New online Chess Club

[andrew martin]

Details as listed in the news and support section above. Please join up and encourage your club to join as a body. Open from Monday 3rd Dec at 10am

Andrew

[andrew martin]

The club has opened early I am pleased to say.

http://ecfclub.chesscube.com

See you online!

Andrew

[Carl Hibbard]

It doesn't work properly under Linux and seems (to be honest) generally a little unreliable

I hope it stays a free service and wonder who at the ECF choose it from a technical point of view?

[andrew martin]

Hi Carl

Quite a lot of people signed up ( 150 so far, thanks) before the system was 100% ready.

The club is due to open tomorrow at 10am; I was quite surprised one could log in and start play on Friday. Thanks for your observations which I have passed on.

All mistakes and responsibility on this one are mine. Just be patient for a while and we will see what happens.

Andrew

[Administrator]

I have moved the topic into a new forum which should better organise this new service

Hope that is acceptable

[Carl Hibbard]

Hi Carl

Quite a lot of people signed up ( 150 so far, thanks) before the system was 100% ready.

The club is due to open tomorrow at 10am; I was quite surprised one could log in and start play on Friday. Thanks for your observations which I have passed on.

All mistakes and responsibility on this one are mine. Just be patient for a while and we will see what happens.

Andrew

It still doesn't work under Linux (and generally) plus support seems to be non existent on their forum - anyone get any good experiences to report?

Might be just me...

[Ben Hague]

I think it does have some nice features, the reporting and statistics tools are good and I liked the look of the site. Sadly at the moment they are greatly outweighed by the negatives. As Carl said it doesn't work on Linux and it was flakey on OS X (although I'm quite some way behind the state of the art there so it may be better on newer versions). The quantity and level of opposition isn't up to much. Partly this is because they're a new site and haven't had much time to build up membership, but they also need to increase the k-value for new players to get them to their level quickly. The speed that moves are transmitted is also a problem, as you lose the immediacy that blitz chess needs. I wouldn't even attempt to play anything faster than 5 minute chess.
I think the biggest problem will be that ICC already does most of this, has the existing membership and provides a better platform for playing chess. While I like the idea I can't see it being a success without some compelling must-have feature.

[Carl Hibbard]

I think it does have some nice features, the reporting and statistics tools are good and I liked the look of the site. Sadly at the moment they are greatly outweighed by the negatives. As Carl said it doesn't work on Linux and it was flakey on OS X (although I'm quite some way behind the state of the art there so it may be better on newer versions). The quantity and level of opposition isn't up to much. Partly this is because they're a new site and haven't had much time to build up membership, but they also need to increase the k-value for new players to get them to their level quickly. The speed that moves are transmitted is also a problem, as you lose the immediacy that blitz chess needs. I wouldn't even attempt to play anything faster than 5 minute chess.
I think the biggest problem will be that ICC already does most of this, has the existing membership and provides a better platform for playing chess. While I like the idea I can't see it being a success without some compelling must-have feature.

Better support is needed - having a little dig at me on their forum after I raise a genuine question isn't going to help to be honest

I know EXACTLY what I am doing and it's somewhat hard work - so without client software their support needs to be classy, precise and to the point

At the moment it clearly isn't

[Carl Hibbard]

If you upgrade Linux to the latest Flash Player at Version: 9,0,115,0 the issues appear to be resolved - recommended to everyone, well Linux users...

[Gary Cook]

As far as I can see there are three problems: firstly in 1 min chess if you are white you lose three seconds whilst the board is loading, the game starts as soon as you agree to play rather than first move free (as on most other sites); the level of support within the group forums seems to be non existant and the questions seem to stay there for days; and unfortunately at the moment you have to wait too long to get a game, hopefully this will change when more people arrive

[Gavin Strachan]

I read somewhere on the Internet that the online chess club market is somewhat saturated, so for a new club to come in on the market at this late stage will have a very big challenge with the likes of playchess.com, icc and fics (free chess!). Obviously the ECF is a good vechicle for customers, but many chess players will already be signed up with other services which offer more reliable and estabilished systems. All I will say is GOOD LUCK! I have signed up, but haven't used the service and still use FICS or playchess (when I upgrade Fritz/chessbase). What makes this new chess club special? What different features does it offer? Why should I switch? I suppose this is all in the business plan. I hate to be a Neg Head but you have to attract users with something unique.

[Carl Hibbard]

It's "meant" to be a little more flashy - sort of a Facebook meets Chess site is the impression I am getting

As Gary pointed out because of the lack of a client application the faster variants (one minute for example) are never really going to work - plus its always going to very hard to judge the lag (delay) between opponents to give a truly fair game at faster speeds with that sort of software

The support needs a lot of attention but generally from a technical point of view its rather nice looking (ish) flash software - forgive the pun, with I suspect the idea of introducing a charging structure at some point...

I remain to be even a little bit convinced however

[Bill Wilson]

There does need to be some big changes.

I've seen the new "black interface" ( http://blackchat.chesscube.com/ ) they are developing, imo they have not addressed any of the existing issues, and in fact I believe they have made the system harder to use.

They are more concerned with graphics and effects than chess!

Hopefully the project leaders will learn a little bit about online chess in the future.

That said, I will use the system for a quick game when I'm not at my usual PC; but I can't see it being a regular haunt. I did invite some local OTB players to join, who I added to my "contacts" list, but the system has a bug which deletes the contact list every day, rendering this useless. There is a lot of ground to make up with stability and security before I would consider giving up my credit card for any premium features.

[David Haydon]

[quote="Carl Hibbard"] - with I suspect the idea of introducing a charging structure at some point...

So I gather the site was set up to make Money? and will not be a 'Free Chess Server' After all? Just a way of gathering users, and then when there is enough, make it a Paid Site?

Sorry, but with all the competition out there, Playchess and ICC especially, this will never work....

thanks,

david

[Carl Hibbard]

Mark from Chess Cube has signed up - expect some comment and more details soon?