Hopefully this will be quick. Haven't played for a long while and stopped at ICC because of players logging off in weaker positions, not necessarily losses, which made adjudication difficult. Also had many games waiting for adjudication which was unthrilling.
For serious play, ICC or FICS
For casual play, lichess.org
For lolz and/or headaches, chess.com
Serious play ICC or FICS because ICC has auto-pairing pools, which are the best thing ever. FICS because there is a pretty serious community there for long time control games and the old-timey telnet commands and such keeps most of the mouth-breathers away.
lichess.org could easily be the best, but it gets too silly with the berserking and bullet/variant-centric tournaments and features for me. If it gets a community of serious players and/or real auto-pairing pools (not the ridiculously poor attempt at it they rolled out a year or two ago), it will be my main site.
chess.com is pretty horrific overall. The interface to the whole website is, let's just say muddled. They have abhorrent ads, terrible mods, and actually charge money for some of their crap. It has potential but maybe the worst management of any major site I've ever seen. I'm also still irate at their decision to call correspondence chess "online chess," which creates the most confusing and ridiculous discussions possible for absolutely no benefit.
I'm curious if anyone has any experience playing on chess24.com? I haven't actually used their site to PLAY chess at all yet, but I have been spending a lot of time there for their live streaming of tournaments (often with commentary). I know they do have live play as well as training videos, tactics trainer, etcetera. It seems they're probably trying to position themselves as a chess.com competitor. Anyone know how well they're doing at that goal?
I can't look at their ugly boards and pieces and see no reason to go to a playing site that doesn't allow you basic functionality for free (changing those ugly pieces to something acceptable). Sometimes they put out a video I'll watch and sometimes I have to put up with their crappy graphics and awkward interface for tournament coverage, but other than that, it gets no shot from me.
Have been playing on all of them (FICS, ICC, etc) for literally 20 years. I only play on chess.com now - I like not having to download an interface, and pretty decent content around the site. Few quibbles here and there but overall good.
I used to play on ICC many years ago although I felt most other options were pretty bad. I have been playing on chess.com since coming back to chess a few months ago and it's gone quite well and is free so I haven't worried about playing elsewhere.
I think I'd like ICC the best but what I really should be playing is longer games and I've heard it isn't as good for finding those.
Again, thanx again guys; looks like Chess.com. I haven't played for a long while and like the free games and have been looking at videos on Youtube thanks to advice given here. I'd rather not go back to ICC and too would like to play a longer game but definitely not too long.
