visit our Registration Page. The process is quick, confidential, and 100% free.

THE PRIZES

This year we are proud to offer several premium prizes:

x4 lucky winners

For over 20 years, New in Chess has been the world's best chess magazine.

With regular contributions from all the world's best players. Garry Kasparov, Vishy Anand, Veselin Topalov, Alexei Shirov, Vladimir Kramnik, Peter Leko, Judith Polgar--you name them, NIC has them. Perhaps that's why New In Chess is also their favorite chess magazine! In-depth interviews, on-the-spot tournament reports, chess anecdotes and curiosities, and more. Don't stand aside, join the best. They have been making this unique magazine for more than twenty years already. And they will go on making New In Chess. For you!

Four lucky contest winners will receive a full year subscription: over 800 pages a year of the very best in chess.

www.newinchess.com

x3 lucky winners

The House of Staunton is proud to offer the Championship Series set.

A full tournament sized Chess set, it features a 3.75" King with a 1.5" diameter base. The Chess pieces are hand carved by master artisans and crafted out of the highest grade woods. The Chess pieces are heavily weighted with luxurious billiard cloth base pads and a beautiful finish. The design of the Championship Chess set is an exact reproduction of the traditional European Pattern Chessmen that have been used at every major International Chess event for the past 10 years. The prestigious list of tournaments that have used these Chessmen includes World Championships, FIDE Olympiads, Linares, Dortmund, Wijk Aan Zee and many more! House of Staunton has received countless requests to reproduce a high quality version of these legendary Chessmen. Here is your chance to truly own the Chessmen used by the Champions!

www.houseofstaunton.com

x4 lucky winners

World Chess Championship 2008 by grandmaster Ray Keene OBE.

Russian Grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik astonished the world by defeating Garry Kasparov in London in 2000. Seven years later he lost the championship title to the Indian Grandmaster Vishy Anand. Now the final shoot-out in Bonn determined the planet's top chess brain.

Ray Keene OBE is Britain's senior chess Grandmaster and his columns in The Times and the Sunday Times are amongst the most widely followed in the world. His account of this needle chess battle comes direct from the ringside and brings you all the drama as the two leading matadors of modern chess confront each other with no quarter asked or given.

www.keeneonchess.com

PLUS OVER 50 PREMIUM MEMBERSHIPS!

The bulk of the prizes (53 of them) will be a Premium Membership to Chessgames.com (4 months). Enjoy all the features that have made Chessgames famous for the past 7 years, including the Opening Explorer, the Sacrifice Explorer, and our unique and powerful training tool, Guess-the-Move.

example of prize banner HOW TO PLAY

64 special banners will be placed in games in our database throughout the month of December. If you find one of these games, just click on the special banner and claim your prize. It's that simple!

You can see an example of what you should look for in the graphic to the right.

Clues will be released at irregular intervals on our special Clues Page, starting on December 10th, and ending on December 25th. In total, 64 clues will be published, each one referring to one of the special games in our database containing a prize banner.

To play the contest, just visit our Clues Page regularly and try to find the winning games. Or, poke around randomly, and if you're lucky enough you might stumble upon a prize banner. Good luck!

ABOUT THE CLUES

Our Clues Page will present all of the clues currently released. Throughout the month of December, at irregular intervals, new clues will be added to this page. Clues that have been solved will be clearly marked in green, so that you can concentrate only on the clues that remain unsolved.

Some clues are so easy, it will be a race to locate the game and click on the banner. Some clues are very cunning and may take days before anybody figures them out. Some clues are so impossible that the winner will likely stumble upon the game by accident.

If a clue proves to be too obscure for even our most ingenious members, we may (at our discretion) add more hints as the contest progresses to help encourage the location of the winning banners.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

The following questions are the most commonly asked questions about this contest. For more thorough details, refer to the Official Rules, found at the bottom of this page. We hope that this avoids any confusion, but if you still have questions, feel free to ask us at the Chessgames Chessforum.

