Chesscube's Demise and the lesson from it.

If chess.com starts being members-only, there is always LiChess, which has the ideology of always and forever being free.

And FICS, which has been free for 20 years.

nothing in life is free, Free stuff is not good. You pay for quality. Market should decide. Inferior services will go out of business. 

I wonder where Jerry is going to go!  We need warzone tournaments eh. 

See above

"And FICS, which has been free for 20 years."

and it's a perfectly good playing site. I've been a completely satisfied "free" member for 17 years.

I'm not sure if this is true for software. The leading chess engine in the world is currently a free engine, Stockfish.

I didn't read the entire OP or the thread but can someone give me the Cliff's notes version please?

--Is Chesscube defunct?  If not, 

--Did it announce plans to go all-premium within a certain time frame?

--or, is the OP more of an opinion piece/prediction?

Thanks.

I thought the main problem with chesscube was the rating inflation. I strolled to well over 2200 there at 15 minute time controls and was still on the rise. I haven't played on it for a year.

Ok never mind I read the whole thing.

This was before my time but do you remember that Chesscube used to have real gambling on it, before 2010 or so?  Meaning, that you could "cash out" your points (Crowns) into real money deposited in a bank account or charged back onto a credit card.

May be this is why I'm above 2000 there :). I have always suspected my rating, still nominally it looks good :).

As a paying member, I honestly do agree that 3 tactics a day is a bit too little.  As noted above, I'd agree that something like 10 a day would give players a little more incentive to give chess.com more traffic, or even consider purchasing a membership.  Anybody who has ever become a premium member knows how addicting tactics trainer is ;).  As far as the opening explorer goes, there honestly are better formats out there.  Problem is, you'd have to purchase them from chessbase and they are quite expensive.  For what it's worth though, chess.com's prices are beyond reasonable, and the features they offer are worth it.  I honestly don't know if chess.com would ever become a paying member only site.  I have an account on ICC which is a pay-to-play site, and such sites are more for serious chess players; not new players.

Concerning chess mentor, that is a program on another level completely.  There are no other programs like it, and chess.com is smart in restricting who gets to use it.

Chess.com from what I've noticed is geared more towards teaching new players the game, and giving them tools to learn, as opposed to satisfying the serious chess players with more in-depth material.  It is suitable for all players though, and that's why I've been spending more time here lately.

                   So where's the lesson to be learn'd from chesscube's demise??  Another thread full of hatred??   In your 3rd paragrah, you asked that chess.com implement 2 little suggestions. And chess.com should do this why??  We all know the quality of people that come running when you put out a free sign.

Chess.com forum trolls typically play chess on Chesscube.

But the chess.com trolls can't play chess.

Jerry sucks, he never plays titled players. Only players significantly weaker lolol.

chess cubes is an ok place to play but chess.com is better!!!!

I agree. They drove every other video store out of business in this area, then went out themselves. There used to be 5 or 6 video stores around here, now there are NONE. It's either use one of those idiotic red boxes or do Netflix. So Netflix it is. I miss walking through a real video store.

Get DVDs from the public library,  they have thousands of mainstream and independent motion pictures.

I have looked into lichess and I have to say that it is a no nonsense free site ( easy registration, no email or personal data required ), quite liquid, good interface, has tactics trainer ( ! ) and Chess960 ( !!! ). Not only does it have Chess960 but you can easily get games against strong players ( contrary to ChessCube ).

Posting in this thread proved to be useful for me already. I have discovered yet an other possibility to play chess.

Agree with point #2, chess is about skill, not gambling.

About point #3, these videos do not get made for free, so chess.com need to charge for them.

Incidentally, yahoo chess was a cheaters paradise... i would smash some guy and before checkmate he would disconnect... I would get the win, but he would never lose rating points... some guys had ridiculous ratings, more than three times their skill level. No-one good played there. Typical of what happens to chess sites that have no cheat detection.

You can join as many OFFICIAL chess.com tournaments as you like - as a non-premium member. (Albeit, there aren't many of those around at any given time!)

You can probably also join Team Matches.