Chess magazines

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Chess magazines

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Fri Jan 13, 2017 7:40 pm

In the spirit of recent threads (but no poll here), what are your favourite chess magazines?

To help prompt discussion, a link to an article on a newly launched chess magazine (looks very impressive): Introducing American Chess Magazine.

Nick Grey
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Re: Chess magazines

Post by Nick Grey » Fri Jan 13, 2017 7:54 pm

This new magazine is about 3 x price of New in Chess or 5 x price of Chess Magazine or BCM;

My favourite is Kingpin - not sure when I bought it last.

Inside Chess was an old US magazine that I bought in late 80s early 90s for a while.

Adam Raoof's "Chess Circuit" had a nice selection of games & articles at a level I could understand.

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Re: Chess magazines

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Fri Jan 13, 2017 8:02 pm

The publishing frequency of this new magazine is less than that of CHESS or BCM. It does have some star names, though, much like New in Chess has star names.

Does anyone here get Chessbase Magazine?

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Paolo Casaschi
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Re: Chess magazines

Post by Paolo Casaschi » Fri Jan 13, 2017 8:28 pm

I bought and subscribed to a variety of chess magazines over the years. Here some notes about the top entries in my personal list:

Europe Echecs provides very good quality content with a good mix of expert commentary and material for new chess enthusiasts. Of all chess magazines, it's probably one of those devoting most attention to the graphics layout and editing, like the magazines your find in news stands. In fact, it's even distributed to a number of the larger newsstands; for example, if you travel to Paris with Eurostar, you can buy the latest copy at the the big newsstands at the gare du Nord train station. The downside, it's in French and has a certain amount of French specific chess news that you might not find relevant.

New In Chess seems providing the best chess analysis quality, with top super gm games annotated by the player themselves or one of their peers. The drawback, the content is clearly orientated towards stronger players. Weaker players might feel a bit lost with this magazine.

CHESS provides a good mix of world chess news and English chess news, the latter might be a strength or a weakness, depending on your interests.

I haven't seen a copy of the new American Chess Magazine (I have probably been put off by their advertising catchphrase "making american chess great again"). Coming from the chess informant publisher, the quality of the chess content should be guaranteed. I just wonder about the choice of publishing only one issue every 3 months. Maybe they just want to concentrate on quality of the content, in the knowledge that there's plenty of online options for immediate chess news with superficial analysis; in this sense, even a monthly publication only comes several weeks since the events they are commenting are finished and archived. Good luck to them, the jury is still out on their long term survival.

Brian Towers
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Re: Chess magazines

Post by Brian Towers » Sat Jan 14, 2017 12:05 pm

When I lived in Germany in the 90's there was a new German language chess magazine called "Kaissiber" produced by Stefan Bücker which was very good. Its forte was unusual openings. Kaissiber is, I believe, a word play on Kassiber (secret message) and Caïssa (goddess of chess). Unfortunately I think it's gone out of print. Too many Germans nowadays are fluent in English :-) and buy New in Chess!
Ah, but I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now.

Gordon Cadden
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Re: Chess magazines

Post by Gordon Cadden » Sun Jan 15, 2017 12:12 pm

Have received copies of lavish American chess magazines in the past. They have a very poor record for surviving more than 3 issues.
The American Chess Journal, edited by GM Patrick Wolf, was superb. They could not find enough subscribers.

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Matt Mackenzie
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Re: Chess magazines

Post by Matt Mackenzie » Sun Jan 15, 2017 8:05 pm

This one has backing from the Chess Informant stable of course, so might just be given a sightly longer run to prove itself.
"Set up your attacks so that when the fire is out, it isn't out!" (H N Pillsbury)

Stewart Reuben
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Re: Chess magazines

Post by Stewart Reuben » Fri Jan 20, 2017 1:00 pm

The ECF has dropped its 'Mgazine of the Year' Award as there are too few candidates.

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