{"id":2157,"date":"2013-04-24T08:36:59","date_gmt":"2013-04-24T16:36:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danamackenzie.com\/blog\/?p=2157"},"modified":"2013-04-24T08:36:59","modified_gmt":"2013-04-24T16:36:59","slug":"chesslecture-milestone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/?p=2157","title":{"rendered":"ChessLecture Milestone"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn’t even notice it until this morning, but ChessLecture<\/a> hit a pretty big milestone three weeks ago — we now have more than two thousand recorded lectures! As of today (April 24) there are 2015, in fact. The two thousandth lecture was a very appropriate one: a lecture on “Anand’s Immortal Game” by David Vigorito. This was a game from earlier this year where Anand beat Aronian with multiple piece sacrifices. There were some questions as to how much of Anand’s brilliancy was preparation (possibly computer-aided) and how much was discovered over the board, but it is nevertheless a fabulous and inspiring game.<\/p>\n

Another reason this was an appropriate 2000th lecture is that David Vigorito has recorded more lectures for CL than anybody else. But it’s extremely close. Little did I realize that he and Bill Paschall are having a nip-and-tuck battle for the top spot, which they took over not too long ago from the currently-on-hiatus Jesse Kraai. There’s also a pretty close race going on for the #4 through #6 spots.<\/p>\n

Here’s a scorecard of all the ChessLecturers and how many lectures they’ve recorded:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. David Vigorito — 308<\/li>\n
  2. Bill Paschall — 307<\/li>\n
  3. Jesse Kraai (inactive) — 287<\/li>\n
  4. Eugene Perelshteyn — 190<\/li>\n
  5. Valeri Lilov — 185<\/li>\n
  6. Dennis Monokroussos — 182<\/li>\n
  7. Bryan Smith — 149<\/li>\n
  8. John-Paul Wallace (inactive) — 137<\/li>\n
  9. Dana Mackenzie — 129<\/li>\n
  10. Leonid Kritz — 62<\/li>\n
  11. Josh Friedel (inactive) — 20<\/li>\n
  12. Mark Diesen (deceased) — 17<\/li>\n
  13. John Watson (inactive) — 11<\/li>\n
  14. Roman Dzindzichashvili (inactive) — 9<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Kind of amusing to see Dzindzichashvili on the bottom of this list. He’s actually a very good lecturer and you can catch his lectures on Chess.com<\/a>. I don’t really know why it didn’t work out for him at ChessLecture, and I will keep any speculations to myself.<\/p>\n

    Segueing into a slightly different topic, does anyone have any suggestions or ideas on how ChessLecture can improve its marketing or attract more subscribers? I have a few ideas: Bring back Jesse Kraai. Make the website more dynamic and\/or interactive. Bring back Jesse Kraai. Offer special package plans for chess coaches. Bring back Jesse Kraai. Any other ideas?<\/p>\n

    I’m not on the management, so I can only make suggestions. It seems to me that the real problem is that we’re a boutique store competing with supermarkets (Chess.com<\/a>, Internet Chess Club<\/a>) that offer the same product we do (lectures) but also a whole lot more (forums, blogs, online chess). The only way that ChessLecture can prosper, I think, is to make the case that our product is better or unique. But I’m not sure how to do that, and not sure if it’s even true.<\/p>\n

    Finally, for anybody who might wonder what I’m up to on ChessLecture, I have a nice surprise in store for you! I have started recording a new series called “Awesome State Champions.” I’ve recorded the first two lectures in the series, which will probably air a month or two from now. The first lecture features John Curdo (17 Massachusetts championships over a 37-year span, 1948-1985) and the second features Orest Popovych (4 New Jersey championships, spanning 42 years, 1959-2001! This may be a record for the longest time between a person’s first and last state championship.) One pleasure I did not expect is that their opponents have been almost as interesting as the state champions themselves. This is truly a forgotten slice of American chess history. I hope you’ll enjoy this series as much as I have so far.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I didn’t even notice it until this morning, but ChessLecture hit a pretty big milestone three weeks ago — we now have more than two thousand recorded lectures! As of today (April 24) there are 2015, in fact. The two thousandth lecture was a very appropriate one: a lecture on “Anand’s Immortal Game” by David […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,1363,25],"tags":[2520,818,307,2372,2518,2519,555,682],"class_list":["post-2157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chess-lecture","category-current-news","category-people","tag-awesome","tag-david-vigorito","tag-jesse-kraai","tag-john-curdo","tag-orest-popovych","tag-state-champions","tag-surprise","tag-viswanathan-anand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2157"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2159,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157\/revisions\/2159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}