Chess Live, formerly called US Chess Live (when it was affiliated with the United States Chess Federation

United States Chess Federation

The United States Chess Federation is a non-profit organization, the governing chess organization within the United States, and one of the federations of the FIDE. The USCF was founded in 1939 from the merger of two regional chess organizations, and grew gradually until 1972, when membership...

), was a subscription Internet chess server

Internet chess server

An Internet chess server is an external server that provides the facility to play, discuss, and view the board game of chess over the Internet...

 that opened on August 8, 2000 and closed on 29 May 2007 when it was bought by Internet Chess Club

Internet Chess Club

The Internet Chess Club is a commercial Internet chess server devoted to the play and discussion of chess and chess variants. ICC currently has over 30,000 subscribing members...

 and merged with World Chess Network

World Chess Network

The World Chess Network was a commercial Internet chess server devoted to the play and discussion of chess that launched in 1997 and closed ten years later in 2007 when it was bought by Internet Chess Club and merged with Chess Live to form World Chess Live...

 to form World Chess Live.

Membership

There were three membership options: Trial, Basic, and Royal; Basic and Royal levels required periodic payments. Higher levels of membership included more features, such as the ability to observe or participate in certain tournaments often held on the server.

Features

In addition to providing Internet users the opportunity to engage in games of chess with others, Chess Live also provided free lectures on skill and tactics to improve one's ability at the game.

Chess Live also included instant messaging

Instant messaging

Instant Messaging is a form of real-time direct text-based chatting communication in push mode between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared clients. The user's text is conveyed over a network, such as the Internet...

 features and the ability to chat with other users in IRC-like public chat rooms.

There were a range of paid and voluntary staff positions to ensure the smooth and effective running of the system.

Connection clients

Registered users used a client to connect to the server. At the end there were two versions of the client available: version 4.2.00, an installed program; and version 2.5.1, implemented in Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

and that could be run from virtually any Internet-connected computer with a Java-enabled Web browser. Royal members could use non-Chess Live interfaces to connect to the server, such as Thief 1.1, Winboard, or countless other interfaces.

Cheating detection measures

The software had arrangements to try to detect players using the assistance of chess programs. It did this, in part, by detecting task switching activities, based on information being undertaken on the computer that the program was able to detect.