Saturday, May 5, 2012

Goddesschess in Echec Magazine

The saga of Goddesschess continues in the Ma-June, 2012 (No. 203) print edition of Echec magazine, published by the Quebec Chess Federation.


Hmmmm, not very legible.  It's in French, too.  I don't know about you, but my French skills aren't too keen these days.  Here it is in English:

Goddesschess and Those Fabulous Las Vegas Show Girls!
by Janet Newton
At the time, there was no way to know that the articles written by Those Fabulous Las Vegas Show Girls would prove to be enduringly popular and among the best-visited pages at the Goddesschess website.(1) From the first article written in 2000 to the most recent article (with a cliff-hanger ending) written in 2008 during the World Chess Championship between GM Viswanathan Anand and GM Vladimir Kramnik, the Show Girls' articles have consistently received a high number of page views every month.
Perhaps it was our individual flights to freedom and our spirit of following our dreams on not much more than a wing and a prayer that led to the Show Girls finding us. I had earned a degree in law and practiced for some years before giving it up for a much more mundane 9 to 5 existence, at much lower pay but a great deal more free time to do the things I wanted to do. Partner Don McLean acts as our webmaster, creates all of the graphics for Goddesschess and its sponsorships, and is a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to doing an interview, getting photographs and video action of the City of Montreal Open Chess Championships, of which we have been a sponsor since 2009. In his earlier life he started out in retail business after earning his degree and worked up the ranks, only to leave to pursue a career in counselling troubled youths. He later retired from counselling and went into the freelance world of what was then the Wild Wild West of the Emerging Internet in 1999. Partner Georgia Albert, a true Renaissance woman, made a living playing pool, owned an antiques business for awhile, and spent twenty-five years in the casino industry in Las Vegas, Nevada.
In July 2000 the Las Vegas Show Girls duo of Bambi Darlin and Candi Kane sent their very first article to The International Chessoid. That article was passed along to Goddesschess partner Georgia Albert as not being "original" enough to be suitable "Chessoid" material. Georgia, in turn, passed the article along to me. I thought it was very clever and funny and so we published it at Goddesschess.(2) Unfortunately, I do not remember what tournament the Show Girls were writing about -- as they neglected to mention the name of the tournament in their article! All I know is that the Show Girls thought that GM Alexander Khalifman and GM Michael Adams were very "hot." And because Candi Kane was wearing stilleto heels, she couldn't walk very fast and the Girls were very late, missing the beginning (and perhaps most) of the action in the "final round."
Perhaps one of you can help identify the tournament that the Show Girls visited? At the time the article was written, GM Alexander Khalifman was the reigning FIDE World Chess Champion (he won that title in September, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada), and GM Michael Adams' hair had not yet turned grey. This was during the time after Kasparov split with FIDE and there were two "World Chess Champions" for many years afterward.
From the beginning, the Girls had minds of their own, and very definite opinions about the world of professional chess. The Girls traveled the world, and sometimes they agreed to cover chess events for us. However, reporting on chess events was not what the Girls wanted to do for Goddesschess. No. They wanted to become researchers into the deepest mysteries of chess and its most ancient origins! In other words, they wanted to be - us!
Because we at Goddesschess believe in exploring new possibilities into the origins of ancient games, the Show Girls found a home with us. We were not going to say that they did not have something valuable to add to the conversation, just because they did not have "degrees" in archaeology, anthropology, or ancient history.
At irregular intervals, indicative of the lives of the busy women that they are, the Show Girls would email articles to me (I'm the de facto "editor" of Goddesschess) and after correcting for punctuation and some spelling errors, the articles were published at Goddesschess. If you would like to take some interesting journeys along the road to discovering the deeper mysteries arising out of the origins of chess, I definitely recommend that you read the Show Girls' articles.(3) To say they are "mind-bending" is an understatement.
The Show Girls are not just Show Girls, of course! They are, first and foremost, businesswomen. The life of a Las Vegas show girl can be very short-lived, although there have been many successful show girls who have had careers of 20 years and longer. But eventually, time catches up with all of us. Today, Bambi and Candi are retired from their g-strings onstage, but are active in producing some of the most popular shows in casinos around the world. The Girls continue to make their home in the mountains surrounding the valley that is Las Vegas and have no desire to leave the valley. Over the years, the Girls tried their hand at designing their own clothing lines and achieved some minor success under fictitious names, but ultimately wisely invested in the early careers of several now very successful designers, wisely realizing that despite men's fascination with tassles and g-strings, it is women who ultimately spends thousands of dollars a year buying their own clothes.
You may be surprised to learn that it was those Las Vegas Show Girls, Bambi and Candi, that led Goddesschess into its very first sponsorship in a chess tournament -- in the 2007 U.S. Women's Chess Championship. However, the Girls have always passionately supported promoting more females to play in chess tournaments of all kinds and at all levels. One of the Girls' favorite sayings is "From a small acorn the mighty oak grows..."
Over the years, many people have inquired as to whether Bambi Darlin and Candi Kane are REAL people. All I am authorized to tell you is that - what happens in 'Vegas stays in 'Vegas...
Goddesschess is very happy to be a sponsor of the 2012 Canadian Women's Closed Chess Championship. In our next article, you will learn just how it was that those Las Vegas Show Girls led us to our first sponsorship in a tournament, and how things blossomed forth from that "First Time."
Notes:
(2) This is the url to the Show Girls' very first Goddesschess article: http://goddesschess.com/lasvegasshowgirls/vegaschicks.html
(3) This is the url to the Show Girls' entire index of Goddesschess articles: http://goddesschess.com/lasvegasshowgirls/vegaschickstoc.html

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