I very much like chess.com’s approach to disconnects – they give it a minute to reconnect, but one’s clock keeps running. This is one thing I find very irritating on playchess – if one’s net connection is the slightest bit unstable (and the opponent is alert), a few seconds blip can cost the game. Also on playchess, when you don’t call a disconnect, the opponent gets his time back.
However, I do find playchess’s user interface much more customizable and the performance a bit snappier.
I prefer standard game-5 blitz and the wait for a game is usually much shorter on chess.com (I assume that’s just a matter of membership numbers).
My impression is that cheating is less common on chess.com, but I can’t really document this.
Anybody else have likes, dislikes on these and other sites?
3 2 is very nice on chess.com. Agree that cheating on chess.com seems less frequent than (say) on ICC circa 2010. But at my low blitz level, I don’t really see much blatant online cheating on any site anymore.
When I am killing time on the iPhone, I find myself playing at chess.com more frequently than on ICC. I do occasionally lose games on chess.com via mobile drops.
I have only played a handful of games on playchess, so can’t speak to that. Chess24 (where I played 5 0 last night after the debate), ICC (still a great place), and lichess (the price is right, and I hear great things about it) all deserve to be included in this discussion.
You get different crowds at different times of day: besides US, Russia, & Western Europe, lots of players from Brazil, Poland, Iran, China, India, Australia on chess.com. Not as many Filipino or Eastern European players (ex-Poland) as I’d expect.
I have played Vasiukov several times in the ICC 5 0 pool!
Totally agree. It would be nice to see some sort of review matrix of all the major online playing sites prepared by someone knowledgeable from both a technical and a chess perspective.
Hmmmm. Just lost two games on playchess by the mysterious disconnect, neither even out of the opening. I’m thinking I’m about done with that site. The problem may well be in my own internet connection (through a cable modem), but chess.com handles it so much more gracefully.