User:Pixieandbenji/draftofchesscube

ChessCube.com is a large online chess community with over 650,000 registered users as of early August 2009. ChessCube.com was founded in 2006 by Mark Levitt, and offers live play, chat, and ChessCube Cinema.In 2009, ChessCube hosted the world's first FIDE rated online matches played in the SA Open 2009.

History
Mark Levitt, founder of ChessCube, was involved in chess publishing in the early 1990s. From 1997 to 1998, Mark built the online Chess World for British Telecom's GamePlay.com, but GamePlay.com dropped its board and card games in 1999 after it listed. Mark launched ChessCube as a market test in 2007 in South Africa, and ChessCube was offered internationally in January 2008. As of August 2009, ChessCube had over 650,000 registered users from over 200 countries. On 10 August 2009, ChessCube announced a US$1.25m VC funding from InVenFin.

Development
The ChessCube live chess is developed in Adobe Flex. ChessCube competes with many other online chess platforms, including Chess.com.

Community
ChessCube has over 650,000 registered users. ChessCube's users are from around the globe, including India and the USA.

ChessCube's community is managed by moderators who are ChessCube players themselves.Moderators may ban players who are abusive.

Investors
ChessCube has secured $1.8m to date in venture capital. Investors include InVenFin, a subsidiary of Venfin Limited, Michael Leeman and Vinny Lingham.

Features
ChessCube Play is ChessCube's signature live chess platform. Games can be rated or unrated, and timed or untimed. Fast games are timed games less than 10 minutes. Slow games are games longer than 15 minutes. Games can be standard or Chess960, a variant where starting positions are shuffled. There are 960 possible starting variations, hence the name. Registered users who are logged in can spectate live games.

ChessCube Chat allows all registered players who are logged in to chat to one another, either in chat rooms, while playing chess games against one another or while spectating chess games.

ChessCube Cinema is an Adobe AIR application that can be downloaded to a users desktop. It allows chess videos and lectures to be downloaded and viewed by the user. These videos allow a chessboard demonstrating the lecture to viewed alongside the lecturer. The Foxy Openings series can be purchased to be viewed on ChessCube Cinema.

SA Open 2009
In July 2009, ChessCube sponsored the SA Open held at Wynberg Boys' High School. After negotiating with FIDE, the World Chess Federation, several matches were played online using ChessCube. These matches were FIDE rated - a world first for chess. Participants in Melbourne, Australia, played against participants in Cape Town. Amon Simutowe won the SA Open 2009.

Awards
ChessCube was a semifinalist in the Adobe MAX 2008 Awards. ChessCube won the 2008 WP Sports Award: Media Award - Electronic.