My Eye, My Eye

Some entertaining internet stuff recently has caught my eye, recommended for your perusal on a lazy and rain-laden and bank-holiday-weekend Friday.

• First up, you might not think that a blog called USCL news and gossip would promise much entertainment, but don't let the name fool you. Recent articles have featured: a T-shirt with the slogan Thou Shall Blunder on it - imagine facing that over the board; a report on how chess in the US is exploding with lawsuits - on which note, see also; entertaining and honest annotations to an interesting game; a humorous post comparing Susan Polgar's husband Paul Truong with Sam Sloan, now accompanied by a poll in the side bar; testosterone; and, well, much else besides. Definitely worth keeping an eye on the whole thing, and I've added it to our sidebar.
  
  
• Secondly, ever wondered what would happen if you crossed a chess board with a subway map? Tom Brown has, in multiple posts across his blog. In fact he's constructed such a map showing every move for every piece on every square of the board, in subway map style. To the right is d5. If you explore his blog you'll find the rest.
  
  
• Next stop is Grandpatzer who seems to have answered the question Was Alekhine Unaware of the Noah's Ark Trap? with the surprising: yes, he was.
  
  
• Finally, The World Team has been winning against high-class opposition again. This time they beat 15th World Correspondence Chess Champion Gert Jan Timmerman at the website Chess Games in a complex struggle. From the looks of the website's newsletter 31.b4!! was the key move, a move with thousands of hours of computer analysis behind it no doubt. The World's next game is against well-known correspondence Grandmaster Arno Nickel, who's out for revenge with the white pieces after a previous loss with black, and you can find out more as well as how to join in the fun here.

And that's it for today. Enjoy the extended weekend.