
WuChess: Online Chess For The Hip Hop Crowd. Why Not. - davidw
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/02/wuchess-online-chess-for-the-hip-hop-crowd-why-not/
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asdflkj
It's brilliant. At $48/year, only real playas will want to sign up, so no one
will be discouraged by playing against someone much better than them. And no
one (without spare $48) can verify whether any given member is any good, which
helps keep up appearances.

There is a lot of money in luxury services, but it takes this kind of rare
insight to get it right.

~~~
hsmyers
So what's a 'real' playas? Someone whose last name is Polgar? Someone who is
better than you? Someone who plays tournament? And what are these
'appearances'? I'd probably agree with you if I knew what you meant--- then
again maybe not...

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asdflkj
Here are some real playas, for reference:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyuSk0KILB0>

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rms
<http://www.kungfuchess.com>

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tpimental
Why is this on here? Just because something shows up on TechCrunch doesn't
mean it belongs on HN

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metajack
Two reasons it may be interesting to HN readers:

1) I am a founder and CEO of Chesspark, which created this, and although I'm
fairly new around here, I'd like to think I am part of the community.

2) The tech we have is interesting. The client is pretty, very responsive, and
completely in javascript. It's also open source, and all the protocols are
XMPP. We open sourced a lot of our backend components as well (punjab,
palaver) and we contribute quite a bit to many projects people here care
about.

Sometimes you have to look behind the story, and not just what techcrunch
thinks of it :)

~~~
rms
:) Definitely a cool partnership, congrats.

