god and jesus are numbers 12 and 86, respectively.

my favorite players of all time are Jose Raul Capablanca, and Paul Morphy because of their natural genius and overall excellence. i enjoy all styles of chess and most chess players. my very favorite active player is

Vladimir Kramnik (world champion 2000-07) http://kramnik.com/

after that i have a small, but growing group of players that i root for more than everyone else.

Viswanathan Anand (current world champion 2007-?)

Levon Aronian

Magnus Carlsen (future world champion 20??-?)(also future top 5 player. :-P)http://blog.magnuschess.com/

Gata Kamsky

Sergey Karjakin

Peter Leko

Alexander Morozevich

Hikaru Nakamura

Teimour Radjabov

historically, i admire several others such as Garry Kasparov, Robert James Fischer, Anatoly Karpov, Mikhail Tal, Emanuel Lasker, Boris Spassky, and Alexander Alekhine.

this link provides a summary of the events that took place between 1998 and 2000 involving garry kasparov, vladimir kramnik, alexey shirov, vishy anand and the classical chess world championship. http://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/989...

mating themes: http://www.angelfire.com/games/SBCh... basic mating themes.

chess log...http://agnum.unixcab.org/?ID=1 a database of tournament results covering the years 2003-05.

http://www.chessville.com/Quotes/mi... chess quotes

http://chess.emrald.net/ a tactics server worth checking out.

http://www.lokasoft.nl/tbweb.htm 3,4 and 5 piece tablebases.

http://www.chessvibes.com/ chess media.

http://www.chessdom.com/ chess media.

http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/twi... chess news, etc.

http://chesscafe.com/ chess articles including interviews, informator analysis, etc.

http://chesszone.org/ downloadable chess books including many classics, some in russian.

http://wtharvey.com/ chess puzzles listed by player and opening. great site.

http://jeremysilman.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b8I... -capablanca, rare film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va9H... -kramnik becomes the undisputed world champion.

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<Dear Vladimir,

We are writing as a small group of Grandmasters, but we believe that we represent the views of the vast majority of our colleagues. We simply wanted to let you know that we think you have suffered a gross injustice, and that you have our support.

We appreciate that you are now under immense psychological pressure, and that it must be difficult to continue to play well in the context of such blatant bias, unfairness, and hostility.

Good luck in the days ahead. If you manage to win in these circumstances you will be a worthy champion indeed.

Best wishes,

GM Jonathan Rowson (Scotland)
GM Peter Heine Nielsen (Denmark)
GM Magnus Carlsen (Norway)
GM Jan Gustafsson (Germany)
GM Tomi Nyback (Finland)
GM Luke McShane (England)
GM Loek Van Wely (Netherlands)>

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