I mean, I hate ****ty chess boards but it mostly has to do with the proportions of the pieces and squares. So far chess.com and chessbase default boards seem fine to me. ICC's default back in the day seemed fine too.

But maybe once I install some sweet custom stuff I'll never go back!

I hear you but I still love using BabasChess and I have to be honest: I find long games on there easier than just about anywhere else including ICC. I put up a few seeks for like 45/5, 60/5, and 45/45 and usually within 1-5 minutes I'm in a game. I've waited for games like that for 30+ minutes on ICC sometimes.

It seems like a higher percentage of the player base on FICS is there for classical time controls more than on any other network/site.

Overall though, yeah - I think ICC and FICS are the two best places to play chess and never look back. Chess.com is just too user friendly and bare bones for me. I hate the community over there, too. Too many casuals and non chess players clogging up the forums with every topic other than chess. ICC's community is huge and longstanding and I find the FICS crowd to be the overall friendliest with the best sense of community.

Something else I like about FICS is their games database FICS Games and Watchbot. These things are invaluable and are impeccably drawn up in charts and graphs online. What FICS provides in this regard is more than any of the pay sites. It's arguably the best part of playing at FICS other than, of course, using BabasChess.

Lastly, BabasChess lets users have one account. Absolutely zero exceptions or you're auto banned by IP. They have a provisional rating system that works impeccably and due to these factors, provides the most credible rating. They're the only site that actually enforces the lack of multi accounting and they legitimately know how to ban people so that it's extremely difficult for them to get back on. It keeps things feeling credible and safe.

Online chess is online chess but I just have BabasChess and Blitzin open and ready to go pretty much 24/7 at this point. LiChess was fun but simply doesn't compare to these two long standing giants in the industry, IMO. The player pool is also extremely soft and casual over on Lichess compared to ICC and FICS. Extremely.

All jokes aside, I appreciated the summary. I have only really used chess.com recently since it seems to be fine so far.

I used to play exclusively on FICS but left it for similar reasons to Gorgonian - they really had no interest in improving the server. They were terrified of open sourcing it because, in their view, the code had been stolen once already to create ICC, but it would probably have been the right decision to keep development active and try to attract improvements from the community.

FICSgames is exactly the kind of thing FICS should have created but ended up being done by an individual user (though an admin I believe - so not entirely unaffiliated with FICS).

I played a little on chess.com but I don't really like the site and would prefer not to support them. If I was going to pay I'd sooner pay for playchess or ICC. Recently I've been playing on lichess and I think it's awesome, I see myself staying there. There aren't many titled players but I don't find it too hard to get a blitz game against 1900+.

Do you have any experience on PlayChess, RoundTower? The Premium sub is $99 USD for a full year and I'm curious as to whether it would benefit my play enough to justify the expense. How does the competition there compare to that on ICC and FICS? If you don't know, anyone else can feel free to chime in

Thanks

Never mind. I looked into PlayChess again to make sure I hadn't missed anything the first peak around and sure enough: Nope. There were maybe 100 games running and all but one was a blitz game. Terrible graphics, software, and population. ICC is so far beyond it it's amazing. Anyway, that answers that question.

I tried it briefly but wasn't impressed with the software. I bought Chessbase 13 only a few months ago so I guess I do have a year's worth of Playchess, but haven't used it once.

I guess that sums it up then. I *wanted* to like it as it's EU for the most part and I'd like to a) play against the diversity of players and b) I'm a nightowl. I like site traffic at odd US hours.

Doesn't really matter - As said, between ICC and FICS there's never really much wanting for a game. Although I still see FICS as having more long games being played at any given time compared to a LOT of ICC's games being grandmasters playing 3/0 and 5/0 blitz in the pairing pools.

What do you think about this software package for me at this point?

http://www.uscfsales.com/houdini-4-p...l-edition.html

it seem silly to me to buy an engine since Stockfish is as strong or stronger and is totally free. So that's the flagship thing you are buying in that package, but what else are you getting?

