Chess Mail logo Friend of ICCF award  
Editor: Dr Tim Harding
   Dr. Tim Harding     J. H. Blackburne   Paul Morphy   Correspondence Chess history book   Captain W. D. Evans

203 editions of The Kibitzer

By Dr Tim Harding

The Kibitzer is a monthly column appearing since June 1996 for the excellent magazine website, The Chess Cafe.

In May 2012, with the publication, of my 192nd article in the series, I completed 16 years of writing it. Now I have written 203 columns.

New columns are posted on the second Wednesday of each month. The series deals with opening theory, current affairs in chess, historical topics, or whatever I feel like writing about!

I have started a new index page for the most recent articles.

Please note that free archive files of The Kibitzer are not available from number 200 onwards; you can read them free while they are current. Chess Cafe instead offer low-cost e-book purchases including databases of games linked to the columns and the link below is to the purchase page for these. The e-book files (available in PDF, PGN and ChessBase format) cost less than a dollar, shared between writer and publisher.

My index of titles to the first 199 articles links to free copies at the Chess Cafe Archives.

The first 51 columns are available as textfiles while more recent ones are preserved there with formatting in PDF. Inevitably with the passage of time, some of these articles have broken links to other websites, or topical references that no longer make much sense.

Also some of the old articles linked to game files which were lost when the Chess Mail site changed hosts. I regret it is not possible for me to supply these files or to comment on previous articles, so please do not ask.

Please do not expect me to answer queries about old articles as: (a) I am very busy; (b) I may no longer have the original source material to hand; (c) My views and chess theory can both change with time.

What is a Kibitzer?

A kibitzer is somebody who watches a game (usually of chess or bridge) and from time to time makes comments which may be apposite, and/or which may annoy the players...