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The Story of my "GOTM" ColumnBy A.J. Goldsby I Written: Monday; January 03rd, 2005. I first started my "Game of The Month"
around 1998. It was run on a {now} defunct chess server ... an early rival to
ICC. At
first, it was only a VERY lightly annotated game ... the idea was to limit
myself to five or six notes and one diagram. Later,
this feature moved around quite a bit, it was even featured for a short while on the
Kasparov chess server. Later, it became a sort of "Game of The Quarter" on yet another chess server, in the form of a {sort-of nightly} lecture there. About three years ago, a gentleman broached the idea of my doing this game on a regular basis. (At first, I turned him down.) Later he suggested the idea again, but at that time, my wife had just been diagnosed with cancer. For about 8-10 months, I did VERY little real chess work. I lost all of my (on-line) students. For nearly a year, while I watched my wife suffer through treatment, surgery ... and later chemotherapy, all I did was to live off of our savings and to try and take care of my family. Needless to say, this was a very dark period for me. Once my wife had gotten substantially better, I again began to teach chess on the Internet and also build web pages. And once more the same gentleman - who once lived in the Pensacola area - asked me to resume my ... "Game of The Month" column. At first I said (a very firm) "no," but then he basically made me an offer I could not refuse. He found a group of 10-12 people, all of which were going to guarantee me a MINIMUM contribution/donation of 100 dollars every month. (Some promised to occasionally give as much as 250 a month.) Additionally, he promised to sign up "dozens of people," who would all contribute at least 10 bucks a month. (Later, I got good support from several people in other states ... a few of these had very deep pockets. A chap in CT with a ton of money in real estate, another fellow in Michigan - who owned a whole string of car dealerships across the state. Many of these big-time supporters were deeply hurt when the economy went bust around 2007-2008.) This led to my creation of my "G.O.T.M." website.
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Fast forward less than three years. All
of my main contributors have stopped sending support of any kind. Some of these people had major, significant problems in their lives. (My heart really went out to one fellow. His Mother had a stroke, and he eventually had to place her in a {expensive} nursing home. Another supporter had a family member severely injured by a drunk driver.) But for most of the others, it was simply a matter of convenience. (One member told me that he "had gotten me started," and felt that was "good enough." ) (Another gentleman said his wife demanded a vacation. However, saving for a lark in Mexico is hardly a good reason for non-contribution, at least not in my book ... especially not after making written promises of faithful, absolute and unflagging support!) I
put out a (new) plea for support, but the response was
truly very, very, very small, almost microscopic. (I
was very disappointed!) This {series of events} has (now) led me to conclude that no one was truly interested in supporting this feature!!! ---> I decided to greatly reduce the amount of time that I spent on this feature. Copyright (c) (LM) A.J. Goldsby I Copyright © A.J. Goldsby, 2015. All rights reserved. Last edit or save on: 03/18/2015 10:26 AM . [Home] [My GC-GOTM Page] [My "Game of The Month" website.] [My Domain]
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