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I did not know there was one. If you look for inspiration, check this out! https://www.chess.com/news/view/chess-com-blogs-of-the-month And if your favourite blog is not listed here, feel free to list it!

Dear All, I have gone quiet on the chess.com blog front. I guess there were just too many balls in the air. The community I am most active in is Say Chess's Training Group. My most recent pieces have been published via Martin Justensen's (aka Say Chess) newsletter on Substack. For example: https://chesstrainingaccountabilitygroup.substack.com/p/week-52-an-impossible-dream-by-neil I like the focus on adult chess improvement so this seemed like the best place to share longer form writing, even if the potential audience is much smaller. I guess we can't be all things to all people. Anyway, Happy New Year! Neil

Competing blogs: https://www.chess.com/blog/LesleyMyra/beating-gm-benjamin-finegold from @LesleyMyra https://www.chess.com/blog/Renate-Irene/bobby-fischer-poem-and-william-lombardy from @Renate-Irene https://www.chess.com/blog/sunny29990/the-misgivings-of-a-chess-player-part-i from @sunny29990 https://www.chess.com/blog/ChessPawn921/avoiding-time-pressure-in-bullet from @ChessPawn921 https://www.chess.com/blog/Nimzo-IndianaJones/bongcloud-or-botez-arena-speedrun from @Nimzo-IndianaJones https://www.chess.com/blog/Fayez58/how-to-play-against-the-sicilian-defense from @Fayez58 https://www.chess.com/blog/Marziotta/using-flashcards-to-improve-at-chess from @Marziotta What is your favourite post among these ones? I would say that if you are in and want to vote (for somebody but you), then all of the people competing should vote for it to count, otherwise voting would be a disadvantage! If anybody has a good system we can go for it. In the end we are trying and testing out stuff. If we get two winners with different systems, or even more... The more the merrier!

Fellow Blog Lovers, I am wondering if any of you out there in the chess.com blog world can identify with this. I have been participating in Blog Champs Season 1 and the post below was my (unsuccessful) entry in the first knock out round. That is absolutely fine - I have enjoyed participating and, if nothing else, it has forced me to make three posts. A good thing! https://www.chess.com/blog/DreamLearnBe/the-ultimate-sacrifice The chief negative points were it's length and the formatting of it - but there are mitigating reasons for both these flaws. I had a productive exchange with one of the judges when I asked for feedback and this brings me to my point. I guess what I am writing is not really what many others actually consider to be a blog per se. They are for want of a better word "articles". This fits in with my long term dream. Eventually I would like to write a chess book. I see my blog as an excellent way to practice my writing. This also explains my approach to the multitude of diagrams that I use, rather than condensing them into one analysis board. I want the reader to experience my blog as if they were scrolling down an e-book. It seemed to me that thumb nails and other pictorial elements are heavily emphasised by many when evaluating blog quality. Fair enough, but this is not a self evident truth of blogs. I am quite a fan of medium and other long form blog platforms. Here writing and the depth of ideas is what is most important. I appreciate that a visually stunning blog is a wondrous thing. But surely the ideas and writing technique need to feature on an equal footing. What do you all think? Are the ribbons and the bows actually necessary for a blog to be successful?

From next month we can do a blog of the month, but for now we can change a tiny bit the format since it's the first time we do it. Until the end of the month you can submit in this thread what you think is your best blog post so far. Feel free to make a thread of your own to ask other people what post of yours they think more fit. Or to ask for suggestions for your next post, to write in the coming week! In the end the aim here is reading good stuff, and improving at writing and at assessing blogs I wish you tons of fun! At the end of October (edited, before I wrote November) I will close comments here and open a new thread with all submissions where everybody can decide their favourite post among the ones listed. If there are some ties we will vote again only for the ties. No prizes involved, but maybe somebody will come up with a virtual reward. Ideas are welcome!

@CDRED141 came up with the idea of a blog of the month in the club. How would you organise it? How could we review the blogs? I won't be reviewing all blogs myself extensively if there are more than 4 or 5 contenders.

My last post https://www.chess.com/blog/Marziotta/time-to-rewire-slowly-back-to-chess Not so chess related, in a way. In another way it's a way to say that I want to be there for chess as well, and so I have to take care of other things as well. Feel free to comment the post if you relate to any of the discussed things. Don't feel forced to review it, but if you want to give me a couple of tips, here I am! I tried to make the format more readable, I got quite some feedback in the BlogChamp and tried to put some things in practice.Not everything, but you know, you can't do everything at once. I put some pictures that for me had a meaning at that point, but maybe it is too obscure for others. Could you let me know if they make sense in your opinion? Maybe adding some more text in the caption could help! Maybe I should grant everybody the power to read my mind!

