English Chess Forum

Some shocking news to report: Daniel Freeman, co-founder and webmaster of the ChessGames site, has just passed on at only 51 years of age. I know there was the odd complaint from time to time about the site's historical accuracy, but it's still an invaluable resource, and always with a strong sense of community about it. One can only hope Daniel's successors are able to maintain the same sort of tone.

Freeman has a thread in the Obituaries section.

It now appears, contrary to initial claims, that he and site member "Sneaky" are not in fact one and the same person.

Well it now seems they may have been.

(it is certainly true that "Sneaky" has not reappeared on the site since Freeman's sad and untimely demise)

Bit more detail here:

https://forum.chesstalk.com/forum/chess ... under-dies

I've found chessgames.com a useful resource at times. You would hope that most of the major chess sites have clear ownership and succession and recovery strategies in place for events like this. But sometimes they don't. Makes you wonder which sites you'd miss the most if they vanished tomorrow (I'm going to start with this one and Chessbase, on the basis that the ECF and FIDE websites are probably fairly safe, one would hope!).

It also appears that the lad possibly used the alias Daniel Freeman as a security measure.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/kibitzin ... &reply=613

At the moment Chessgames is still ticking over with a few understandable minor glitches.
One live game is stuck in a loop and the easy daily puzzles are not so easy.

It will probably take a while to get things back on an even keel.
A few people have expressed an interest in taking it over.

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 07, 2018 1:21 pm

Makes you wonder which sites you'd miss the most if they vanished tomorrow (I'm going to start with this one and Chessbase, on the basis that the ECF and FIDE websites are probably fairly safe, one would hope!).

I can't imagine Chess Notes could have any kind of replacement or successor.

Though of course hard information about him remains sketchy, it is thought EGW is in his 60s now.

On the plus side, you would think they were the type to ensure their legacy does not disappear when the time comes.