I have a strong bias towards open source software and would definitely recommend you try Scid. However I've tried Scid a bunch of times and even started writing patches for it (didn't contribute anything yet though) but still end up going back to Chessbase. So you might find the same.

• The Houdini 4 engine - adds basically 0 value over Stockfish
• The DeepFritz 14 user interface in Windows Office 2010 standard - you need an interface for your engine, there are lots of free alternatives so it's a matter of taste.
• The DeepFritz 14 database management system - think this is like Chessbase Light? That might be available for free
• Premium membership of Playchess.com for six months - sounds like you don't want this
• The ChessBase Engine Cloud - I think this allows you to pay to have your games analysed. Seems redundant
• The ChessBase "Let’s Check" function* - super useful if you are doing deep analysis of topical openings. of limited value to you
• A database with over 1.5 million games - definitely useful even for beginners, to get a sense of how strong players play. However there are equally high-quality databases available for free.
• A bunch of ebooks - always nice to have more chess content

So yeah, assuming $130 is not a lot of money to you you are definitely getting something useful, I'd still push Scid first though and you can figure out if you like it or not.

Fwiw I liberated a copy of Chessbase 13 but then also set up SCID at work and, tbh, I may just move towards SCID at home too, lol. It just seemed simpler. Chessbase in some ways felt like Microsoft Outlook or some sort of "unnecessarily" massive software that I may have no interest in utilizing fully.

I agree FICS has some nice things going for it. I stuck it out with them as long as I could, though. If they ever get off their butt and do something new, I will probably go back. But not until then. I'm throwing in with lichess which clearly seems to be the future, to me. I've already converted a crapton of my babaschess graphics to lichess

My thread on custom lichess graphics:
http://en.lichess.org/forum/lichess-...ustom-graphics

Also, I own Chessbase 13 and never use it. Scid vs. PC, Lucas Chess, and Chess Position Trainer are basically what I use.

I currently have premium memberships to chess.com and ICC, but I am switching over to Lichess. If you don't care about chess videos, than there seems to be limited reasons to pay for a membership.

If I ever get through the backlog of chess videos I have acquired over the years, I might care about them. I have enough for awhile, I'll just say that.

Awesome post. Thank you. Of course, after a good night's sleep and with a clear head, I can't think of any reason to buy this today lol. Your post is the nail in the coffin. Thanks again.

And I will agree that Lichess has some great things going for it, too. Being free + open source is fantastic.

That said, I'm having a hard time prying myself away from BabasChess. I have my ICC sub here but I keep finding myself putting games in on FICS. I like FICSGames a lot. A lot.

One thing I will say about software for those of you on a budget: ChessTempo seems to do just about as much, and in some cases more, than a lot of these playing software packages does. For just $4 a month you get the gold sub which gives you access to everything. So, for just $4 month you could combine FICS or Lichess with CT Gold and that alone would be a very, very powerful launching point for anyone. CT is amazing.

If you do decide to throw a few dollars down on a network, I'd have to give the nod to ICC. The only other consideration would be Chess.com and quite frankly, it's absolutely horrible next to ICC and costs more for some inane reason.

http://ficsgames.org/cgi-bin/show.cgi?ID=374767257

Just finished this game on FICS. 60/5 rated standard. Note of the day: Indeed, playing blitz was bad for me a couple of months ago. Absolutely no question about it. What I thought it was providing me in benefit turned out to confer absolutely no advantage in classical time controls and it really fostered short term thinking and planning. I was hanging pieces and seeing nothing when I first started playing games again last week and it was driving me nuts. Sure enough, after about a dozen longer games this week, I'm back to actually playing chess instead of just pushing pieces. I also realize that although there are a number of longer time controls that I'm fond of, I need to focus on a few and get used to playing them over and over.