I am no authority here, and I think everybody can participate to the discussion. What do you like in a blog? What must it have to be good? What standards should it have? If you want to say yours, or share any article, this is the right thread! I just found a random article. https://www.blogtyrant.com/how-to-write-the-perfect-blog-post/ I do not like to think at other blogs as competition, more like people we can admire or learn from (learn from their mistakes and from what they do right). Finding the target is useful, but sometimes esp for personal blogs it's important to start writing, we can rearrange the target and the soul of the blog post after post. If we never write, or are too bound to an idea, the writer's block could always catch us! I think that if we write about our personal experience the blog will always be unique. The blog should be interesting and understandable for our target. Visually interesting, easy to read and skim, using bullet points and bold to improve reading. Short sentences. The use of paragraphs... My blog is... Oh my blog. A diary in the end. I share it, more for the sake of letting know what I do, to be able myself to follow my progress and being accountable. I don't go very deep in any topic, but I did it in some posts. But this is material for another thread. I will probably post it tomorrow.

Please tell me your opinion about this! I want to improve, so tell me if you see any mistake. https://www.chess.com/blog/matbellanas36/the-cheating-gambit-extract-from-marca-press It's a common topic these days, so it's perfect to practise writing.

Just post here a blog or blog post you like and tell us why! It mustn't be your all time favourite. No pressure there. If you own a blog, it shouldn't be from your own blog. Feel free to start a separate thread if you want to share your best post! I will answer myself later, I want to post a blog I read today for the first time. So it's like an excuse to read more blogs.

This was my very first blog. It seems strangely prescient - did I write it knowing that it would fit nicely somewhere, sometime in the future? Anyway, let me know what you think. Whilst it will be more convenient to comment in the Blog Lovers thread, it would be nice to leave a comment on the blog itself.....I have found that it is not always easy to get comments! https://www.chess.com/blog/DreamLearnBe/yes-another-blog-from-an-unremarkable-chess-player

This is a newborn club, so any help is so welcome! What would you foto make this club better, improve the engagement of the members and so on? What would you like to see? What would you offer to make it better?

I will start with my whys. I love to write. I have notebooks everywhere at my place. I take notes continuously. Sometimes I never read them, but always have to write. I have kept other blogs in the past, a couple about my life, one about job search, and some where I maybe wrote a post or two then abandoned and forget. I want to be accountable. Writing down what I did over the last days and what I plan to do forces me to go on doing it. Or at least, it is a good reminder. I have notes everywhere, seeing everything in a post helps. So there is a place to find videos, books, everything! I hope people can tell me if they like things I like, if they find them useful or useless, and share part of their path with me. No matter if lower or higher rated, I think everybody at some point had to focus on simple tactics like pins. I hope to inspire people, to start discussions where everybody can learn something new. Everything comes from cooperation. When we close in ourselves we advance less. I hope to find like-minded people in the path. I hope to improve at chess and at blogging.

What makes a blog appealing to you? What kind of blogs do you like? Chess and non-chess related. What compels you to leave a comment in a blog? Do you like reading blogs in general? If you don't, I think you should reconsider, especially if you write a blog yourself and want to improve at blogging, getting new ideas, and become part of a community where everybody can help each other. If you have other good questions on the topic I will later add them here in the first post of the thread. If we understand what we like in other blogs it would also help us to blog better, in case we already do it or plan to do it in the future.

Hello! I eagerly want to improve my blogs. So if anyone can give me review on how I can improve, I would really appreciate it. My latest blog link: https://www.chess.com/blog/Fayez58/beat-the-evans-gambit

Hi all! For the bloggers, feel free to promote your posts (even an old one without so many comments where you would like more feedback), to invite your commenters and people you know read your blogs. Also don't hesitate to ask for suggestions or give suggestions to the others around! For everybody, feel free to invite here people that write blogs you love, especially if they are small blogs that in your opinion deserve more attention. Also tell about the group to people who love reading blogs in general. Let's try everybody to read each other, to comment and give suggestions, and to help each other to have blogs that become better and better every time we write! I do not know if the best format for promotion is using notes or the forum, let me know what fits better. Maybe this message, or something similar, would also deserve to be an announcement, but, you know, it's content could change after interacting a bit with you. This is a new club and I will try to give it the best direction for all of us taking into account all suggestions. Enjoy writing and reading!

Can I get some feedback? https://www.chess.com/blog/CDRED141/how-do-you-use-chess