For those of you who might have missed it, the annual trivia article in the Post-Crescent appeared in yesterday's paper. Not surprisingly, the focus is on the big story of this year's contest: the transition to a webcast-only format. I suppose the photo of GM Reid Stratton is a slight step up from last year's photo of Jonathan Roberts, but not much. He sounds rather optimistic in the article that the webcast will work well, but please forgive me for being rather pessimistic about it. Unless they're adding enough bandwidth for over 1000 connections to the webcast, I have a hard time believing that (a) the system won't get overloaded and bogged-down, and (b) some teams won't get blocked from listening in by other teams with 40 computers or more. The article also notes that GM Stratton is from Portland (a fine town, I must say), making him the second Oregonian grand master in three years. Please, Reid, for the good of humanity, don't repeat Phred's Oregon Hour....

» LU contest prepares to move into the unknown [Appleton Post-Crescent]