LatestChess :- You have won the SA chess champion four times, you were playing well, when and why did the transition from playing to Businessman occur?
Mark Levitt :- In the early 90s I wrote software to automate layout and design of chess publications. I think I was the first person to download the first ChessBase font via direct telephone link on an International call - this was before the Internet was easily accessible. I did work for Batsford, Cadogan and CHESS Monthly magazine - and flew to London 10 times a year to pick up contract work. I also built a chess service for BT's WirePlay network (now known as www.GamePlay.com) during that period.

I was the first person to download the first ChessBase font ...

Living in South Africa in the apartheid era meant that participating in International events was not open to me. Later apartheid was thankfully abolished and a new South African society began to normalise. Nevertheless for me I realised that I was never going to be a top player and that it was time to turn my attention to other areas.

I realised that I was never going to be a top player  ...

it was time to turn my attention to other areas ...

My entrepreneurial side came out further and I invested in or started up non-chess enterprises. I had a mixture of success and failure, but was bitten by the idea of starting businesses.

I stopped playing seriously in the late 90s but I maintained a strong interest in chess.

LatestChess :- You developed chess service for BT's WirePlay (Gameplay.com), launched by Gary Kasparov. Can you tell our readers about it?
Mark Levitt :- I took some time off business in the mid 90s to try and program a chess word-processor around the same time that BT were looking for a software developer to build their service. So I stopped working on my project and spent 18 months building the service. I really loved that time - although it was quite a tough project. When I finally delivered the system I was thrilled that BT hired Gary to launch it. We had a public exhibition where Gary played against three players via the WirePlay network. Gary ran two of the games and I helped him operate the third. The public event was a great PR coup for BT and they listed GamePlay.com around the start of the Internet bubble era.

I was thrilled that BT hired Gary to launch it ...

After the project I was upset to hear that GamePlay was shelving all its strategy games and my application was mothballed. I had spent all that time building a comprehensive service that was never going to see the light of day.

I was upset to hear that GamePlay shelved all its strategy games ...

LatestChess :- What inspired you to start ChessCube website? Most of the services offered by ChessCube are free, How are you generating revenues from the website?
Mark Levitt :- I learnt a lot from my BT experience and even though I then left chess business for almost a decade, the ideas and techniques I developed then became the precursor to ChessCube.com. My interest in Internet was spurred by my time at www.Clicks2Customers.com, a global leader in Pay-per-click marketing, where I was an investor and Chief Information Officer. I was surrounded by incredibly talented people such as founder Vinny Lingham, who taught me a great deal about the opportunities on the Internet.

ChessCube is a free service. We have been funded by angel investors and have recently been chatting to a few Venture Capital Investors. These are tough times though and no-one can run a business without looking at sustainable revenue models. ChessCube will be launching a premium service as well as some other revenue drivers late this year that will bring some real value to chess players. We do not want to reveal our plans quite yet though, so you will have to watch our progress.

We never plan to charge for our current playing service though - that is our contribution to the world chess community. In fact we plan to continuously innovate and improve our free playing service to the point where it competes strongly with paid services. We have spent the last three months improving our scaling and removing critical bugs. But watch this space.

we plan to continuously innovate and improve ...

LatestChess :- ChessCube has over 600,000 registered users, this is a great achievement considering the short duration. What are the secrets of this success?
Mark Levitt :- We are very proud of our growth and the number of registered users we have. We have done this through strong marketing and providing a free product that people really like. We are a social network as well as being a game playing service and that is part of the success. We have a number of new initiatives planned for late 2009 where we offer better social services to our users to make their experience even more fun.

LatestChess :- In the Chess world, we see a lot of praise/appreciation for Chessbase and ICC for providing excellent interface for online chess playing. In your opinion, If you compare ChessCube with other online Chess playing websites, what are the strong and weak points of ChessCube ?
Mark Levitt :- ICC has been around a long time and they have a very established following as well as a rich offering to their users. They have tens of thousand of paying customers which is very important. ChessBase is more than an online site. It is a great company that has really established itself as an icon in the chess community.

Both of these companies have good online communities, but neither of them have yet leveraged off the social networks. I have no doubt that they will move in this direction in the future.

Chessbase, ICC haven't leveraged the social networks ...

Another website is chess.com. Their name gives them an advantage in that search engines list them first. They are also very good at marketing and have leveraged social networks to grow.

Strong points of ChessCube over ICC and PlayChess is that it is a free service that has the ability to deliver on the web itself. Their strength, though, is a time-tested and bug-free system, with a number of top players and good revenues.

Free service with ability to deliver on the web itself
is the strong point of ChessCube over ICC and PlayChess ...