Chess Today : Past & Future
by GM Alexander Baburin

There are not many readers who saw all 1000 issues of Chess Today - people come and go - this is only natural. So, I hope that a short essay on the history of Chess Today will be of interest.

The idea to start a daily Net-based chess newspaper came to me in the summer of 2000. I was on a plane to Copenhagen. When I am on a plane, ideas just come to my mind, I can't help it. It could be the altitude, it could be the idleness, but the most likely cause is free alcohol!

Anyway, that day I thought that there was so much material in chess, that I could easily write a chess column every day. But I did not see a newspaper, which would possibly publish my chess stuff on a daily basis, so I decided to start my own paper! Pretty quickly I figured out the main ideas: the paper won't be free, it would be daily and not too long. Ideally it would inform, educate and entertain. As for the format, I settled on PDF, which allows people to see diagrams and figurines even if they don't have chess fonts on their computers. Most people use some chess software, so PGN and CBV were quickly added.

There was a lot of free and good chess stuff on the Net, so Chess Today had to offer something unique. It could not be just chess news : TWIC was perfect at doing that! But not many sites gave current annotated games, so that had to be our selling point. It seems that this format suits most people still, but I am open to new ideas.

The editorial team grew with the paper: Jimmy Adams (editor of Chess Monthly) recommended Graham Brown as an editor. Graham did the first issue and has done most of the editing since, but I was also fortunate to link with Ralph Marconi, our second editor. Tim Harding also helped with editing in the early days. Both editors, as well as all our journalists and I, learnt a lot as we went along.

As for journalists, I started writing CT during the Istanbul Chess Olympiad, where I was playing. That was a really crazy idea - I did not have much spare time, Net connection in Istanbul was slow, etc. But once I managed that, I knew I could produce Chess Today!

However, I needed help, as writing for it every day would be the shortest way to a mental asylum. So, I asked my friend IM Vladimir Barsky to join me. Then GM Ruslan Scherbakov, whom I knew from junior tournaments, joined us. Later GM Mikhail Golubev and IM Maxim Notkin joined the team. Max later brought in IM Nikolai Vlassov. Prior to that GM Kasrten Müller (Germany) and IM John Donaldson started sending their contributions. Also my former student Sam Collins (Ireland) began reviewing books in CT. Later Andy Ansel and Don Aldrich (both from USA) joined our list of reviewers. Recently I got a few reviews from other people too.

Now Chess Today has a very strong panel of journalists. It is likely that we will have more guest writers soon : the paper is growing and I want to diversify the content. What we really need is more readers! When CT first started, its readership quickly rose to 400, then members began to climb more steadily. I also began offering CT subs as prizes at ICC and Fritz server. GMs can receive our paper for free and currently we have about 40 such readers. Among them are such top players as Shirov, Gelfand, Svidler, Lautier, van Wely and Radjabov.

At the moment we have about 650 readers and the figure seems to have been frozen for quite some time. I even begin to suspect that there are only about 500 people on the whole Internet willing to pay for chess and that I found them all! But the experience of ICC tells otherwise, so I remain hopeful. The next year will be critical for the future of our paper - if the readership does not grow, I will have to think carefully about the vitality of the whole idea. But with more people coming to the Net, things should get better. And services charging for their stuff on the Net are becoming more accepted by the public too. The general chess public is notorious for not willing to pay for their hobby, but when CT succeeds, it will be a piece of cake to start a daily paper on golf or tennis!

As for our plans, we hope to finish a few things in the near future. First, we will have more standards in our issues - I guess that some readers already saw changes in the past 2 months. We will also do more planning in advance when it comes to content. Mikhail Golubev will soon become our Content Editor, so he will overlook our editorial portfolio, etc. Another idea is to finally produce CT CDs. There are two of them in the works - years 2000-2001 and 2002. Each CD will have all PDF files from that period, one large database with annotated games and tactical quizzes (Chess Base format and PGN), Index, Acrobat Reader and Chess Base Light programs. Each CD will retail for about $20, but will be offered to the existing paying subscribers with a significant (perhaps 50%) discount.

Moving away from Yahoo is our other priority. This is not that easy as many web hosts do not allow the use of mailing software. But we have done some research and testing, so soon we might be able to depart from Yahoo, which has been quite unreliable.

Finally, I am still thinking about the best format for Chess Today. I reckon that there is a problem (mostly psychological, but no less important because of that!) with daily issues. I'd like to explain this in more detail. Imagine me, an ordinary customer, who buys a CT subscription. It is not too expensive and generally is a very good value for money. It comes to me every day, but I don't read it every day. Not a big deal - CT is still rather inexpensive. But after a while I get the impression that I am not getting full value - CT is not for me! And I terminate my subscription...

I bet that such thinking is quite common, particularly among those who do not sign up for CT in the first place because they cannot read it every day! Of course, when I asked CT readers if they would prefer to receive CT twice a week, almost all voted for daily delivery! But I asked the audience, which already voted for that option. So, my idea is to offer a choice: we will produce daily CT (as before) and also special issues twice a week, for those who will prefer this option. Those issues will have all annotated games and quizzes in our database, some annotated games and tactical positions in PDF, all book reviews in PDF and a digest of chess news. I hope that offering this option will make CT more attractive to a wider chess audience! If you have a comment or suggestion regarding this idea, please send me a note.

Summing up, I hope that in the next few months Chess Today will become an even better and more professional publication. We hope that our readers will stay with us and that new people will join us soon - your help in promoting Chess Today is always appreciated!

(Copyright © 2003 by Alexander Baburin. Reprinted with permission.)