My Chess Store

Amazon.com is now allowing their affiliates to set up online stores, complete with a shopping cart, that can be stand alone sites or incorporated into existing sites. I set up my chess store and included it into my chess site. The store is located at http://www.mikeseroveyonchess.com/ChessStore.html. You can purchase chess books, software, boards and sets, plus other game related stuff, at this web page. If you click on the link near the bottom of the page you can sign up for your own Amazon affiliate account.

Chess Store

ICC Correspondence Chess

I have entered two different correspondence chess tournaments at ICC. I didn't do very well in the first one because I let my ICC membership expire prior to completing those games and lost a few of them on forfeit. I entered another one this year and still have two games left. It is these two games that have me ticked off at ICC right now. My opponent, JimGaming, exceeded the time control in both of my games with him! I sent time complaints to the tournament director both times and it took about 3 weeks for the director to respond to my complaints! In both cases my opponent was given a warning and more time to complete his moves! There was no mention of me getting more time to complete my moves! Why does my opponent, who has already violated the initial time control, get more time to play and I don't when I have been within the specified time control?!? IF my opponent violates the new time control, and I complain about it, then I get a win on time forfeit! I don't think that is fair and that is why I refuse to enter any more correspondence tournaments at ICC. I believe that the USCF has a similar rule about time controls in correspondence chess. In a regular over the board chess game my opponent would lose if I called him or her for exceeding the time control! Why is this different for correspondence chess? No one has given me a good reason for this yet!

Correspondence Chess

Mike Serovey Loses to winerum in an ICC correspondence game

Here is the PGN version of my loss to winerum at ICC. The complete game, with analysis and diagrams can be found at http://www.mikeseroveyonchess.com/Winerum-Sicilian.html.

[Event "ICC correspondence 2006SC18QF.02.03"]
[Site "Internet Chess Club"]
[Date "2006.05.02"]
[Round "-"]
[White "winerum"]
[Black "OnGoldenPawn"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ICCResult "Black resigns"]
[Opening "Sicilian: Nimzovich-Rossolimo attack (without ...d6)"]
[ECO "B30"]
[NIC "SI.31"]
[Time "22:59:49"]

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Bxc6 bxc6 5. O-O d5 6. d3 Bg4 7. Nbd2 e6 8. c3 Bxf3 9. Nxf3 Qa5 10. c4 Nf6 11. e5 Nd7 12. Bd2 Qc7 13. Qe1 g6 14. Qe2 Bg7 15. Rfe1 O-O 16. cxd5 cxd5 17. Rac1 a5 18. d4 Rfb8 19. Rc2 c4 20. b3 Nb6 21. b4 axb4 22. Bxb4 Nc8 23. Qd2 Na7 24. Bd6 Qb6 25. Bxb8 Rxb8 26. Qe3 Nc6 27. a4 Qa7 28. Ra1 Rb4 29. Qd2 Rb3 30. a5 Rd3 31. Qxd3 cxd3 32. Rxc6 Bh6 33. Rb6 d2 34. Rbb1 Qa6 35. Rd1 Bf8 36. Rdb1 d1=Q+ 37. Rxd1 Bb4 38. Rdc1 Kg7 39. h3 h6 40. Rcb1 Bxa5 41. Rb4 {Black resigns} 1-0

Chess Tournament Results

To Be Or Not To Be Decided

Even though my poll results were disappointing I have decided to renew my domain name, http://www.mikeseroveyonchess.com, for another year. I'm not sure what I am going to do after that. The reason that I renewed the domain name is because I have several links from different sources pointing to that domain name. I am also going to renew my hosting for another year when it comes due next month. The hosting is reasonable for what I get. I also am starting to look for work as a website builder, webmaster and website administrator. As such, I need samples of my work and the chess site is one of my better sites.

On the survey, I found out that the one "No" vote was one in which Patrick wanted me to keep the site up but use free hosting instead of paid. I decided to stay with paid in spite of Patrick's advice to the contrary.

Chess Site

To Be Or Not To Be Continued

I put a poll on my chess site and got 10 responses to it so far. One vote was my own to test the poll to make sure that it worked properly. Also, I thought that my "Yes" vote would encourage others to vote "Yes". I got 5 votes for "I don't care", 4 for "Yes" (including my own vote) and one "No" vote. I have no way of knowing if anyone voted more than once. What strikes me as being odd is that someone would take the time to vote in my poll if he or she really does not care whether I keep the site up or not! Why vote if you really don't care about my site? I have until December third to make a decision on this site. If the majority of my site visitors don't care if I keep the site up then why should I go through the small expense of renewing my domain name and paying to host the site for another year? Because I am thinking about looking for a job as a webmaster or site administrator I need to keep a few of my sites up to show as samples of my work. The chess site has the most original content of any of my sites and the best traffic ranking. So, this would be a good site to show as a sample site. Also, analyzing my games for this site can help me to improve my play. Still. I have to wonder why I would want to give away my best moves and analysis for free to people who don't care about it!

You can visit my chess site at http://www.mikeseroveyonchess.com.

Chess