Thank goodness for off-topic posts about penguins, in that case.

https://www.neues-deutschland.de/ar...

To get by the paywall just click <Vielleicht später....> ("maybe later") to make the sales-pitch window vanish.

It's in German, of course, but you can use Google translate on the page. Be warned some of the sentences come out really funny. (Both "funny odd" and "funny ha ha".) The title of the article, I believe, translates into "Three and a half people run a global chess forum."

??? I take it, that the translation means you (Daniel) is able to put food on the table(?)...

For a game with Che or Einstein
Three and a half people attend a world chess forum

You maintain a database that collects chess games, and you live on them. Sounds crazy.

Actually, everything is based on the idea of ​​my very good friend Alberto Artidiello. He had suggested to me in the late 1990s to create a website for »the biggest games in history«. The basic concept of Alberto, who unfortunately has passed away, I have actually only expanded. Not to mention that at the start of Chessgames.com, I never expected that this would give me a career perspective.

What did you do before?

After completing my undergraduate degree at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, I worked on other projects with the Internet that was just becoming popular. And now a real company has grown up.
On the one hand, I find it flattering that people imagine an office building full of people working there. On the other hand, from time to time I also have to smile: our headquarters is simply my home office, with two full-time employees and three part-time employees, including my person.

Many would like to trade with you; apparently you can at least pay for your rolls.

Not to forget the beach near our office! But seriously: We have done everything only thanks to the great support of tens of thousands of chess fans from all parts of the world. They constantly help to improve the database by sending games, creating analyzes or reporting errors. As a result, we created a "Premium Membership" for $ 29 a year, and that was the key to financing the development of Chessgames.com.

You have almost 200 000 registered users. What do the subscribers get for the money?

You can have competitions in the team, with a large group of participants voting on each turn. You get full access to our analysis lab, which has recently even integrated the well-known computer program Stockfish. Unlike other providers, they are more than just an online archive. I agree. For example, weaker players can learn from and among the stronger, the professionals are sometimes inspired by unusual ideas of the amateurs - in solidarity for better chess so.

You have already saved more than 850,000 encounters, you had only 750,000 previously planned maximum. Why so much more?

In retrospect, my forecast is a bit embarrassing, as I underestimated what global chess boom the Internet would trigger. In the meantime, we can no longer capture every encounter, but focus on events and individual meetings that meet the highest quality standards.

But you also have casual players in your database, such as Ernesto Che Guevara or Boxing Klitschko. What have they lost at Chessgames.com?

A game is supposed to be instructive or interesting, or both, and even amateurs sometimes succeed in games we can learn from. A separate category are encounters of famous amateur players. These include the named and many others, from Albert Einstein to Humphrey Bogart to Ray Charles, from Napoleon Bonaparte to Fidel Castro to Lenin. Such celebrity qualifies automatically for Chessgames.com. Do not always make friends with it. Some hate postings, for example, say that the games of Che, who was a "mass murderer", have no place in the database. If a game is included in our database, it does not entail an assessment of the character of the person concerned; we alone document that there was the relevant interesting game.

The games will be electronically saved by you. But sometimes servers collapse: Does your database dissolve in virtual nirvana?

For heaven's sake: No! There are a number of backups on other servers. And our main server was not even offline for a minute when Hurricane Irma struck a few months ago, with no power in the city.

Put the case, you lose your appetite and close your shop. What happens then with the stored chess knowledge?

Game of the Day
Wednesday, January 10
Joseph <B>lackburne vs Theodore <B>lock

Player of the Day
Walter Shawn <B>rowne

Opening of the Day
<B>udapest Gambit

Are we not all <CG>'s children then?

http://art.cafimg.com/images/Catego...

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/...

<On page 262 of A Chess Omnibus the caption to a sketch of a crowned figure reads ‘King George V’. However, as has been pointed out on page 223 of the April 2005 BCM, the picture in question had appeared in the BCM in (September) 1905 and was not of George V (who did not ascend to the throne until five years later). To correct the record, we add that in the 1905 BCM the sketch had the caption ‘The (B.C.F.) King, 1905’ and that it depicted H.E. Atkins in regal attire, following his victory at the congress in Southport.>

So the Perfectionist has a flaw or two?

it's like owning your own chess magazine---

Which pages on chessgames.com have the most kibitzing?

Kenneth S Rogoff (296,767)
Kibitzer's Café (214,825)
Wesley So (203,019)
Magnus Carlsen (79,311)
Robert James Fischer (54,233)
The World vs G Timmerman, 2007 (44,596)
Vladimir Kramnik (40,086)
Jeremy Lim (31,445)
Kramnik - Topalov World Championship Match (2006) (29,163)
The World vs N Pogonina, 2010 (26,716)
The World vs A Nickel, 2006 (26,654)
A Nickel vs The World, 2008 (23,261)
Hikaru Nakamura (21,677)
The World vs Akobian, 2012 (21,233)
Y Shulman vs The World, 2007 (20,940)
Odd Lie (19,775)
Viswanathan Anand (19,095)
Garry Kasparov (19,016)
The World vs Naiditsch, 2014 (17,689)
Veselin Aleksandrov Topalov (17,549)
Biographer Bistro (16,819)
S Williams vs The World, 2013 (14,965)
Eugenio Torre (14,318)
M Umansky vs The World, 2009 (12,340)
World Championship Candidates (2013) (12,087)
FIDE World Championship Tournament (2007) (11,917)
Battle of the Brains II, 2008 (11,499)
Anand - Kramnik World Championship Match (2008) (11,069)
Nigel Short (10,538)
Anand - Topalov World Chess Championship (2010) (10,123)