lol Schachgeek
this is what i was saying about the chess.com world tournaments. each month or so, it will be in a different state or country around the world. since there are different people in the chess.com staff around the world, it shouldn't be that hard.
yes, that's true, many want it rated by the USCF, so that's why the tournament is just for fun. if chess.com should like to hold a tournament, it would be about $10.
$10 entry fee without USCF involved.
Voice chat is available already if you use Meebo. Go to www.meebo.com and sign on with your chess.com credentials. Since we already have a meebo plug in, maybe voice or even video is something easily added by the chess.com team? As I understand it, the meebo software does not use chess.com servers so there's no adverse impact on site speeds or hosting costs.
Would make the vote chess discussions (especially speed vote chess) much more interesting! Alternatively, any one of a handful of messenger programs could be used as well. My favorite is Skype.
Live chess960 has been suggested before and it's "on the list" of projects according to staff in prior threads. No eta though.
In person over the board chess tournaments have been suggested before and rejected as impractical.
To paraphrase, since the majority of members are in the USA it would make sense to hold this tournament, at least initially, somewhere in the USA.
But as for charging the "regular tournament price" that would be a deterrent for most, at least in the USA. That's why the USCF and over the board chess is on the decline in the USA. After travel expenses including airfare, hotel, food, entry fees and USCF membership, well...it's waaaaaay too much money!
There is precedent for correspondence chess organizations to hold annual meetings, for example "chess in friendship" based in Germany, they hold an annual meeting and otb tournament somewhere in Europe. Before the "wall" came down, those meetings were held somewhere in the Soviet Bloc, because it was impossible for people in eastern europe to travel to the west. The bulk of the attendees were from Europe though. It was very rare for any other continents to be represented.
Similarly no matter where you hold this "tournament" you're pretty much only going to get members within reasonable driving distance. Even if you put up decent prize funds.
Now, if you were to offer potato sack races between rounds...lol.
where do you type in your chess.com username and what do we use for the password? do we have to register?
Hi chess.com! I'm here to say that chess.com is very social, but I think it can be more social. How? Below is why...
This might be costly, so you can make this optional and only available to premium members: voice chat! It seems safe to me, I mean, Yahoo Messenger, VBuzzer, Windows Messenger, have voice chat. It should be a total of 365 minutes per year or maybe you can buy "packs" such as $2.99 for 10 minutes and $4.99 for 25 minutes, etc. Note, that was an example. Some people, like me, want to hear the person and know more about them by talking. Thanks for installing Meebo chess.com, and I think you can do voice chat!
Next we should have Live Chess 960. Can't you just use the Live Chess application and randomly switch the rank 1 and 8 pieces around every new game? It woould be more fun too play chess 960, live. That way we can practice more often and not have to wait for your opponent to move on online chess.
Finally we should have real chess.com tournaments. In other terms, I mean sending out a message to everyone on chess.com, then chess.com has to arrange the tournament themselves in a place on Earth. Since you have people working on chess.com in different parts of the world, why not try this? It would be fun meeting other chess.com members and you guys can charge us regular tournament price. I understand that half the people on chess.com only play in payed tournaments for rating, but the other half, like me, would like to pay for: social and fun purposes.
Members of chess.com, is there anything else you guys want to add? I like hearing different ideas. Please comment and let me know on this! Thanks!