Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources online chess with private rooms only?

Hi...my dad wants to play chess (or other games) online to cheer up my ds6, who's really unhappy and 2000 miles away from his grandparents. B/c of the way my son's already clicked his way onto dating sites and totally inappropriate images/videos, generally accidentally or in the spirit of innocent exploration, I don't trust he will stay exactly where I put him online, and don't really want him on a gaming site where he can talk with strangers at this age or click on ads that take him who knows where. (and with two younger kids I can't monitor him every minute to be sure he's ok). Does anyone know of a site where ds can play with his grandad without ads or contact with unknown people?

thanks for any suggestions!

If you find one, please post!

I think the Chessmaster game has an online option... I've never used it myself, but it might be worth looking into.

If you use yahoo messenger you can play chess with someone in your group. Only people you approve can communicate with him.

DD8 hooked herself up and then showed DD6 how to do it. When they are at school I pull up their yahoo messenger just to make sure there isn't something shady going on.

So far, the only people on their list are the grandparents and an uncle, of course, DH and I.

I haven't seen any weird requests pop up from strangers, although I would guess that's a potential caveat.

It's pretty fun. We are lame in that I'll be on this forum(too much!) and my messenger icon will pop up. It's usually DD8 in her room asking me to play chess. So we play online with her upstairs, me downstairs even though we have a chess board in the living room.

I've finally had time to look into these suggestions. Chessmaster is only for PCs, and I can't figure out a way to use Yahoo Messenger to play games and think it might be PC-only. Clearly I need incogneato's daughter to help me!

So let me append a caveat to my question - does anyone know of any private online game sites that can be played on a mac?

thank you...