Following up the freeze of Kasparov's new project, worldchessrating.com, there is no big news. People haven't been paid since the beginning of the year and they had warned that they would stop work on March 1 unless paid. They will return to work as soon as they are paid and are optimistic that they will be. Apparently this happened late last year back when the site was only in Russian. Although Kasparov is involved in the project, he is not the one financing it or signing the checks.
The raison d'être of the WCR is supposed to be a new rating list that will be more dynamic and also combine classical, rapid, and blitz play into one list that will include everyone from beginners to Kasparov around the world.
I think this is a great idea, but launching a big web chess portal before that system even exists is a bit of putting the cart before the horse. There is no revenue to be seen at the WCR site right now.
