Want to find out your rating? Take part in this study in the Netherlands: What is your Chess Rating? I haven't tried it yet, but the description says it consists of 30 tactical positions and takes about 15 minutes.
A couple days ago, I saw the book reviews by IM John Watson at TWIC (link below). I've only read two so far, but they seemed quite good.
Interested in the chess rating system? Find out more about Arpad Elo: Criticizing Elo's Book Although this page seems to have many statistical criticisms, which could well be correct, the author also quotes Sam Sloan who gives a more personal explanation for his criticism of Elo. I don't know how reliable Sam Sloan is. Take a look at his debate with Robert Hyatt over cheating in chess computer tournaments. Interesting stuff. I don't know what to believe. I guess we still need to hear from Hans Berliner.
News: We are proud to announce the opening of our games collection, with this beautiful draw annotated by our resident expert, David McCraw. And, fresh off the free presses! This win was one of Jason Brown's proud accomplishments at the Dole Memorial. Cucchiella - Brown (After looking at both games, could you send me some feedback on which format you like better.. Is it better with more diagrams or is one enough? Perhaps there's a Zen purist out there who believes in No diagrams?) Another lovely submission, this game annotated by Noah Canter, Ondangan-Canter, is our latest addition to the games. Please consider sending us a submission of your annotated games for web & newsletter publication. If you are planning a submission, please keep in mind : 1) Please submit in both .PGN and .TXT,.HTM, or .RTF format. (I mean, one PGN file, and one file of one of the other three types.) 2) If you have many variations, please consider the format of the game. Take a look at the games above, and think about where you want the spaces and diagrams. I'd love to have enough time to do all the formatting myself, but the more you put in, the easier it is for me to put it up. 3) If you'd like to put a game on your own page, and want to know how to make the diagrams, or the html file, just ask. I'm happy to help.
Dole Memorial 1999 : The winners in the Open section were Petr Stratil (from the Czech Republic), Eric Mui, David McCraw, Ruben Ondangen, Stanley Kamiya, Lorenzo Farinas, and Beau Mueller. The winners in the Reserve were Tatsuo Yamanoha, Leonell Domingo, Kevin Young, Ed Hope, Jorge Ortiz, Albert Burian, and Kevin Makaipo. Many thanks go to all who participated.
In case you'd like to create your own diagrams, I'm using EPD2diag for the diagrams. I got it from the REBEL website at this site in the Netherlands. If you have any complaints about the mismanagement of this site, I'd love to hear them! uhchess@hawaii.edu
And finally, what you've been waiting to find out this whole time! Our meetings are on Tuesdays from 5 to 10 PM. Where are we in May? Which way is the wind blowing? Just in! (Last week actually.) March meetings to be held in (drumroll, please), Hemenway 215, yet again! (Cheers abound.) No news yet on May. Please wait until sometime next year for that kind of sensitive information.