Chess.com

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Jump to: navigation, search
Chess.com
220px
Web address www.chess.com
Slogan Play. Learn. Share.
Type of site
 Internet chess server, Social media website
Registration Yes
Launched June 2007
Alexa rank
 Increase 1,911 (March 2016)[1]
Current status Active

Chess.com is an Internet chess community, chess server and social networking website, and also the name of the company that runs the website.[2] According to Alexa rankings, it is the most frequently visited chess site on the internet.[3]

History

The domain chess.com was originally set up in about 1995 by Aficionado, a company based in Berkeley, California, in order to sell a piece of chess tutoring software called "Chess Mentor".[4] In 2005, internet entrepreneur Erik Allebest and partner Jarom ("Jay") Severson purchased the domain name and assembled a team of software developers to redevelop the site as a chess portal. The site was relaunched in 2007.[2] Allebest plays chess at an amateur level.[5] The site was heavily promoted via social media and grew quickly, attracting mainly casual players. In 2009, chess.com announced a takeover of a similar chess social networking site, chesspark.com.[6][7]

In October 2013, chess.com acquired the Dutch-based chess news site chessvibes.com.[8] According to the website mainpage there are over 11 million members and over a billion live games have been played on the site, along with 100 million correspondence games.[9]

Chess.com has held regular "deathmatches", whereby two titled players are paid to play a series of blitz games (5-minute, 3-minute and 1-minute, all with one second increment).[10] To date there have been 30 deathmatches, some of them held between some of the top grandmasters, such as Hikaru Nakamura, Dmitry Andreikin, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Simen Agdestein, Lê Quang Liêm, Wesley So, Georg Meier, Arkadij Naiditsch, Loek van Wely, Fabiano Caruana, Judit Polgár and Nigel Short.[11]

Features

Chess.com operates a freemium business model: main site features are free,[12] but players have to pay to get additional features.[13]

Visitors to the site can play on a live chess server and correspondence style games, referred to on the site as "turn-based". Players may also play against chess engines, and participate in voting games, in which players form teams and vote on the best move. Additional features include tactics training, chess forums, articles, chess news, downloads, openings databases, groups, live broadcasts, daily puzzles, online coaching and a game database of over 2 million games.

On the site, players are able to learn to play at any level, take part in discussion forums and watch chess events.[14]

The company publishes a large number of articles on a variety of chess-related topics, including chess strategy, opening theory and history. Regular contributors include Gregory Serper, Bruce Pandolfini, Rafael Leitão, Dan Heisman, Jeremy Silman, Petar Genov, Daniel Naroditsky and Natalia Pogonina.

Chess.com has a policy against the use of chess engines in all forms of the game, except unrated games where both players agree. It utilizes certain techniques to catch players using engines in games, and bans many on a daily basis.

Chesskid.com

Chess.com also runs the site chesskid.com for chess players aged 13 and under. Chesskid.com runs an online championship which is recognized by the United States Chess Federation.[15][16]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Premium Membership & Subscriptions - Chess.com
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

Retrieved from "https://infogalactic.com/w/index.php?title=Chess.com&oldid=712544175"