World Chess Championship Carnival

The World Chess Championship in Bonn, Germany provides a necessary distraction from the rapid decline of global finance. At least that's part of the angle taken in the entertaining report at Todd and Vishal's blog. Vishal raises the specter that Anand's claim to the title based on winning a tournament is suspect until and unless he defeats Kramik in this match.

If you are following my own commentary, you already know that I've made efforts to redirect you to The Chess Mind by Dennis Monokrousses. Monokrousses is an International Master and graduate student in philosophy well known to many aspiring chess players for his excellent Radio Chess Base lectures. On his blog he is offering the sort of commentary that makes his lectures of such great value to the improving class player. He apears to following the games through FoidosChess and other sources and posting periodic updates--live blogging as it were.

The Usual Suspects

Among the links currently found on my blogroll, Alberto Dominguez is posting nice clean game scores as they become available. Mig Greengard's Daily Dirt Chess Ninja blog offers his popular game analysis and commentary with rich insights into some of the psychological aspects of competition. Susan Polgar offered insightful live commentary of game four, as well as plenty of coverage of other games and other chess news. Close to my heart is her emphasis on youth chess.

Chess Vibes has a nice layout for finding the latest news that interests you most. Watching the games live is possible at the official site of the World Chess Championship 2008, as well as ChessPro (Russian) and ChessDom. I'm following the games myself mostly on the playchess server, but also through my favorite correspondence/turn-based playing site: ChessWorld.

Random Blogs

Two blogs called Chess Musings are following the match. Chris Torres has a Wordpress blog worth a look, and Jason uses his blog to direct chess enthusiasts to a site where all the games are presented in replayable Java script. Ed Hong has some match updates and other chess news. Crestbook is a Russian blog that appears of interest (sorry that I cannot read Russian--the emergence of Chess Informant eliminated the need that drove Bobby Fischer to learn that language). I'm certain the match is blogged in many other languages as well, but this Russian site came up in a Google search in English, so that much is worthy of mention.

MSM

The so-called Mainstream Media has even offered comfort in our afflication. The Huffington Post has a story about game 4. Yahoo! News picked up the same story, but attributed to the Associated Press. According to NewsCred, Robert Huntington--the author of the AP story--writes for the San Francisco Chronicle.

I will happily add more chess blogs to this carnival if readers will submit their favorites.