We’re excited to let you know that ChessCube V5.04 has been launched, and with it comes a a few great updates:

Minimize your Friends Bar:

The Friends Bar can now be minimized at any time while on ChessCube. With the Friends Bar minimized, you still have access to the Tournaments, Watch, Play, Chat, Shop and Leaderboard buttons. You can also show the friends bar in its normal size at any time to see how your friends are progressing through the levels and ratings.

Choose to hide or show your Friends Bar

Bigger chessboard:

With your Friends Bar minimized, you can now play on the biggest chessboard we’ve ever had on ChessCube. When watching a live game in progress, sit back and enjoy an even bigger board in full screen mode!

Unified user and profile settings:

We’ve unified all your profile, interface, playing, and community settings in the new “Settings” box. To find this box, simply click on the cogwheel above the Tournament and Watch button.

We hope you enjoy this release!

Regards,
The ChessCube Team

Today we launched the brand new ChessCube Version 5, which keeps all your old favourite features – but adds a whole lot more:

A faster snappier simpler ChessCube with better server performance:

• Version 5 uses less system memory and speeds up all the controls to make it snappier and zippier.
• The menu items have moved from the top left to the bottom right of the ‘Friends bar’.
• The ‘Draw’, ‘Resign’, ‘Abort’, ‘Flip-board’ and ‘Copy-PGN’ buttons have all changed to simpler mini-buttons, now located below the material balance section on the left.

ChessCube V5

Earn experience points (XP)

You get XP for actions, such as playing rated games or tournaments, beating stronger players, inviting friends to ChessCube, and many more. At certain XP values you move to new levels to unlock more features. See our Forum for more details.

Making ChessCube more fun and social, to grow our community:

See all your ChessCube friends in a new control at the bottom of the screen. You can sort by ‘General rating’, ‘Tournament rating’, or ‘ChessCube level’ to compare yourself to your friends.

The ‘Friends bar’ also makes it easier to add friends from Facebook, or sending them an email invite. Spread the word – and in fact you can earn a whole lot of extra cubits for doing just that!

In-application Cubit store (coming in a few days):

Our old website store was hard to find, but now you can buy fun items with your Cubits at the click of a button directly inside our new in-application store.

Have fun with ChessCube version 5 and let us know what you think!

All the best,

Mark Levitt
CEO ChessCube

This part of the game can often overwhelm players and the goal of this series is to provide a better understanding of the opening so that you can play with confidence in your own games.

Recently added openings include: the Philidor Defence, Four Knights Opening, Three Knights Opening, Vienna Game, Bishop’s Opening, Danish Gambit and Centre Game.

Visit the shop now!

Enjoy!

There are four new Andrew Martin Show videos which feature analysis of the most interesting chess games around the world. This is a great way to improve your general understanding of the game and get exposure to more openings and positions you might not normally play.

We have also released a new and exclusive four-part series on the Ragozin Queen’s Gambit which starts after the following moves: 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 Bb4. This is a very interesting and aggressive opening for Black which many of the world’s top players use. Why don’t you join them?

See you on the Cube!

In order to make our site friendlier we have decided to automate certain draw cases from now on. The ChessCube server will immediately end a game in a draw if any of the following positions occur: K-K, KN-K, KB-K, KN-KN, KB-KB, or KN-KB (K=king, N=knight, B=bishop).

In addition, you cannot win a game on time if you have only a King, a King and Knight, or a King and Bishop. (In the exceptional event that you had a forced mate in such a position you can email support@chesscube.com to fix the rating result after the game.)

We hope these changes will make your ChessCube experience even more pleasurable!

As chess players, a great deal of our time is devoted to the subject of how to be better at chess. We live in hope of that Damascean moment when the secrets of chess excellence will revealed to us and the tyranny of the bell curve distribution will be overthrown. We will, like Bobby Fischer, “just get good”. To this end we study, practice and reflect. We join clubs. We sign on with online chess sites. Some go so far as pay for personal coaching. And we buy books about chess – a lot of books! Now, things being as they are, I am not the person to give anybody advice on how to become excellent at chess. But the thought strikes me that it may be helpful for us all to consider why it is that we strive to do so.

Dr Siegbert Tarrasch once remarked that “Chess, like love, like music has the power to make men happy” [1] which is certainly true as far as it goes but the “Teacher of Germany”[2] does rather gloss over why it is that chess has that power to make people happy. But perhaps chess computers like Deep Blue, Fritz and Rybka, which have made a number of important contributions to technical chess theory, can offer us a clue to this distinctly human concern too. Consider; very few of us endeavour to become good at chess because we wish to be able to beat chess engines. We wish to play against other human beings! Quite clearly, chess is a social occupation.[3]

Returning to the question why be better at chess? It seems reasonable to conclude that proficiency at the game gives us a sense of status and belonging in a community which shares our values and an affirmation that the community values us. It is in this respect that ChessCube is unique in online chess; ChessCube recognises that the social component of the game is as important as any other element of it and provides a community where this aspect is actively nurtured. And come to think of it, this social dynamic seems likely to better any player’s game.

We would love to hear from you – what are you in it for? Hopefully an interesting and fruitful conversation will arise and in future blogs we can develop it further.

