Chess.com is an Internet chess server, Internet forum and social networking website; it is also the name of the company that runs the site. It is the most frequently visited chess website according to Alexa Internet rankings.
Video Chess.com
History
The domain chess.com was originally set up in 1995 by Aficionado, a company based in Berkeley, California, in order to sell a piece of chess tutoring software called "Chess Mentor". 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. 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.
In October 2013, chess.com acquired the Dutch-based chess news site chessvibes.com. In 2014, the site announced that over a billion live games had been played on the site, including 100 million correspondence games.
Chess tournaments
Chess.com has held regular "Death-Matches" since January 2012, whereby titled players are paid to play a series of blitz games over a non-stop 3-hour period (5-minute, 3-minute and 1-minute, all with a one-second increment). To date, there have been 38 deathmatches, the participants of which include 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, Nigel Short, Wang Yue, Francisco Vallejo Pons, Erwin L'Ami and Ruslan Ponomariov.
Computer chess tournament
In November 2017, chess.com held an open tournament of the ten strongest chess engines with $2,500 in prize money. The top-two engines competed in a "Superfinal" tournament between the two finalists - Stockfish and Houdini. In the 20-game Superfinal, Stockfish won over Houdini with a score 10.5-9.5. Five games were decisive, with 15 ending in a draw. Of the decisive games, three games were won by Stockfish, and two by Houdini.
Maps Chess.com
Features
Chess.com operates a freemium business model: main site features are free, but players have to pay to get additional features.
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 (computer chess), 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, opening 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. Another popular feature is clubs (or teams), which can play matches against each other.
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, Natalia Pogonina and Daniel Rensch.
Users can play a number of variants on the live server, including crazyhouse, three-check, four-player, king of the hill, 960 chess and bughouse.
Chess.com has a policy against the use of chess engines in all forms of the game, except where "specifically permitted (such as a computer tournament)". It utilizes certain undisclosed techniques to catch players using engines in games and bans many on a daily basis.
Chess.com also mutes and bans users who repeatedly break the forum posting rules.
Chesskid.com
Chess.com also runs the site chesskid.com for chess players aged 13 and younger. Chesskid.com runs an online championship which is recognized by the United States Chess Federation.
See also
- List of Internet chess servers
References
External links
- Official website
- ChessKid.com
Source of article : Wikipedia
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