Monday, September 07, 2009

Pure Pawn


Yet another online chess playing site has entered the fray. This one has the odd name of "Pure Pawn" and I have one of the developers to thank for alerting me to its existence. However, the site is not just about playing chess. The makers have also just added a wiki.

For most of its existence we've been content to sit in our corner of the Internet, but a few months ago we realized that there are virtually no useful chess wikis to be found. There are resources to be found, of course, but they are fairly spread out, and typically reflect a single person's analysis.

With this in mind, we set out to make a different kind of chess wiki. We've joined a game board to each wiki page, which allow us to illustrate each of the steps in an opening, for example, or show a full professional game, while simultaneously allowing for wiki-style analysis by our members. We can also take advantage of the games that've been played on the site, allowing for a certain level of statistical breakdown, too. Of course, the project is brand new and still experimental, so we're limiting edits to site members, and content to openings, games, and examples.

Their main problem now is basically a lack of participants. The site describes itself as "a quickly growing community of chess enthusiasts who you can play against either in real-time or in a correspondence-style matches", but when I logged in, there was nothing happening! Actually, I think their other problem is the lack of PR and that, I guess, is where this post comes in.

So guys, check the site out. Could be interesting. Go to www.purepawn.com.

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