My local club plays 35/5 swiss style tournaments once a week, two games a night, two weeks to a tournament. A lot of the tournaments that are of longer controls around here are right around the 60/5 mark. Further, 45/45 is the standard online control for long chess and I'm going to be playing in ICC's T45 League starting next season (June 2nd). Further, this time control will prepare me for any longer games or FIDE style games that have a primary and secondary time control along with an increment. I will also try to work in a 90/30 online or OTB now and then. As a result, online, I'm going to just keep running 60/5's, 45/45's, and 35/5's. FIDE uses increment and the USCF is big on 5 second delay. We can't use delay online (why I have no idea) but considering it's only 5 seconds, the increment should work well.

A final thought about this game and time controls: I'm greatly encouraged by how much better I play the longer the game is. I don't mean the obvious in that my play is more precise - I mean proportionately to my competition. I'm naturally much better at longer controls. I also continue to be remarkably better at endgames than other players around my rating and experience level and the longer the time control, the longer I can press this advantage on them. Quite importantly, as well is that I FAR more enjoy classical chess. The real deal. I like watching it, studying it, and playing it. Blitz certainly has it's place but not so much in my game at the moment. I'll have to revisit it down the line since it keeps playing more and more of a role in tie breaker spots in chess but ...not really at the non professional level. For now, I'll stick to playing the time controls detailed above and remember my lessons learned from my foray into blitz. No matter how addictive it can be some nights. I can't help but realize after I play it for a few hours that I'm chasing an instant gratification fix. Wins and losses should come slower and with more attention to detail if you're trying to make the kind of progress I am.

Geez, you weren't kidding about the endgame, that dude just immediately imploded once a bunch of pieces were off of the board lol.

This is not uncommon at the level of games I'm playing right now. I don't have as high of a win % when I'm playing games shorter than 45/5 because we don't get to set the stage for a full endgame and then play it out to conclusion. When we are looking at a game going an hour and a half or more, and 40+ moves, I almost always win the game in the endgame.

Now, this guy played the first 3/4 of the game like it was blitz and then, after he was in a losing position, started to use his clock a little and calculate. It was too late.

http://ficsgames.org/cgi-bin/show.cgi?ID=374810665

35/5 rated. Opponent took the bait after 18. Bxa6 and went for the double attack leading to instant mate.

Just so I'm not posting exclusively wins: http://ficsgames.org/cgi-bin/show.cgi?ID=374707848

That's from a few days ago, though. At first I thought the six weeks off didn't effect my game much but I was quite wrong. Tactical blunders all over the place until I got a few long games back under my belt again and started working CT problems every day.

I hate losses that I'm responsible for with a blunder. Hate. The thing is that I generally button up my weak points quickly and already my vision has improved in the last week.

I'm also finding that playing OTB a lot helps your online vision. Things just become much easier to see on the board.

Why didn't you play e5 at any of the opportunities you had?

Great question and good point. If I had made the e5 break I never would have wound up in that tactical situation on the queenside and instead would have been able to continue to press on his kingside.

This guy and I have been reviewing the games afterwards and are getting ready to play our 3rd game together, a 45/45 on FICS, this week so this is extremely helpful.

http://ficsgames.org/cgi-bin/show.cgi?ID=374819157

Running 35/5's over and over to get ready for the club's swiss style's at that time control and thought a 30/5 could do no harm. In time trouble and with my eyes a little glassy I missed the obvious mate in 1 here. Tough loss. I thought I was going to pull this one out. I hung a pawn at one point and then missed m1. At least this game didn't happen in a USCF rated.

After a few sloppy games, I am starting to get myself back together here. My ChessTempo estimated FIDE is now over 1450 and I just won this 45/45 on FICS when my opponent resigned on move 17.

http://ficsgames.org/cgi-bin/show.cgi?ID=374896736

Long games, tactics, and book study are the name of the game for me right now. I'm working on Winning Chess Strategies currently. I want to get it knocked out in completion and then move onto My System and Chess Praxis.