Quote:
Originally Posted by Gorgonian
Great. I just don't use FICS anymore. Super tired of its stagnation and apathy towards improving.
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.