Forum Matters! Community matters!

Yes, we believe this is very true in any online web based internet page which attracts various people from all different areas of the world. We are all united in some sort of virtual environment belonging to a group with same needs, same interest or hobby. We don't care about religion, race or disability - in virtual space we are all equal.  So: 

• what makes a community?
• what sustains a community?

These are two fundamental questions every online web site should answer before trying to build a community. The first and ultimate answer is having an interest. An interest in some hobby, thing, real or imaginary and share this interest with others. If only two people share same interest on certain object (let's say a new car model), you can say they started to build up a community. Two more people will join later and you have already 4 enthusiastic people talking about one car, sharing the news, photos, videos, technical documentation anything which they find interesting and would like to share with others as well. Just 4 people and imagine 4,000 people? There we talk about some community! The same goes with chess as one of the oldest thinking games ever with hundreds of thousands players around the world. There is not one nation from the developed or developing countries which doesn't know the word chess. The chess is played from India to Russia, from USA to Germany, simply everywhere. And how can chess players meet. They have two options, they can meet in person (1:1 or by phone/email) or they can be part of some chess community (either local in the town or internet with other on-line users)

Let's stay a bit with chess communities. There are already most likely hundreds of them from country's point of view going to local town and then individual clubs but when you want to talk global - you need to go online. To truly meet on some chess servers, discuss special moves, rational or irrational; to analyze latest games by grand masters and many more, this all can be done by the community.

So what really makes a great community compared to those which don't have so much success? It's the level of involvement and commitment of the members who are willing to give support to one another. The role of the administrator is to only watch over so everything goes by the rules and behavior, but let the people decide which stream they would like to go. The most successful communities are those which actively share ideas and want to grow together, to achieve something valuable and meaningful.

THE FORUMS

The forums are these days essential platforms or engines around communities. We believe the FORUMS are made for you and therefore we will have only very little moderation or involvement (only if the issues are directly posted to administrators or developers, there of course we will support) the rest is upon the players. As long as the forum supports the community, the community will support the forum. Now ask yourself, on how many forums are you registered already? Two, three, ten or thirty? Most likely each of these forums discuss, chat, communicate, share special things for you and therefore you are there and actively participate. Remember being sad, when your post don’t get reply in more than 1 day, what a terrible feeling. How many times did you reply to a post or submitted a post? And you know it's not only about taking but also about giving. The more you give the more you get, that's the ultimate truth also in Forums. IN order for the administrators and developers of the Opening Master to fully concentrate on the next HOT release they should not be spending times answering each posts. Only as mentioned above in case the posts are directly approaching the help of the administrator and/or developer, however it is the ultimate power of individual users on the forums to help each other and to grow together. If you know the answer to a post, please don't skip it, help the other person somewhere 4000 miles away, next time s/he will help you in return. 

The community is sustainable only if members actively participate to the posts and analyze together the given task, problem or issue and developers develop applications which support the community. The community is sustainable only of they have right set of tools (e.g. Forums, Support sites, FAQ, Private Messaging, Chat boxes etc) which they can use effectively and without errors or breakdowns. The smoother the tools are the better the usage of them by the community. 

THE SUPPORT

The support sustains the community too. By supporting one another, by supporting your group member or your friend or chess partner across the sea you are not only supporting others but also supporting yourself. Have you notice that teaching somebody to do it your way helps you to understand the issue in more depth, you look at it from different angle, from 3rd party perspective and somehow analyze things in different mode then the usual self-learning. And as mentioned in the forum section above, once we support one another, developers might focus better what we all like and why we are actually here - for the love of the game CHESS. The chess database and its quantitative analysis of chess openings should help the players to become better, smarter and more advanced using the data which are being shared either by the programs or by individual members posting their games of analysis.

THE COMMUNITY vs. DATABASE

So why to build a community around the database? Imagine you would have an access to all combinations and permutations of chess through out the game from the start to the end. OK, this is currently not possible with even the best computers of the world, it's simply too many combinations. Wouldn't that give you a competitive advantage over the opponent to know maybe a half of it? Knowing from the first few moves the % of likelihood of the winning or losing or even better what will be next 20 'ideal' moves to win this game, because this combination was already played and the game is recorded on 4,843,432nd place in the database. What an advantage! OK some may argue this is cheating, but it's actually not, it brings players to more advanced plays, to play better chess next day, not making the same mistake twice. The chess community is very competitive just like in any other sports, you play for the passion but you also play for the winning of the game. Why would you start the game if you knew you would lose? (only in such occasion when you play for learning). So chess database is another tool which players could use for their own use. to learn from it, to apply it when in need and to analyze it while learning. The best part of it, the database grows either by your own games or by your opponents every day. The more games are played on tournaments, the more games are recorded and combinations analyzed. The better quality the games are the better quality the databases are.

One may ask the question why do authors charge for the main products if they claim to be a community. Isn't community for free?

Answer: yes we believe the community is for free. And therefore on the OpeningMaster web pages players may find tons of information they would have to seek very hard on the internet, they may find things which wouldn't find at all, find answer to their logical problem in the forums and they may download things which normally wouldn't find anywhere, because they were developed ''inside the house'' or posted by other users free of charge. All forums, articles, documentations, tutorials are free to use, there are many databases and trees which you can download for free of charge (just a free registration) all you need to do is get it from us or from each other as community. Nevertheless, we believe it is fair to ask little bit for return for the sleepless nights when the computers are running until 4 AM, for the bandwidth to keep the web site running next year too and for the overall energy spent on the development of the database. Therefore, the mainstream products are offered currently only to premier members who would like to support  the development of the databases and support the updates as frequent as possible (not just once a year but quarterly or sometimes even monthly). It is the similar thing as posting a button on the website ’’please donate via PayPal'' with underneath statement ''the average donation'' until now is: 22.45 USD.’’ 

We believe in fair treatment and we bet you believe as well. Keep the Opening Master growing for your own interest. The interest to play and win the chess game using the best possible tools on the market.  

Truly Yours,

Opening Master Development Team