Chesscube's Demise and the lesson from it.

[Chess.com's policy is that we do not discuss our competitors in our public forums: I have therefore locked this thread - David, moderator]

Dear fellow chess players,

Before you read on, I want to warn - I am kind of critizing chess.com - please do not be hurt, nor post hate speeches. 2 things are what I want from moderators: assurance, and/or acceptance of my requests.

I was a former chesscube.com member. For the past 8 years, I am seen its horrifying descent to corruption, and enevitablity, demise. It's still up, but since most of the free members are fleeing to chess.com, I daresay, chesscube will continue dwindling.

So, what has happened to chesscube? Short Answer: Corruption. Long Answer: Well, at the start, it was a free site. It had good UI, nice games servers, some resources, and a few other tibits. Then they added gambling. You could play free, or pay some virtual currency called cubits. Nice. Then it added VIP, and some advantages that they have over others. Okay. Then they bulked up the VIP advantages by HEAPS. Hmm... Then they took away free playing, and flooded the servers with ads. Some people started to flee. Then the real corruption set in - it forced players to buy cubits in order to play, since they were losing them so quickly, due to harsh policies. Then all the reports were directed into auto-messages. Oh no. Migrations were a common place. I lost faith and migrated into chess.com (which is heaps better). Then now they are tightening the bolts yet again. Congrats, chesscube! The biggest migration is now on the move, mostly to chess.com.

Now, I have outlined the corruption of chesscube.com - but why am I saying this to you? Well, a couple things.

1. How much I now hate chesscube.

2. How I hope that it might not happen to my final refuge, chess.com. You see, I have been migrating quite a lot since the first migration out of chesscube. Then I settled here, and found out how awesome it was. But that was what I thought, too, when I first saw chesscube. So I hope, with my deepest sincerity, it does not become chesscube. Protip: do not introduce virtual currency! I cannot emphasize more - do NOT CORRUPT!!!

3.  Since I AM premium, I am blind to possible sufferings of the free members. When I was a free member, I could only watch one half of a video, then it stopped with an ad of premium accounts. I was pretty mortified, then. Is it still implimented? If so, please lift it. Because it is one of the most aggravating things I had for chess.com, along with the fact that I could only have a tiny slice of lessons in Chess Mentor. So I just have to ask 2 little upgrades for free members. One: That the video cutting rule must be abolished or prevented from implimenting. Two: Chess Mentor Lessons limits must be increased from 2 to 3 or more.

Thanks

Chess.com Lover,

dennyhan

There are a host of free videos on YouTube including a bunch from chess.com.  I think it's great that they allow free members a taste of the regular videos.  Obviously it's being done to entice folks to upgrade, but that's capitalism.  It's the way free enerprise works.

ChessMentor is the premium product available here so why would they want to give it away?  As it is all members have access to 25 free (and quite wonderful) courses.  That should be enough material to let people know if Chess Mentor is right for them.

Yeah that's sad about chesscube.  I don't see this site going down that path but I wouldn't be surprised to see it go allpremium eventually.  Maybe with an even cheaper entry level class just to help with the spam problem.  If it cost a membership fee to post here I would expect the spam problem to go away since the TOS prohibits spam and the membership would be revoked.  Anyway nice post although I suspect your suggestions have no chance of being implemented.

Open to any more comments?

I'm a huge fan of Chess Mentor courses, it will be the reason I go premium at some future point. I think Chess.com is smart to hold Chess Mentor as a mostly premium feature as it sets itself apart from every other chess site. I think they should loosen up on their tactics trainer though, as ChessTempo allows unlimited use of their tactics trainer so it's not a selling point for this site, you may as well allow everyone to use it more here so they have less reason to go to another website. Bumping it up to 10-12 a day instead of 3 would probably satisfy most free members. I think Chess.com should look to itemized membership too, for example some may just want to watch videos or just use Chess Mentor. Why not allow people to pay just for those features at a lower cost (but more to get multiple features than if you got the current package)? For example you could bill Chess Mentor as $3/month or $30/year. I think more people would be willing to buy those kinds of memberships.

Yes, I agree with you here. I also want to upraise another point. I just learnt that you can only join one tournament when you are a non-member. But in other servers, EVEN in chesscube, we have infinite amount of chess tournaments for free. In this aspect, the others win hands down here. We need to attract more free members by opening up the tournament number valve.

I'm not quite sure that this belongs here, but I have some issues with the policies of Fide Online Arena. Not exactly corruption, but really stupid policies which make a good idea go wrong.

The good idea is that from very recently you are allowed to have official, monitored Fide ELO based on online play. You have to submit a scanned identity card and pay a membership fee to do this. But this is fine: I'm willing to pay this price if I can have an official rating based on controlled games with players of real identity.

It is also a good idea that you can have an unmonitored ELO for casual games and games against unofficial players.