[1] http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Chess
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarrasch
Praeceptor Germaniae
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_animal

“A social animal is a loosely defined term for an organism that is highly interactive with other members of its species to the point of having a recognizable and distinct society.”

The Leipzig chess piece set with ChessCube Analysis running

A Sick Set Thursday with a difference . This is how the chess board looks on my “Sean” account. I guess I am pretty much boasting about how great my custom colors and Leipzig chess piece set go so well together. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to make anyone jealous, but I do sometimes brag about it . There are 6 different piece sets to choose from, including the standard ChessCube Classic and Line sets, however I quite like the Leipzig piece set.

On these screenshots, you’ll see 3 of the many different benefits I have of being a Premium member of ChessCube. 1 being the custom chess piece set (in this case the Leipzig set), 2 being the custom colors of the squares of the board, and 3 being ChessCube Analysis, which is showing me what the next best move would be. ChessCube Analysis becomes active while watching live games, or when reviewing your past played games.

In my opinion, this is an outstanding ‘virtual chess set’, and it definitely deserves to be the Sick Set of this week!

To learn more about the ChessCube Premium service, visit: http://www.chesscube.com/shop/membership/view

And with that, I’ll get back to playing on my super cool ChessCube account

Sean

Battle of the Bands chess set pitches a Jazz band against Rock and Roll! Whimsical resin figures are detailed and hand painted and range 2″ to 4″ tall. The board (included) is solid wood in natural tones and measures 13×13.

Via – WildAboutMusic

Zuma brings his Bishop into the game against Sithole

In an interview after the game with City Press, Zuma said, “Chess is very important as it makes you a better and knowledgeable human being. I like games like chess and bridge because they stretch your brain to the limit. They make you think strategically”. President Zuma also challenged local businesses to support the sport financially. “Next year we must host a fundraising dinner party for chess right in the hall,” he said.

Kwazulu Chess Association President Sandile Xulu, one of the tournament organisers, said chess gave “young people the opportunity to compete, regardless of race or social standing”. “It provides a field of ideas, concepts and strategy for young growing minds,” he said.  In an interview with ChessCube Community Manager, Sean Wyngaard, Xulu said that KwaZulu Chess’ aim is to take chess into all schools, as well as to introduce it as a sport. Future plans would then involve working with the Department of Education to consider it as a subject in school in Kwazulu-Natal and particularly rural areas and all of South Africa. “This is exactly what President Zuma and I shared and want to see happen.” said Xulu. Speaking of President Zumas’ desire to have all children take part in chess tournaments, Xulu noted, “This (the Nkandla tournament) was our “OPENING MOVE”, which we hope will get supported and start rolling”.

Sandile Xulu, President of the KZChess Association

ChessCube supports President Zuma’s vision, and will be launching an online schools chess initiative in South Africa and other countries from early 2010. The South African government, a number of NGOs and large corporations are doing a great deal to improve Internet and computer services in schools. ChessCube will be working with all providers to ensure that schools in South Africa can connect to ChessCube’s classroom service.

“ChessCube will provide facilities for children to play chess online and to receive online video training”, explained Mark Levitt, ChessCube CEO. “The basic service will be free to all schools in South Africa, and we will be working with big business to sponsor additional opportunities for South African youth.”

ChessCube’s classroom service will be at the forefront of a modern trend to popularise chess. Along with Venezuela, which has recently included chess in it’s official school curriculum, ChessCube considers the personal and societal benefits of chess to be of immense value. What are these benefits precisely? David MacEnulty, a famed chess teacher (the subject of a movie “The Knights of the South Bronx”) had this to say in a recent exclusive interview with ChessCube:

“One of the things you learn from playing chess is how to control yourself. You learn to have delayed gratification. You learn tremendous discipline and above all you learn to trust your own judgment. Once a child learns that he or she is smart enough to play chess, there’s not going to be any holding them back from anything else.”

“The biggest benefits come when children actually sit down and play tournament chess. Once you’ve played tournament chess for a couple of years, major transformations take place in a child. The question of relying on your own judgment really comes out.”

“When the children on my chess team in the Bronx went to junior high school they were much better prepared than many of their peers. In fact, the Principal of the junior high school once told me that the chess kids seemed to be a different breed altogether. You can tell the chess kids from the way they walk down the hall – there’s just more confidence in the way they walk. There’s more confidence in the way they interact with the teachers in the classroom. They don’t get into trouble because one of things that chess teaches us is to see danger ahead of time.

“One of the things that’s overlooked frequently is the social component of being on a chess team or just learning to play chess. When children work together on a team, even though chess is one person against one person, whatever is good for anybody on the team is good for everybody on the team.”

“Now when one of the kids from a place such as where I taught in the South Bronx wins a game against a very privileged child, that changes everybody’s attitudes. The recognition, that there, on the other side of the board, is my intellectual equal, that’s an amazing transformation that happens on both sides of the board. I think that’s a really critical thing that we should introduce to society everywhere, not just South Africa.”

President Jacob Zuma contemplates his next move

Sources:

Times Live (Article)
City Press, 27 December 2009

Useful links
ChessCube Facebook Application: http://apps.facebook.com/chesscube/
ChessCube website: www.chesscube.com