English Chess Forum

This is a chess site I built, it looks a bit like Facebook but with no ads and chess news feeds and chess tools. It's not perfect, nothing I build is, but it's an honest effort and I want to give back to the chess community that has given me so much over the years. It is free and all content is either user generated or from a 3rd party who is happy to share it on my site.

The site has a home feed where everyone can post status updates and each person has a profile page and can add friends, you can blog, post photos, chess games, videos etc. Check it out if you like. Thanks for your time.

http://social.chessclublive.com

I had a quick look and the site didn't give the names of any organisers (or company) that are providing this site. Do you know who this is? (Information about charges was also not prominent - do you know if it is free?)

Strangely enough the registrant of the domain name has a name similar to that of the person who originated the thread.

Registrant Name: MICHAEL MKPADI
Registrant Organization:
Registrant Street: WESTOVER HOUSE, WESTBURY ON TRYM
Registrant City: BRISTOL
Registrant State/Province:
Registrant Postal Code: BS9 3LT
Registrant Country: GB
Registrant Phone: +1.7771526900
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: [email protected]

Can someone better at statistics than myself calculate the chances of the coincidence?

He's not hiding that fact, he said: "It is seriously impressive but I'm biased cos I built it".
Having said that, saying "I stumbled on this amazing chess website" is a bit, um...

Doh! Should have read the whole message I guess. Sometimes it is better not to (...)

Mike Gunn wrote:I had a quick look and the site didn't give the names of any organisers (or company) that are providing this site. Do you know who this is? (Information about charges was also not prominent - do you know if it is free?)

Hi Mike. The site is free with no ads. I built it for anyone who thinks it combines social in a chess in a nice way. I've been running a website for chess playing and chess news for years but decided to revamp it with social.

This is our Facebook page. http://facebook.com/chessclublive

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:He's not hiding that fact, he said: "It is seriously impressive but I'm biased cos I built it".
Having said that, saying "I stumbled on this amazing chess website" is a bit, um...

It's called an attention grabbing opener or a lie to some people, I thought me owning up later should absolve me of any sins.

John Upham wrote:Doh! Should have read the whole message I guess. Sometimes it is better not to.

Well John you know of me, we've exchanged messages generally about Chess Club Live and we are facebook friends and we featured some of your stunning photos, I'd thought you'd give me a bit more support, never mind.

Ah, Chess Club Live. Have you stopped posting borderline pornographic images on there by now?

Like John, I read the first sentence and went to the site. Introducing yourself as the originator (on the site) would seem to be a good idea ... otherwise people might doubt your motives or mistake you for somebody like Mark Zuckerberg.

I thought it was done rather delightfully. I was getting cross at ..the stumbled on bit.. thinking, 'Oh yes, an advert masquerading as an innocent post' and then he admitted to it and the anger went away. Good luck, Michael.

Michael Farthing wrote:I thought it was done rather delightfully. I was getting cross at ..the stumbled on bit.. thinking, 'Oh yes, an advert masquerading as an innocent post' and then he admitted to it and the anger went away. Good luck, Michael.

Michael your reply was a welcome bit of positive feedback in a sea of doubt and scepticism (not all from this forum but generally), thank you and good luck to you also. If you ever choose to join our site, I'll make you a moderator and send you some of our branded goodies and promote any blog you should choose to write on our site as a featured blog....it gets posted to 214,000 chess fans on Facebook and on to twitter a further 30,000 and Google+ too any time you write anything.

Thanks again Michael.

IM Jack Rudd wrote:Ah, Chess Club Live. Have you stopped posting borderline pornographic images on there by now?

Well we have over 100 editors on the page posting 250 posts a day and some fans consider a fully clothed male chess player ok and a fully clothed female player exploitative, and when any of our editors post pictures of men and women in any state of undress playing chess it is seen as porn. When an editor posted a photo of a group of men playing chess or posing next to a chess board in swimming trunks in a swimming pool it was fine, when another photo was posted of a women in bikinis playing chess or posing by a chess board it was considered porn by some. If you consider there are decency laws on Facebook, if a page like Victoria's Secret posted porn they'd be shut down even though they are a lingerie seller. We haven't been shut down and I encourage our editors not to post nude male or female models playing chess as nudity and chess are only ok if you are an avant garde artist.

I wonder if you remember when Chessbase use to post such images, they still have them on the archive pages. I don't know if you've had a word with them too, perhaps not.lol

Mike Gunn wrote:Like John, I read the first sentence and went to the site. Introducing yourself as the originator (on the site) would seem to be a good idea ... otherwise people might doubt your motives or mistake you for somebody like Mark Zuckerberg.

Yes Mike a fantastic idea. I've done blogs and videos about the story of Chess Club Live and my motivations for building it. No modern chess playing site has an about page, chess.com and lichess.org certainly don't but if you go to our blogs you will see information about me and the site over and over again. Also on our Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/chessclublive

If people want to doubt your motives reading a bit of text on another page on the same site isn't going to make them think any different.

The website has no ads, no fees, most people judge things by what they see and if you see good things and no bad things you assume good...at least that's what I do. Thanks for the feedback

Moved to Adverts now.