| There are several good places to play chess online
right from your home. All you need is a computer and access to the
Internet. When I originally sat down to write this article I discovered
that 12 pages of writing could not do justice to all the extra features
these clubs offer, and 12+ pages takes up a lot of space… however, during
my research I ran across an excellent web page called: “The Chess Kamikaze
Home Page.” This place has several good articles for chessplayers
including “Guide
to Playing Chess on the Web”, written by Steven A. Lopez. |
I highly recommend you go to this site and read
Steve’s article which covers the 1st nine chess sites listed below.
I’ve added 3 more site listings to his list including my favorite, the
Internet Chess Club.
|
Yahoo Chess
MSN Gaming Zone
It’s Your Turn
Excite
Chess
Playsite
Chess
Lycos Chess
The Big Network
Chess
2AM
Chess
The Station Chess
Kasparov
Chess
FICS
Internet Chess Club
|
| All the sites listed here allow players to play
for free. Some of the sites offer additional attractions if you join.
Some of them also have articles to read and other chess goodies. |
| I would not say that any of these chessclubs are
bad… they all give FREE access and promote chess. If your priority
is FREE then by all means, stop reading this and start trying out the sites! |
| However, if you like a little luxury in your life…
or want some of the extras, please take advantage of what it took me over
a year to find out: |
What advantages do you gain if you become a member
of the ICC?
|
- Free entry into USCF-rated prize tournaments each month.
- Take part or watch all events that are closed to unregs, like the
World Championship broadcasts, DeepBlue-Kasparov broadcasts, US Championship
broadcasts, Harvard Cup, Play the Master, Lectures, etc.
- Play in free simuls against Internationally-titled masters twice
a week.
- ICC ratings for standard, blitz, bullet, bughouse and wild.
- Search and examine our database of IM and GM games.
- Play Correspondence Chess on the ICC.
- E-mail any game from histories, libraries, or the database.
- Observe Grandmaster games.
- Free entry into official WBCA tournaments.
- Play in Standard tournaments each month and win membership prizes.
- Play in “Tomato” tournaments every day.
- Play against the computers, like BulletC, WimpD, etc.
- Watch MrSpock’s lectures 24 hours a day.
- Have a permanent name people will recognize.
- Finger notes and variables you don't have to set everytime you login.
- The ability to create aliases.
- Lists that don't go away, like notify, gnotify, censor, alias, etc.
- Have a history of your games.
- Keep a personal library of your favorite games.
- Shout and s-shout.
- Send and receive messages to people who are not logged in.
- Request adjudications in abandoned games.
- The services of ICC’s computer detection group, to ensure you don’t
have to play against computer cheaters.
|
Believe me, I’ve played at most of the ‘free’ sites
and I can tell you that in 90% of them you will get frustrated, upset,
and/or disappointed. Here are a few Real-Life scenarios that I experienced
at several ‘free sites’:
|
A USCF rated opponent of under 1000 totally trounced everyone in a tournament.
Even though this kid had a USCF rating around 990, his online rating at
the chessclub was over 2500! (That means he’s using a chess program!)
L
After beating an opponent he kept sending me ‘hate tells’. He wasobviously
a sore loser. L
At one site the chessboard was so small and ugly! I couldn’t concentrate
on the position.
|
| The ICC uses a special program called BLITZIN which
is easy to use but offers so many cool features it would take pages to
cover. But what’s important to me is that when I’m playing in a tournament
at ICC I know that my opponents have to use the same interface… and that
means that BLITZIN is checking everyones games to make sure that I’m not
playing against a computer program! This is pretty important to me,
and I believe that the ICC has the highest success rate of eliminating
computer cheaters. I’ve also noticed that players at ICC are usually pretty
repectful; if they weren’t BLITZIN gives me the opportunity to type ‘CENSOR
<playername>’, which would disallow them to send me any messages or
tells. J |
| So, we have a web site that has solved 95% of the
problems of playing chess on the Internet. And while I encourage
everyone to check out the sites for themselves… if time means anything
to you then go with my personal recommendation and check out the Internet
Chess Club. Speaking of time, I see that TIME magazine even
recommended the ICC in their March 20th issue (page 102). So if TIME
magazine and USCF both recommend the ICC and you want to play online, what
are you waiting for? Get some practice for your next MICHIGAN OTB tournament! |
