Chess Cafe Has Gone Rogue

Chess Cafe is one of my go to sites for info. Just went to the site & found out they are charging 50.00 a year to access articles.  You can still buy chess equipment without paying which is good. I went ahead & signed Up for a year.

That's why i couldn't have access to novice nook articles through dan heisman links this morning..

No more free novice nooks?

Yes, sadly for us what used to be a free resource now costs $.  New owner, I think.

Yes.. New owner. I don't know how it will go. I think a lot of regular visitors will be turned off by this move. If you decide to pay it will give you access to everything. It is kind of a steep price IMO.

Looks like most of the older articles are still available for free. Or at least I was able to get to them from Dan's site.

           I should of put that site on a flash drive when I had the chance. Those dirtty rotten scroundrels

I still seem to be able to pull up the old Novice Nook articles from Dan's site, although no idea if that's going to last.

I can't blame the new owner for wanting to monetize the articles on the site, but it may cause the opposite effect with me. I don't think I'm going to pay $50 a year for access, and I'll probably stop ordering from them entirely. I wish him luck with his new site.

What happened? Your original post was fairly critical and, if I recall correctly, you thought people would stop going to the site. Now, you've not only edited your post but paid the subscription.

They'll be out of business in 6 months.

50.00 ? I should charge that for my art tutorials...

Your right in That I was very critical of the pay up or else no access. I simply changed my mind & re-edited my post. I have been going there for a long time & decided to give it a years subscription. If it doesn't work out, I will not re- subscribe.

               Maybe if we got a lot more diamond members, Erik could buy Chess Cafe ?

I have no problem with "free" sites adding extra content and charging for that, but I always feel that there's an element of "screwing over the user/fan base" when numerous services that used to be provided freely are suddenly put behind a paywall.  From their point of view it's a trade-off, they are likely to lose a large percentage of visitors and popularity in the short-term, but they will probably make a lot more money, which they can then use to help improve the site as well as making ad-free maintenance easier, and claw back some of that lost popularity.  I won't be paying the subscription.  

I hope that they do keep the archived columns online, largely because if they take them offline as part of the "paywall" then many chess sites (including mine) will be left with numerous dead links.  However, I expect that they probably will take them offline.

Their archeive can be 'archieved' though

https://web.archive.org/web/20140714190611/http://www.chesscafe.com/archives/archives.htm

I see that the PDF articles are archived as well, which is very handy- so whatever happens, we won't lose free access to the earlier articles.

Who does own chess cafe?

My issue with all this is that I was a loyal visitor to ChessCafe for years, and in appreciation I spent a fair amount of money in their store over the years.  Now the slate is wiped clean and loyal supporters are left out in the cold.  It is annoying enough that I've decided to boycott the site.  I probably should just calm down and push my next chess book order through their site :)

I'm in the same boat as you. Chesscafe was my favorite place to buy books because they packed them really well for shipment. The next time I'm ready to order some more books, I might give them another try to see if their packing standards are still up to snuff.

I agree. I thought you might still be able to see all of the great book reviews that are archived there but alas no