Site Update: Group/Team Vote Chess, Live Chess, & Vacation Changes
Chess.com has made its first entry into group/team competitions today!
Today (31 July 2008) we released a few new things.
The big one is that today we released the first stage of group/team play. Chess.com Groups can now challenge each other to Vote Chess matches! Both teams will need to go in and edit their settings to allow for Vote Chess (go to Manage Group => Edit Settings). Groups can also create open seeks for other groups to accept.
The next stage will be to build the Group Vote Chess leaderboard which will keep track of scores for a trailing 12 months and show win/loss records. We will also more fully integrate vote chess into groups.
After Vote Chess is fully integrated we will work on group tournaments & matches.
LIVE CHESS
We have added a LOT of new features to Live Chess today! Here are a few:
- Premove - ablity to make anticipatory moves (must enable in SETTINGS)
- Right-Click Cancel - right-click now cancels premoves & piece in hand
- Friends - now easily manage your friends in Live Chess
- Blocking - block annoying users
- Timers - timers now show more detail when under 20 seconds
- New Rooms - more rooms for languages & Open Discussion
VACATIONS
The second big change of the day is how vacation time works. Here is the new scoop:
The number of vacation days give to members is described below: STARTING VACATION All new Chess.com accounts start out with 7 days of vacation time. ACCRUAL All members then accrue an additional 2 vacation days per month added on (1 on the 1st, 1 on the 15th). BUMP Premium Members are given a Vacation BUMP when they subscribe (and when they renew). The following time is added for each subscription period:
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Free: none
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Silver: 1 day per month
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Gold: 14 days per year
- Platinum: 28 days per year
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Diamond: 28 days per year
CAP Vacation time is capped so that you can't keep accumulating vacation time forever. It is capped as follows:
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Free Members: 30 days
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Silver/Gold Members: 60 days
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Platinum/Diamond: 90 days
In a nutshell, you earn your vacation by actively spending time on Chess.com. You can also become premium to enable more vacation or raise your vacation cap.
(NOTE: The previous vacation system gave 40 days across the board to everyone every Jan 1. We have removed that system. However, people who signed up before August 1 will not have their vacation lowered below 30 days.
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In addition to group vote chess and vacation time, we fixed a few bugs and issues.
Thank you for your wonderful ideas and support!
Erik, Jay, & the Chess.com Team
[Please Note: Don't send me Tech Support, Abuse Reports, or other "Site" issues. Please contact Chess.com Support for those things. But I do love thank you notes and personal messages! Thank you!]
Yes, I am the guy who started Chess.com (along with Jay, Igor, Piotr, and many others). I have 3 amazing daughters, one wild son, and a wonderful, patient wife! I learned chess when I was 8 years old. Since then I have been playing, studying, and enjoying it regularly. I prefer semi-open and closed positions that blow up tactically (like the Closed Sicilian, King's Indian, Glek etc).
Want to know more about how Chess.com got started? Read about it here!