WHO CAN PLAY?
Anybody at all, of any age, from any country, excluding: employees of Chessgames.com, the contest sponsors, and such employees' and sponsors' immediate family members and persons with whom such employees are domiciled.
DO I HAVE TO BE A PREMIUM MEMBER TO WIN?
No, but you must have an account (a "username") to claim a prize. You can get a free account quickly and easily at our Registration Page at any time.
ARE ALL SIXTY-FOUR BANNERS ONLINE FROM THE BEGINNING?
No. The banners will be placed on the game pages only when the clues are released. By December 25th all 64 banners will be online.
AT WHAT RATE ARE THE CLUES RELEASED?
64 dates and times were selected in advance between December 10th and December 25th, by a computer, completely at random. The average rate is 4 clues a day, but it's possible for a day to go by without a single clue, or for two clues released mere seconds apart. Because there is no way to predict when the next clue is released, you'll simply have to check the Clues Page frequently.
CAN I WIN MORE THAN ONE PRIZE?
Yes. If you win one prize, keep on playing, and you might win another. However, if any single member wins five prizes, he or she will immediately become ineligible from winning any further prizes.
WHY DO YOU RELEASE THE CLUES AT IRREGULAR INTERVALS?
To give everybody, from all the time zones across the globe, a fair chance at being online when a new clue becomes available.
YOUR CLUES MAKE NO SENSE!
Some of them make perfect sense, but some are highly obscure. Be sure to read the tips at the bottom of the Clues Page. If a clue proves to be too hard for anybody to solve, we may add further hints to encourage its solution.
WHAT ARE SOME WEBSITES THAT MIGHT HELP ME SOLVE THE CLUES?
Chessgames.com will be the most important site to use for all clues, but being skilled with Google.com can also help a lot. Some of the clues will involve anagrams, for which the Internet Anagram Server is an indispensable resource. For questions of history, art, mathematics, or a number of other subjects that our clues reference, Wikipedia will surely come in handy. Having a good dictionary will also be an asset.
ARE WE ALLOWED TO DISCUSS THE CLUES WHILE THEY ARE STILL UNSOLVED?
Sure, if you want to. The Kibitzer's Cafe is a popular place to do that.
I'M A PREMIUM MEMBER AND I'VE DISABLED ADVERTISEMENTS. CAN I SEE THE PRIZE BANNERS?
Yes: the prize banners are visible to everybody, regardless of preference settings.
I'M A PREMIUM MEMBER; WHAT HAPPENS IF I WIN A FOUR MONTH MEMBERSHIP?
Four extra months will be added to your account.
I'M A LIFETIME MEMBER; WHAT HAPPENS IF I WIN A FOUR MONTH MEMBERSHIP?
Sorry, your four extra months will be meaningless. Chessgames may (at its discretion) randomly award these prizes to non-premium members to compensate for prizes negated in this fashion.

OFFICIAL CONTEST RULES

The Chessgames.com Holiday Present Hunt is a game of skill and luck available to the general public. Follow the instructions on this page to discover the hidden gift-graphics and claim prizes. These are the official rules:

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. To claim prizes, you will need to have a registered account at Chessgames.com. (If you do not have an account, visit our Registration Page and sign up; it's quick, anonymous, and free.)

The prizes are not redeemable in cash and must be accepted as awarded. By claiming the prize, the winner authorizes the use, without additional compensation, of his or her name and/or screen-name for promotion and/or advertising purposes in any manner and in any medium.

Chessgames.com retains the rights, at its absolute and sole discretion, to make substitutions of equivalent kind or approximate value in the event of the unavailability of any prize or component of the prize for any reason whatsoever.

Images of the prizes are provided only as examples; the true prizes received will not necessarily look exactly like the advertising photographs.

To give everybody a good chance at winning, a limitation of prizes is in effect. If, at any time, a single member wins five (5) prizes, he or she will immediately become ineligible from winning any further prizes.

A mailed prize is any prize other than the 4-Month Chessgames Premium Membership. If a member wins two identical mailed prizes, Chessgames will substitute a different mailed prize selected randomly from the remaining prize pool. Therefore, no member can win two New in Chess subscriptions, two Championship Series Chess Sets by House of Staunton, or two copies of World Chess Championship 2008 by Impala Press.

In order to be eligible for any prize you must supply us with a working valid email address. If you register to our site with a bogus or nonfunctional email, we will be unable to contact you, and your prize may default to another member.

If a clue is not solved in a timely fashion, Chessgames.com may offer extra, alternate clues to encourage its solution. This may or may not be done by Chessgames.com, at its sole discretion. Any prizes left unclaimed at the termination of the contest will be void and not awarded.

In the event that a Four Month Premium Membership is won by a user who is already a premium member, the expiration date on the winning account will be extended by four months.

Four month membership prizes are non-transferable. They will be activated upon the account that clicks the prize-banner first, and cannot be given to another member.

The use of web spiders or other automated software systems designed to scan web pages in bulk is strictly prohibited. Anybody discovered using such techniques to find the gift-graphics will be disqualified from the contest and the prize(s) won will be returned to the pool. However, the use of public search engines (e.g. Google) is permitted.

This contest is subject to the laws of the United States and the State of Florida. This contest is void where prohibited by law. Employees of Chessgames.com, the contest sponsors, advertising and promotional agencies and their respective affiliates and associates and such employees' and sponsors' immediate family members and persons with whom such employees are domiciled are excluded from this contest.