Anyone else sad Pogo Chess is gone?

I know you're not allowed to talk about competitors to Chess.com in the forums, but now that Pogo.com has permanently shut down chess, it's not really a competitor. They shut it down because of the end of Flash, but seriously, before all these new chess sites on the web in the last decade, Pogo was one or the originals and should get at least an eulogy. And they still kept their user interface since the 1990s. Anyone here miss the demise of Pogo Chess? I guess we'll all meet again in Heaven under the room name "Active Advantage."

They’re working on getting backgammon back too. Maybe other games will be resurrected as well. Chess.com is the best for me anyway.

I do agree about Chess.com, but I have a nostalgic fondness for Pogo, especially in the way they used tables that you would create as opposed to random matching. I also found it was much more conversational-friendly than most other sites. 

whats pogo chess?

One of the first online chess sites, very popular back in the 1990s. Now I feel old. 

We are old. But i’s cottage cheese-jello night at the cafeteria so that’s something to make you feel young again.

I know this is an old thread, but I used to play there a lot. Just out of curiosity, do you remember your rating there? I hadn't played chess in a long time until recently, I don't think I'm as good as I was, but there is no way to compare with a pogo rating, mine used to be 1800-1900. Chess.com I'm around 1400 now.

What's pogo chess?

I remember Pogo's ratings used a different formula and were way higher than any other site. I remember that 1500 there was basically around 1200 here. 

Yea I suppose that makes sense, I remember it started at 1500.

No, glad to see the end of it.

True, and I always went up way up in the first dozen or so games. Here and in real life, I've always been in the 1500-1600s for the last 20 years. One thing I miss about Pogo's interface was that you could create tables where once seated, you switched back and forth a lot. I think it was more conducive to social chess and playing more repeat games with other players. Plus, you could have players enter your table and watch while you were playing. When you came online, you could see which tables your friends were at and join them to watch. It was really nice. 

Right! I remember when the red dot players (the top level) were playing, they usually had a small audience of watchers, lol.

One thing I hated though was players who refused to play the black side.

lol, i remember that too. i used to always create tables where i was playing black to begin. Got games much faster than all the other tables, where people were sitting on white. :-)

Btw, what happened to Kasparov chess and yahoo chess?

I think with some of the old sites the format of the games just got outdated, and they just chose to let them die. Plus the fact that cheating with engines seemed to be really popular. Definitely could have turned a lot of potential users away.

Don't know about Kasparov or Yahoo chess, but in the case of Pogo, they were running it using Adobe Flash, and when Adobe end-of-lifed Flash last December, Pogo dropped all its flash games rather than rebuilding them. Even playing it last year before they axed it, they were still using the same build from the 1990s, i.e. the chess squares were so small on a modern monitor, you had to zoom in to see it. 

Hi, I use to play there, I was you could say like an admin. Miss it too..

I used to play chess on pogo! My user name is “dep fried chicken!” That’s right with one “e”. Lol