Hi Cubers!

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

Dear Cubers,

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

Eight new shows by IM Andrew Martin as well as Foxy Openings (volume 50): The Torre Attack.

Enjoy!

We have added some new videos to the ChessCube Shop!

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!

Up until now ChessCube has not awarded automatic draws in positions with limited material such as K-K, K-KN, K-KB, etc. Instead you had to claim the draw manually (by clicking the Draw button) or play on until the 50-move rule kicked in. While this is in accordance with the FIDE Laws of Chess we have seen many practical cases where this leads to bad sportsmanship and people playing just to win on time.

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!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ChessCube Supports Chess Education in South Africa

Cape Town, South Africa – 23 December 2009. ChessCube, a South African based Internet Chess Company with an 800,000 membership, offers support to President Zuma’s recent initiatives to encourage South African youth to play chess.

Playing chess at school could lead to job creation. Mark Levitt, CEO and founder of ChessCube, says, “President Zuma noted that the sport of chess develops strategic thinking for school going children. It also aids the development of mathematic and languages skills. David Macenulty, a US-based chess coach, proved that inner city New York learners who studied chess at primary school went onto tertiary education far more than their peers. So great was his contribution to chess in schools that it inspired the Ted Danson film ‘Knights of the South Bronx’.”

Levitt explains the impact of chess now on the future jobs of South Africa’s youth: “Kids who play chess at primary school level tend to go onto tertiary education to secure and create employment for themselves and others. Chess plays an important role as one of the many initiatives to create a prosperous South Africa of growth, starting with the youth.”

ChessCube is 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 corporates 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 Levitt. “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 recently raised R10m from Invenfin, the Venture Capital subsidiary of Remgro Ltd, a listed South African Company.

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

Contact information
ChessCube(Pty) Ltd.
Contact: Mark Levitt (CEO)
+27 82 389 3637
+27 21 555 2019
mark@chesscube.com

About ChessCube
ChessCube (www.chesscube.com) was launched in June 2007 from Cape Town headquarters. It has since grown to a community of over 800,000 avid chess players, and continues to grow. ChessCube is an innovative, and award-winning, live chess platform. Mark Levitt, founder and CEO of ChessCube, is four times South African Chess Champion, and many of ChessCube’s board members are avid, strong chess players themselves. ChessCube’s investors include Invenfin (the venture capital subsidiary of the Remgro Limited group) Vinny Lingham and Michael Leeman.

For more information or images, please contact Mark Levitt (mark@chesscube.com) or Sarah Blake (sarah@chesscube.com).

Mark Levitt, founder and CEO of ChessCube, is in December issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. Go get your copy and turn right away to page 15!

Or, take a quick read of the scanned version included with this post.

Some highlights:

• ChessCube now has over 750,00 users!
• Mark has over 100 chess titles (which is why I don’t ever challenge him)
• ChessCube Premium tracks a player’s online activity and provides detailed feedback

Mark Levitt of ChessCube in Entrepreneur Magazine

Photo credits: Joe Botha

The inaugural Silicon Cape networking event was held at The Old Biscuit Mill in Cape Town last night, and we were certainly thrilled that our CEO, Mark Levitt, was the speaker for the event.

The vision of Silicon Cape is concise and clear:
“The Silicon Cape vision is of an ecosystem in the Western Cape of South Africa, that serves to attract and bring together local and foreign investors, the brightest technical talent, and the most promising entrepreneurs, to foster the creation and growth of world-class global IP start-up companies in an environment that competes with other similar hubs around the world against the backdrop of one of the most beautiful settings and pleasant places to live, work and play on the globe”.

Silicon Cape Event at The Old Biscuit Mill

Having been both an investor and an entrepreneur, Mark was well positioned to give a thought-provoking and useful talk to the 400 strong crowd. With so many entrepreneurs in the room thinking about investment, Mark had several salient points – most of which were tweeted as he spoke (including a rather dubious Chess t-shirt suggestion)

• Don’t quit your day job, build on the side.
• Fail fast, or succeed fast.
• Advisors are important in your business plan.
• Align yourself with the right people and advisors.

Mark also had the opportunity to announce ChessCube’s first Facebook App (to plenty of applause).

ChessCube investors InVenFin were among the sponsors of the event, and the ChessCube crew put in a good appearance. Having  Mark as the inaugural speaker giving his insight into the starting the business and entrepreneurship advice was great for future CEOs of start-up companies. From a ChessCube perspective, it was fantastic seeing our CEO offering his words of wisdom to all in attendance, including our staff and investors.

Mark Levitt speaking at the Silicon Cape event

Richard Wooding at the event

Cape Town, South Africa – 24 November 2009. ChessCube, the popular live chess platform, launches a live chess application in Facebook. Facebook users can add the application to their profile, and play with Facebook friends, ChessCube friends or any player on ChessCube.

ChessCube’s live chess application allows users to connect with even more players, and play live chess from within Facebook. With about 2,000 players online at any given time, anyone will be able to find a game at the right skill level.

There are several chess playing applications on Facebook, but very few of them offer live chess. The ones that offer live chess tend to have very few players online. ChessCube offers chess players of all levels a superlative experience with about 2,000 players online and a strong chess community. ChessCube also allows games to be played between all players, no matter whether they are using the Facebook application, or the website.

Mark Levitt, ChessCube CEO says: “We are very excited to launch our first Facebook Application. Facebook is a new way for chess players to connect with the vibrant ChessCube community.”

The ChessCube chess application may be found in Facebook’s app directory, or logged-in Facebook users can go to http://apps.facebook.com/chesscube/. Existing ChessCube members can link their Facebook profile to their ChessCube profile, while new members can register with ChessCube.

ChessCube expects that this new application will add to their considerable user growth.

Useful links

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

Download News Release (pdf): ChessCube Launches Live Chess in Facebook

We’ve been hard at work making some exciting changes to ChessCube – take a look and see:

ChessCube - spot anything new?

And, there is more on its way. Keep watching this space for announcements over the next few days.