I agree with you guys. Playchess interface is pretty far from perfect.
Still play there though, since the membership fee is a lot lower cause the 50$ annual fee is based on the actual days that you log in and play.
Much cheaper and more fair this way I think.

Amen to this.

I have only played on PlayChess. I absolutely love it. I recommend you read the site manuals to get best usage, similar to HEM.

I just got an e-mail from Chesscube and they offer a premium service now for cheap ($15/6months). Anyone used this?

FICS for bughouse/crazyhouse, ICC for everything else. Blitzin and Thief are the only way to go.

Thanks for all the debate in this thread. I am just getting back into chess and I used to play a lot on FICS. Now Im torn as to whether or not to stay with FICS or get an ICC account..

For those that do play on FICS semi-regularly from a windows computer, what is your preferred client?

Personally, Im not looking for any frills, so I just use the jin applet and I'm fine with it.

Thief, because it's specifically designed for bughouse.

BabasChess FTW

I do, its just too annoying to play on. If the board is too ugly i dont think anyone can focus 100%!

Any update on this?

Have ICC and PlayChess changed much over the last couple of years? Has anybody changed their opinion and switched from one to the other?

I prefer somewhat slower games, such as 15/5 or 7/12 and occasionally 30/0. Anybody know if one site is much better than the other for those games during European evening hours? I'm rated about 1800 for slow/standard games on FICS, so I assume it won't be an issue to find sufficiently strong opponents on either site.

Alan

i was at the crossroads a couple months ago between whether i should just keep going with my fics account, or re-up at icc or possibly consider playchess. fwiw i grew up on chess.net and then moved to icc and played exclusively there, aside from bughouse.

i ended up re-upping at icc.

i will re-iterate what others have said itt and that the 1/3/5-minute pools on icc are still very robust and populated. quick games every time i join up. i'd say the daily tournament pools in the tomato family of bots have drastically decreased in quality, virtually no very good players or titled players play in them whereas about 5+ years ago tournaments were out of control busy with very competitive action. that being said if you are dedicated there's free monthly prizes to be won and as dire mentioned very early itt, with enough effort you can freeroll your membership. not that most people would really care but i feel like a lot of the character icc had back then is long gone and it's a much more autonomous site.

that being said the quality of play is the best, and has the most titled players, and while i've still not taken advantage of the daily lectures/podcasts/simuls yet, the availability is still there. playchess just seemed too foreign to me to join, like i said i grew up on icc so it was getting a bit of bias in my choice. as for the less popular time controls with increment, may be difficult to get games at those.

I only joined ICC for the educational content tbh and didn't renew when sub ran out, although I think the content was very good.

Now a days PlayChess is somewhat larger than ICC. At certain Euro-centric times it can get extreme with several times as many players on. ICC has the auto pairing/pooled games, which are simply amazing and oddly not copied by the other sites, but I don't think the site is worth $70 a year. An interesting idea for them might be to have a $30/year model that only provides chess + chat, and then some sort of tiered premium model that includes all the educational/chessertainment content. And perhaps even go above that with ultra-premium tiers including free live lessons or what not.

FICS regularly has around the same number of players logged on as ICC these days, and I think BabasChess is a far superior interface to any of the others. Here is a screenshot gallery that I maintain for it:

http://gorgonian.tumblr.com

FICS lacks on the high end of competition, but for non-titled players, there is plenty to play against. There are titled players there, too, they just prefer incognito on FICS, so they aren't always labelled.

I think playchess's interface is lolbad, personally.

I'm facing the same decision here in 2013. I'll be playing via my iPhone.

ICC charges $11.99 for three months.

Playchess charges $11.99 for twelve months.

Bit of a price difference, but either way it is cheaper to play via iPhone. I'm guessing I don't have access to all the benefits, but that's fine because I just wanna play chess. Price is of little consequence, I'm looking for the best place to play.

I'm looking for:
-the strongest and most serious competition
-the most reliable server
-getting a game quickly (I prefer slow)
-the most effective anti-cheating measures

To me, that criteria makes ICC to the superior candidate. I pay for my membership and play equal amounts between my PC, tablet and phone. App is good and reliable.

Thanks! From reading the rest of the thread and researching a bit, that was my thought too.