Mystery solved.

It all started when I emailed chess clubs in England offering link exchanges.  My emails appeared to be from “Trent L” because, well, my name is Trent and my last initial is L.

However, when replying, some people would call me “Lawrence”.  The first time, I figured it was just a slip.  Hey, maybe the guy just finished talking to a Lawrence and had Lawrence-on-the-brain.  (You know how bad that is.)

But it happened several times.  My curiosity was, as they say, piqued.  Am I going crazy?  Am I Lawrence?  Is my whole life some kind of crazy Fight Club illusion?

I emailed someone who called me “Lawrence” and asked why they thought my name was Lawrence.  Turns out, there is a young chess whiz in England called Lawrence Trent.

Ahhh.  Now I get it.  Suffice to say, I’m not Lawrence Trent.  Sorry to disappoint anyone who thought they were being contacted by a renowned genius

Chessup has a links page. I’d be happy to include links to any chess-related sites, and would appreciate return links back. I’m particularly interested in club websites, so send ‘em on in. I hope to format the page a little bit better in the future.

The best way to reach me is via the address below:

Not related to chess, but I like the way this guy thinks.

Cool.  Bruce Pandolfini has linked to me in his January 24th column at ChessCafe.

For those new to the site, the tool is on the front page.  Here are some instructions for using it.

I have a policy on hotlinking.  I’m pretty much OK with it, but please give credit to my site in the form of a link.

I hope you enjoy ChessUp.

Happy New Year!

Yeah, I know it’s the end of January, but saying “Happy New Year” during the first week of the year is so…predictable.  Besides, this is the time of year when you need a happy message the most.

The PC that I used to create ChessUp decided that it did not want to live to see 2007.  All the source code is saved, I just need to rebuild everything on the machine.  I’d like to make this blog a little easier to read.  (What the heck was I thinking when I put a striped-background directly behind the text?)

The forums continue to be a frustrating point for me.  It is very difficult to build a community and fight a wave of spammers simultaneously.  I need to re-vamp all the anti-spam measures on this site.  My feedback email inbox is flooded with spam, too, and so are my blog trackbacks.  It can be fixed, I just need to sit myself down one evening and do it.

If you sent me a message recently, I probably missed it.  If you want to contact me, the best way is to email:

spaceNOSPAMrook[at]gmail[dot]com

(Remove the NOSPAM and replace [at] with @ and [dot] with .)

Hope to hear from you.

Looks like someone was using performance enhancing technologies:

An Indian chess player has been banned from competing for 10 years after seeking the assistance of a computer via a bluetooth headset.

Umakant Sharma was caught during a “random check” in a New Delhi tournament on 4 December, Information Week reports. The headset was sewn into a cap which he “typically pulled down over his ears”. The All India Chess Federation (AICF) found Sharma’s accomplices had used a computer to calculate moves and had transmitted the recommendations to him via said headset.

I’ve added some anti-spam measures to the forums.  I was getting about 6 signups a day that were nothing but spam for various “performance enhancers”.

I modified it so that an admin has to manually approve registrations.

Also, spammers, take note: your profile will NOT appear on the Memberlist page.  Only members that are approved will appear there.  So don’t even waste your time or mine signing up, because your profile has to be approved by me in order to appear on the site.  And the chances of that happening are slimmer than a grandmaster losing to mate-in-one.  Oh, wait.  Well, let’s just say it’s a damn slim chance.

The SPAM issue has been taking my attention away from participating in the forum.  I hope to get some more action going there again now that this problem has been mostly solved.  Thanks to everyone who has participated so far!

This is for all the spammers who keep registering in the ChessUp Forums:

Stop.

Really.

I know what you’re trying to do, registering accounts and posting spam links in your profile to improve your Google Page rank. I also know that a human is involved somewhere in this process, since you guys are circumventing my anti-spam measures.

But it’s not going to work. The chances of your account surviving more than 60 minutes are nil. The search engines will not see your website. Furthermore, I’m just going to report your spammy websites to the search engines and webhosts. In case you didn’t understand that last sentence: posting spam in my forums can be detrimental to your website’s health.

So give it a rest. Go bother someone else, or better yet, go play in traffic. Your time will be more productive.

We have 50 posts in the ChessUp Forums. Pretty good for only two weeks. Here are the answers to a couple questions I’ve been asked:

YES you can absolutely post your own puzzles in the Chess Puzzles forum. You can also comment on other puzzles. The forum is totally open, and if you have anything vaguely related to chess puzzles, you can post it in there.

YES other forum categories can be created if there is demand. We currently have 3 open categories (General, Puzzles, and ChessUp Diagram Tool). More can always be added…just ask!

The best way to get more people to join is word-of-mouth.  So tell a friend to join!

See you in the forums…

ChessBase has posted a bunch of stats once again trying to determine the greatest chess player of all time.

The interesting thing about this study is that it compares the quality of the moves, not just the win/lose/draw results.

I could tell you who their #1 player is, but why ruin the fun?  See if you can guess who it is, and then go check out ChessBase’s article.