
How the Internet has changed chess: Part 6
It's time to continue this series. I've been very busy this last month. My previous five blogs in this topic have discussed the speeding up of chess on the Internet. Sometimes I feel like it's me against the world trying to educate the masses the values of taking your time when playing a game of chess. Let's take a look now at chess.com TV. Periodically live tournaments are broadcast with commentary by titled players. Many of these events are conducted with slow standard time controls. After all this is how all titled players earn their status. This technology simply did not exist 30 years ago when I was an up-and-coming master strength player. I would've loved to have kept up to date with important tournaments. Chess videos abound on the Internet. I, myself, have a YouTube channel with well over 300 videos available for immediate viewing. Here is the link to my play lists:
http://www.youtube.com/user/BobbyJFischer1943/videos?view=1&tag_id=&sort=dd
Chess coaching has become a lucrative and time-saving endeavor. In the old days a player had to drive to the master's house and leave hoping he could remember everything he was taught. Now the Internet, Skype, chess.com live interface, and video capture software combine to enable the master to give more lessons and the student to receive more value. I am quite certain I am the top-selling coach on this site. If you sort the chess.com coaches by services sold, you will see I'm ranked fourth among titled players. I achieved that position in less than a year and chess.com has not kept track since March. Since that time I've been deluged with new students. All this is enabled me to make chess a full-time profession. I haven't worked a regular job since December of last year and only worked four part-time months since I became active at chess.com in April of 2012.
My next big goal is to promote chess.com to new markets. More on this soon. My video lessons group has reached the top 10 groups at chess.com in just over 14 months. My new world standard time control group has cracked the top 100 groups in just over one month. I stand by my earlier statement. I and Dan Heisman's Learning Center would like to prove that there is a demand for standard play on the Internet and would like to see chess.com offer one round tournaments played a time control of 90 30 on hopefully an hourly basis. This eliminates the need for my group and for all the unnecessary paperwork that must be implemented by manual efforts. It is a shame at ICC that knightrunner’s idea of a 60 60 league was taken away from him by his fellow administrators and replaced with a shorter time control. His story is in his finger notes on that site. We must hold for 90 30 as there is no other reasonable way to prepare players for the time controls they will find while they pursue it improvement in the real world. 90 30 on chess.com will make it the best place on the internet to play standard time control chess.
I have achieved a lot of success here at chess.com and I have helped a lot of players improve their game. Even without reaching the high positions I have stated above I would still enjoy doing these activities. I thank you for your support and together chess for everyone involved in these endeavors will become whole lot better.
My video lessons group link: http://www.chess.com/groups/home/nm-aww-rats-free-video-lessons
My world standard time control link: http://www.chess.com/groups/home/world-standard-time-control-chess-club-365-days-a-year
Part seven will follow soon! Thank you for your time.