Between December 10th and December 24th, 2012, Chessgames.com will be hosting the 6th annual Chessgames Holiday Present Hunt. We will give away 64 prizes over these 14 days.

The 2012 Chessgames Holiday Present Hunt is sponsored by New in Chess, The Sunday Times Chess Column, and The Chessgames Store.

HOW IT WORKS

Out of our 650,000+ chess games, 64 of them have been specially selected to display a prize-banner at some point during the month of December. Between December 10th, 2012 and December 24th, 2012, sixty-four clues will be slowly released to the public on our Clues Page. These clues are designed to help lead you to the game pages that contain the special winning prize banners.

>> TO THE CLUES PAGE

What kinds of clues are these? Some are visual, some are anagrams, some are mathematical, some are in the spirit of crossword clues, some require a knowledge of chess history, and some are just plain bizarre. To get a feel for the kinds of clues that you will have to cope with, check out last year's Present Hunt.

If you are the first person to discover a game page referred to by the clue, you'll see a special banner ad that reads "Congratulations, you are a winner!" Simply click on this banner to claim your prize.

NO PURCHASE IS NECESSARY; you do not have to be a premium member of Chessgames to participate. However, before you can claim a prize you must have a registered Chessgames username. If you don't have an account yet, take a minute to visit our Registration Page. The process is quick, confidential, and 100% free.

THE PRIZES:

This year we are proud to offer several premium prizes, starting with $US 200.00 worth of chess goods courtesy of The Chessgames Store!, plus over 50 free subscriptions to Chessgames Premium Services!
 

 

x2 lucky winners The Magic Tactics of Mikhail Tal by Karsten Müller and Raymund Stolze.   Mikhail Tal was one of the greatest geniuses in chess history. Feared and admired for his dazzling attacks, the "Magician from Riga" took the chess world by storm. In 1960, at the age of twenty-three, he wrested the world title from Mikhail Botvinnik to become the youngest World Champion ever. In this book Karsten Müller and Raymund Stolze have created an instructional guide by investigating and explaining the secrets of Tal's breathtaking tactics. Additionally, they present one hundred exercises selected from his games that will teach amateurs how to distinguish between correct and incorrect combinations, and how to defend against them.   A special feature are the contributions from legendary grandmasters such as Spassky, Yusupov and Kramnik, who share their personal impressions and describe their games with the 8th World Champion.   The result is both an intimate portrait of one of the all-time greats of chess and an instructive guide for lovers of Tal's legendary combinational style. www.newinchess.com

x3 lucky winners Book selected by Times Chess correspondent Ray Keene. In May 1997, World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov, regarded by many as the greatest player of all time, came to New York to face his most unusual and challenging opponent yet. Deep Blue, a supercomputer developed by a team of IBM scientists in a project started ten years earlier, was capable of calculating 200 million chess positions per second and was incapable of tiring, losing heart or making an oversight. Six games would be played for over $1 million in prize money. This book tells the full story of this historic encounter, from the personalities, hype and controversies to the debates over computer intelligence and the future of chess. Every game is analyzed in detail and the earlier 1989 and 1996 matches between the two contestants are reviewed. Man versus Machine: Kasparov vs Deep Blue is the definitive on-the-scene report that every chess enthusiast must read. Don't forget to follow GM Keene on the Times Chess Twitter feed where you'll get the best of chess-related news, puzzles, and chat. www.keeneonchess.com

x2 lucky winners For over 20 years, New in Chess has been the world's best chess magazine. With regular contributions from all the world's best players. Garry Kasparov, Vishy Anand, Veselin Topalov, Alexei Shirov, Vladimir Kramnik, Peter Leko, Judith Polgar--you name them, NIC has them. Perhaps that's why New In Chess is also their favorite chess magazine! In-depth interviews, on-the-spot tournament reports, chess anecdotes and curiosities, and more. Don't stand aside, join the best. They have been making this unique magazine for more than twenty years already. And they will go on making New In Chess. For you! Two lucky contest winners will receive a full year's subscription: over 800 pages a year of the very best in chess. www.newinchess.com

64 special banners will be placed in games in our database throughout the month of December. If you find one of these games, just click on the special banner and claim your prize. It's that simple!

You can see an example of what you should look for in the graphic to the right.

Clues will be released at irregular intervals on our special Clues Page, starting on December 10th, and ending on December 24th. In total, 64 clues will be published, each one referring to one of the special games in our database containing a prize banner.

To play the contest, just visit our Clues Page regularly and try to find the winning games. Or, poke around randomly, and if you're lucky enough you might stumble upon a prize banner. Good luck!

NEW FEATURE: TOP-OF-PAGE CLUE ANNOUNCEMENTS

In previous years, people went to the Clues Page and pressed "reload" like maniacs to be the first to get a shot at the new clues, whenever they went online. This year we are going to give your mouse finger a break, and tell you in a big red box at the top of the page, every time a new clue goes online. All you have to do is use Chessgames as you normally would, and keep your eye on the top of the page for announcements of new clue releases.