The very big mistake that Fide Online Arena commits is that they don't really allow free members ( they use the brutal method of resetting their ELO every week ). By this measure they reduce the liquidity of the site in a dramatic way. This low liquidity spoils the whole thing for me. Also there are 2000 strong players around with resetted 1200 ELO who keep beating me and destroying my rating. This is just ridiculous.

@watcha

I know what you are saying, but this is getting slightly off-track here. This post is about chesscube's corrpution and my requests/suggestions for opening up the site to the free members more.

But hey, I understand what you are saying though. I think that FOA don't have policies against "sandbagging". It is a technique where the player with higher rating intentionally lose games in order to achieve lower rating, but still retain their skills. So I believe what you, or others should do is to request to the site moderators the making of policies against sandbagging, and to make an engine/rule to stop the 2000 players intentionally lose or reset their ELO rating too much. 

One such policy could be that you can only reset your ELO rating once or twice per year, and players can report unorthodox losses by high-ranked players.

Good luck.

I think you misunderstand me.

Fide Online Arena ITSELF resets the rating of free members ONCE IN EVERY WEEK, by default ( sort of punishment for not paying a membership fee ). They have done it to me, when I was a free member. My chart looked like sawteeth.

I have not seen a site which resets its members ratings except for Fide Online Arena. This is brutal, unaccaptable and above all: harmful to Fide Online Arena, it does not reach its goal, it is stupid.

Ah, sorry, I see now.

That is one of the most idiotic policies I've ever heard about. Seriously? You are supposed to prevent sandbagging yet they FORCE you to? And every WEEK? That is outrageously stupid.

Maybe try to contact them about how ludicrous this is. If they don't hear, just quit going there. Eventually/hopefully, they will be stripped bare of free members, and then realise their mistakes.

Good luck.

                    If you go to, search forums, and type in sandbagging, you'll find a number of threads.

I am in complete agreement with your assessment of chesscube, which is unfortunate since it was my site-of-choice for playing for several years. I loved their GUI.   The whole cubit concept was always lame but when it began to be used as a means to try to force people to become premium members, the lameness reached the level of ridiculousness.  I  log in there every single day just to get free cubits I'll probably never use unless every other chess site goes down for a day.

I have an account at Chesscube. The idea that you can have credits and pay on a per game basis is not bad per se. You can use this site as a backup if your other sites are down or just for diversity without having to pay a regular fee. However having this system of stakes is a bit too much, you have to be very careful not to click on a bid which would cost your whole credit balance for losing one game...

Chesscube is the only site though at which I could ever reach a rating above 2000. It is difficult to assess what this is worth since Chesscube ratings are not analyzed as heavily as chess.com or Fide ratings.

I think the idea of paying for games with ersatz capital is silly and the fact that they try to propel it into a selling issue even more so.  You can play at FICS for free, no gimmicks.  I've played there since 1997 and never had a single problem. The only appeal Chesscube ever had for me was its interface and the ease of getting a game; the rest of the site I find rather pointless.

I think Chess.com gives quite a lot to the free members. And a years "Gold" membership is a measly 29 dollars US. I paid more than that for the last chess book I bought on Amazon.

I paid for the full boat "Diamond" membership and I've been more than satisfied. When my membership is up I will certainly renew. I fail to see why you insist we need to "open up the site to the free members more". Chess.com offer a decent place to play for the free members and has very reasonable upgrades. If Chess.com starts giving everything away, they will soon go out of business and we won't have this place to play....

They took down YAHOO! chess. 

This was around since the 90's I believe and I was hugely, hugely dissapointed as I had played a few games there at one point in time (no more than 30) because I wasn't interested in chess at the time, but it was a nice website/ lobby system, and I wanted to play there recently to find it had been taken down this year. 

Really having a lot of gripes with YAHOO as a company. I really don't like when companies cause damage to potentially a few hundred people who find a passion or community somewhere and they simply don't understand the nature of these people and assume that they can migrate elsewhere to the chess websites elsewhere. I've been part of bigger communities where this happened.. online server neglect is a real thing :(. You can find an internet "home" and a company can decide to take it down without much thought. 

                     Kazooie;   I feel the same way about BLOCKBUSTER

Best Buy anyone?

Looks like an "end of the world" type movie script!

This is about Chesscube and its corruptions, my requests to chess.com and other chess website's corruption assessments. Not about BlockBuster, BestBuy, or stupid scripts. Stay on track or steer off it completely.

I totally agree with windmill64 about tactics trainer.3 per day for free members is a bit ''ugly''.Learning openings also for free members is almost a forbidden area.I agree with you about the virtual currency.It ended up non virtual.

My basic comment is that everything in this social-economic system is moving with the profit as the main parametr.It is not what makes happy and good to members and users of any product.I think one day chess.com will see that having so many free members costs a lot and they will try to keep only members that pay.Everyone's main idea is not to make people love chess but make profit.I am not accussing anyone.This is how things are moving.When every human activity and need is a product you cannot expect a great hobby like chess not to be affected.I also believe corruption is a symtom in this system and not a cause.