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Amsterdam, December 22, 2003
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Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan joins w-chess
Today the former champion of the USA, grandmaster Yasser Seirawan, has joined w-chess.
After an explanation by the w-chess team of how to play chess on his new mobile phone (a N341i with camera), Yasser was impressed with the possibilities of the new medium.
Since Yasser is involved in several activities to promote chess worldwide, he and the w-chess team have agreed on a number of brainstorm sessions to explore possibilities to use this new form of chess.
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W-chess implements its Player-to-Player JAVA applet
Today the second JAVA applet was implemented on w-chess for users in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany and Italy after being officially approved by the operators. This applet allows users to play fast games (max. 1 minute per move) against other players.
For this purpose a special "game room" has been created where you can see which players are available for a quick game at that moment.
An extensive description of this applet and how it works can be found here
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Milan (Italy), November 19, 2003
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W-chess participates in succesfull i-mode launch in Italy
Today WIND, the third biggest operator in Italy with 9 million customers, launched i-mode with a great media spectacle, with lots of Italian TV personalities.
W-chess was there as one of the prominent games on i-mode.
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New York (USA), November 18, 2003
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W-chess presented the great match between Kasparov and X3D Fritz live
Together with America's Foundation for Chess and the virtual reality company X3D in Seattle, Mobile Excellence presented a live report of the chess match between Garry Kasparov and X3D Fritz on i-/m-mode.
This match was played in New York from November 11th till November 18th and was considered as the ultimate fight between man and machine.
The games were followed (free of charge) by thousands of i-mode users in Europe and m-mode users in the US on w-chess.
One of the viewers was the Dutch grandmaster Harmen Jonkman and he reports about each game on w-chess.net.
His extensive analyses (in Dutch) can still be found on Schakers.Info.
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Ankara (Turkey), November 6, 2003
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W-chess teams up with Mobilsoft for more strategic mind games
Today Mobile Excellence, the developers of w-chess, and Mobilsoft, developers of several mobile enabled games, have announced that they will join forces to further develop and market strategic mind games for mobile users, like draughts, backgammon and reversi.
More ...
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Soest, September 25, 2003
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W-chess implements its first JAVA applet
Today the first JAVA applet was implemented on w-chess for users in the Netherlands, after being officially approved by KPN Mobile. This applet allows users to play against the w-chess computer "Chessie" in a much more user-friendly way, because the moves can be entered using the arrows on the keypad of the handset instead of with algebraic notation like e2e4. Furthermore, the applet greatly reduces the amount of data transmission, because only the moves are transmitted and not the entire chessboard.
An extensive description of the applet and how it works can be found here
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Milan, September 24, 2003
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Agreement with WIND Italy to have
w-chess join i-mode launch in Italy
The Italian mobile operator WIND has come to an agreement with Mobile Excellence to have the w-chess service as part of their i-mode launch in Italy this coming November.
WIND, the third biggest mobile operator in Italy, had signed an agreement with NTT DoCoMo this summer to join the i-mode community in Europe.
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Amsterdam, September 6, 2003
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Alexandra Kosteniuk plays world's first mobile chess simul
The 19 year old Russian lady grandmaster and vice world champion Alexandra Kosteniuk has established a world record by playing the world's first mobile chess simultaneous game ever, against six opponents who were not facing her behind the chess board, but who played with their mobile phones via w-chess. Alexandra scored 5½ points out of 6 games.
The event has drawn a lot of attention in the international chess world: even as far away as Malaysia an article was printed in a newspaper (News Strait Times).
The event was reported on sites like Schakers.Info (Benelux), ChessBase (both the German and the international pages), Schach-Ticker, Echecs-International and on www.kosteniuk.com, where a complete overview of photographs can be found.
For a complete report click here
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Aix-les-Bains, August 19, 2003
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W-chess present during French Championships
During the first week of the French championships Mobile Excellence was invited by the president of the Fédération Française des Échecs (FFE), Mr. Jean-Claude Loubatière, to present their w-chess service at the Palais des Congrès in Aix-les-Bains.
Many players from all levels - including some of the grandmasters - were interested to get to know this new form of playing chess and took time to have it explained to them by Hans van Briemen and Bert Houweling of Mobile Excellence.
For this occasion, Bouygues Telecom had prepared a special offer for licensed players of FFE, which allowed them to buy a new i-mode phone with discount.
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Soest, July 16, 2003
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Game viewer on w-chess
Today the w-chess service has been enhanced with a game viewer. This function, which can be found in the menu as option [4], allows the players of w-chess to replay all their old games from w-chess. But it also gives access to a database with over 250.000 grandmaster games, where they can search games from old world champions like Alexander Aljechin or Bobby Fischer as well as more recent games from today's grandmasters.
Users can search on one or two names, on event and on the year a game was played.
In the future a search on opening variations will be added.
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Brussels, June 25, 2003
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Base Belgium launches w-chess
Today w-chess was officially launched on the BASE platform in Belgium and very soon the first Belgian players started to register and play chess.
It looks like Belgium is trying to outgrow Holland as a w-chess country.
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Dusseldorf, May 5, 2003
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E-Plus Germany launches w-chess
After extensive technical testing, w-chess was approved by E-Plus and launched on their platform. The first players started to register and half way during the evening more than 20 German players were active on w-chess.
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Paris, May 5, 2003
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W-chess succesfully launched in France
W-chess was approved and launched on Bouygues Telecom i-mode platform. The first French w-chess players started reluctantly playing against some Dutch players. After a couple of hours up to 100 games were ongoing.
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Madrid, April 5, 2003
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W-chess to become official content on Telefonica Moviles Spain e-mocion
The Management team of Mobile Excellence was invited by Telefonica to discuss the possibilities to make w-chess available on their Emocion platform. From August 2003 Telefonica will launch their version of i-mode in Spain. W-chess will be one of the first official games. The contract also includes the rights to offer other mind games in the future.
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The Hague, April 4, 2003
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W-chess successfully launched on KPN The Netherlands i-mode
After extensive and successful testing, the Mobile Content division of KPN Mobile has released w-chess on their i-mode platform. On the first day w-chess was visited by hundreds of curious i-mode customers of whom 60 took a subscription and started playing w-chess.
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Paris, March 4, 2003
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W-chess approved on Bouygues Telecom ixmode in France
After Bouygues Telecom had reviewed the prototype w-chess service, Mobile Excellence received the official Content Provider status for w-chess on their i-mode platform. -
The official launch is planned by May 2003.-
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The Hague, February 12, 2003
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W-chess approved on KPN Mobile
The new i-mode chess service has been approved by the KPN Mobile group of operators as an official content service on their i-mode platform.-
Within the next 2 to 3 months it will be possible for i-mode customers of KPN Mobile (The Netherlands), E-Plus (Germany) and Base (Belgium) to play chess against other i-mode chess players, or against a chess computer, to solve chess problems and to view more chess related news and content.
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