ABOUT THE CLUES

Our Clues Page will present all of the clues currently released. Throughout the month of December, at irregular intervals, new clues will be added to this page. Clues that have been solved will be clearly marked in green, so that you can concentrate only on the clues that remain unsolved.

Some clues are so easy, it will be a race to locate the game and click on the banner. Some clues are very cunning and may take hours before anybody figures them out. Some clues are so impossible that we'd never figure them out in a million years, even though we wrote them. In those cases the winner will likely stumble upon the game by accident. If a clue proves to be too obscure for even our most ingenious members, we may (at our discretion) add more hints as the contest progresses to help encourage the location of the winning banners.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

The following questions are the most commonly asked questions about this contest. For more thorough details, refer to the Official Rules, found at the bottom of this page. We hope that this avoids any confusion, but if you still have questions, feel free to ask us at the Chessgames Chessforum.

• WHO CAN PLAY?

  Anybody at all, of any age, from any country, excluding: employees of Chessgames.com, the contest sponsors, and such employees' and sponsors' immediate family members and persons with whom such employees are domiciled.

• DO I HAVE TO BE A PREMIUM MEMBER TO WIN?

  No, but you must have an account (a "username") to claim a prize. You can get a free account quickly and easily at our Registration Page at any time.

• ARE ALL SIXTY-FOUR BANNERS ONLINE FROM THE BEGINNING?

  No. The banners will be placed on the game pages only when the clues are released. By December 24th all 64 banners will be online.

• AT WHAT RATE ARE THE CLUES RELEASED?

  64 dates and times were selected in advance between December 10th and December 24th, by a computer, completely at random. The average rate is 4 clues a day, but it's possible for a day to go by without a single clue, or for two clues released mere seconds apart.

• CAN I WIN MORE THAN ONE PRIZE?

  Yes. If you win one prize, keep on playing, and you might win another. However, if any single member wins five prizes, he or she will immediately become ineligible from winning any further prizes until next year.

• WHY DO YOU RELEASE THE CLUES AT IRREGULAR INTERVALS?

  To give everybody, from all the time zones across the globe, a fair chance at being online when a new clue becomes available. Plus, we don't want you to know when they are coming ;-)

• WHAT'S THIS ABOUT 7 DIGIT NUMBERS?

  This is very important if you want to win. Every game in our database has what we call a "game ID", which is a 7-digit number. Currently they are all in the range of 1000000 and 1700000. Due to this fact, many (if not most) clues will lead you to a solution which is a 7 digit number. Once you know this game ID, finding the game is simple. Two methods: (1) You can type the number into the "EZ Search" at the top of our homepage, or (2) visit the URL chessgames.com/ followed by the game ID. For example, to get to game 1000000 (the very first game in our database) you would go to chessgames.com/1000000.

• YOUR CLUES MAKE NO SENSE!

  We really want you to solve them. Some of them make perfect sense, but some are highly obscure. Not everybody will be able to solve every clue, but some of them are so easy we call them "race clues" because the first person to locate the banner and click wins. Be sure to read the tips at the bottom of the Clues Page. If a clue proves to be too hard for anybody to solve, we may add further hints to encourage its solution. If you want to practice solving clues, check out the crazy conundrums from previous years: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.

• WHAT ARE SOME WEBSITES THAT MIGHT HELP ME SOLVE THE CLUES?

  Chessgames.com will be the most important site to use for all clues, but being skilled with Google.com can also help a lot. Some of the clues will involve anagrams, for which the Internet Anagram Server is an indispensable resource. For questions of history, art, mathematics, or a number of other subjects that our clues reference, Wikipedia will surely come in handy. The Cryptogram Solver will chew on the hardest cryptograms and give you an answer in seconds. Having a good dictionary will also be an asset. In recent years, we've found that some solvers have been using the website TinEye can help you figure out what an image is.

• ARE WE ALLOWED TO DISCUSS THE CLUES WHILE THEY ARE STILL UNSOLVED?

  Sure, if you want to. The Kibitzer's Cafe is a popular place to do that.

• I'M A PREMIUM MEMBER AND I'VE DISABLED ADVERTISEMENTS. CAN I SEE THE PRIZE BANNERS?

  Yes: the prize banners are visible to everybody, regardless of preference settings.

• I'M A PREMIUM MEMBER; WHAT HAPPENS IF I WIN A FOUR MONTH MEMBERSHIP?

  Four extra months will be added to your account.

• I'M A LIFETIME MEMBER; WHAT HAPPENS IF I WIN A FOUR MONTH MEMBERSHIP?

  Sorry, your four extra months will be meaningless. Chessgames may (at its discretion) award these prizes to randomly selected non-premium members during our "Dear Santa Contest" to be announced later in December.