THE NEW EDITOR

By Larry Parr

Despite all the unfounded attacks on Kalev Pehme before he even began editing
the January 2004 issue of Chess Life (which was twice the size of the one in
December) I see no reason to criticize his performance so far.

As a matter of fact, the USCF website says that the February issue featuring
Kasparov on the cover ("he goes deeper into the matrix") will be mailed to
members on December 29. If this turns out to be true, then it will arrive at
least TWO WEEKS BEFORE previous issues have reached members.

In January I noticed a slight stylistic change to reduce clutter and save
space. Instead of 1. e4 the dots have been eliminated as in 1 e4. I heard that
this improvement produced an internal battle!

One can only hope that our worthy politicians will not meddle with the content
of the magazine or peddle any more happy talk in its pages. It's too soon to
judge the new editor's performance, of course, but he should be given a fair
chance to succeed.

So far I like what I see.