64squar.es - Chess meets Web 2.0

I believe it was on MetaFilter a few days ago that I learned of 64squar.es, a new chess site. I’ve been playing a few games on it over the past few days, and I really, really like it. I’ve played chess online in the past at a few different sites - usually at Yahoo! Games - and didn’t care much for it. The interfaces were often clunky, the boards often ugly. Also, at least on Yahoo! Games, there wasn’t an option to continue the game later. You had to finish the game, or simply resign. 64squar.es fixes all of that and then some.

The site is very clean, and quite easy on the eyes. The board is simplistic but functional, and is slightly customizable: when you create a game, you’re able to select the color o the dark squares. You’re not required to finish a game once it’s started; in fact, it’s expected that you won’t. Most of my games are spanning a few days at least.

The site uses AJAX to update the games when you’re on a game screen, so you don’t have to keep refreshing the site - at least in theory. I’ve personally been running into some issues with this feature, namely, my connection to the server just dies. The AJAX updates will work for a while, and then the game will get rather quiet. When I manually refresh the page, I’ll discover that my opponent has indeed moved. I’m not quite sure if they’re having server problems right now, or if it’s something to do with my router. Whatever the problem is, hopefully it’ll be sorted out soon.

One feature seems to be missing, even though the front page says it exists: email notifications when it’s your turn. I’ve not received any emails, nor do I see an option for it under my profile. I guess that’ll be coming out in the next release.

If you’re interested in playing me (or just watching me blunder my way through games), here’s my profile.

Update: Okay, I’m sorry. Clearly, the veritable flood of traffic that I’ve sent to the site (yeah, sure) is causing 64squar.es some problems - at least for me. I keep getting error messages, saying I’ve been disconnected from the “push server”. I’m told to logout, then log back in to rectify the problem. Unfortunately, logging out just gives me another error. Oops.

Hrm. Unless things get less clunkier connection wise, I may be hopping to Red Hot Pawn. In fact, here’s my profile for that chess site. I don’t like it nearly as much as 64squar.es, but at least I’m not getting errors / disconnects constantly at Red Hot Pawn.

Update #2: 64squar.es is now back up and running, and from a preliminary test run, it seems to be working much better. I’m not getting popup errors now, and my connection to the Ajax-iness seems to be working well. Jonah, the fellow working on it, also told me that there was a bug with the email updates, causing them to not work. That’s fixed now. In other words, 64squar.es is now back in the race for being my favorite chess site.