Anyone else playing chess beside Umfi here?

[UtwigMU]

Recently I've gotten back into chess. Seeing Nakamura play again live on chess.com and having watched US Championship and blitz challenge with Kasparov really pulled me in. On top of that I've found lots of great Youtube chess channels (4/5 of them are in Russian though). I've started playing rapid tournaments on chess.com on weekend seeing I make no progress playing 5min blitz games. The quality of game and pleasure is far greater in slower game.

I still suck. Best win was against 1592 in rapid. I've won one tournament and placed 3d in two (+3-2=0) And my rating in blitz sucks so I play with unimaginative patzers where I do the same thing and then either it becomes boring when they don't resign or I loose on time etc...

[Umfriend]

I've never tried chess.com, I am with playchess.com... Currently about 1400 rating but that really moves between 1350 and 1700.

Classic rating with our national federation is 1808 atm.

I friggin' love you avatar!

[VJ]

I used to play a bit at chess, but now that is already a long time ago. Still have one of those dedicated chess computers with a board, pressure sensors on each square and leds to indicate the coordinates for the move the computer does. It plays quite well on harder levels but takes longer to think. But for a nearly 30-year old device...

I'm more into tactical boardgames, like Agricola or Firefly...

[UtwigMU]

Here is chess.com vs playchess.com

Chess.com is web based but client is as good as playchess.com except for the one click entry and clocks are on each side of the board (on plachess they are together). Premoves, etc... work.
Also on chess.com you can have nickname and rating for free, on playchess you can only play as guests for free. I don't like this as in Cafe you mayb play a total patzer or a super GM without knowing which makes games not so interesting. They also transmit games from important events and you can kibitz, comment... Also I think lately more players (especially Nakamura) play on chess.com now. They also stage events. Now there is a blitz match online between Caruana and Vachier-Lagrave. I was looking at chess.com, playchess.com and ICC.

Now if you get paid membership you get more tournaments per week (free only 3/week), better computer analysis (free analysis is nearly useless as you don't see some lines and for some moves it's not deep enough), more or unlimited tactics and lessons. You also have entire history of games in archive and you can download everything as pgn to analyze in your program. Also if you pay there are no adds.

There is Android (don't know about iOS since I don't use it) client for chess.com and if I ever switch to Linux - well the playchess client is really nice but only some versions work in wine which is not optimal. Web client works in all modern browsers and works well.

I'm a cheapskate so I'm using free Kvetka (Windows) with opensource stockfish (best engine at the moment) to analyze games and explore lines. But to see where you've blundered or made inaccuracy built in analysis is good. Kvetka supports chessbase format - you just open my internet games cbh and select game to start continuous engine analysis.

Basically if you want to have nickname and rating and play, you get that for free on chess.com. Paid features are only perks on top of that. I did get paid membership because I want to play rapid and longer and tournaments are great way to do that (most games are 1-5 minutes) though people play 30 and 60 also. Free 3/tournaments a week is not enough for me plus I like unlimited tactics.

Some years ago I went to local chess club but they said they only play blitz once a week which for me is pointless. If I would go somewhere to play over board I'd like to play longer time controls.

[Umfriend]

Well, for me, Playchess is free. I got a free subscription when I purchased one of the older Fritzes and it is still going. But I coulc try chess.com someday I guess when I have the time (never been so busy in my life FCOL).

At my club, we play 36/1.5hrs + 15 mins. We do blitz once a year at year end for our blitz championship and we do a rapid tournament (30 mins pppg) over five Friday evenings. I still like over the board way way better, certainly for longer but also for blitz.

I actually never really use engines. For blunder checks, yeah, but not for a better understanding of the position or anything. For me, talking and analysing with others works way way better. I also dislike the fact that with engines, one can never actually make a GOOD move. Only bad (or normals, i.e., not-bad) moves. Objectively speaking the engine is right on that but it just does not sit well with me.

[UtwigMU]

I agree on engines. Engine can tell you a move is better than the other but cannot explain why. You need better positional understanding to know why one move is better than the other and lately I'm more focusing on the latter than on flashy tactics.