On-line Chess - Part 1.18 - Play for free

The most famous chess web sites hardly allow a player to play for free (unless you are a very famous chess player, in that case you are very welcome to join). Important chess servers’ access is not free but you can try for free for one week only. Others require a free registration with limited features and a premium registration with prices per month, 3 months, 6 months and per year. Premium memberships are full options in this case but there is a saving for long term registration.

Figure 14 – http://www.chesscube.com premium membership fees


Another policy is to have different premium memberships from the lowest level one with some features only to the highest level with full features.

Figure 15 – http://www.gameknot.com premium membership fees


Usually free registration limitations are on

• the number of games playable at the same time or in a day, 
• the possibility to access tournaments, 
• the number of game archived is limited, 
• computer analysis is not allowed, 
• play in teams is not allowed, 
• very basic statistics, colors and pieces customization are not allowed, just to mention a few.

Other providers who ask money as well to all the members offer an “exploration” mode in which the user can play for free for a limited amount of time or games. Expired this period they are invited to pay the fee for the next games.
Talking about money, some web sites allow playing with money (both symbolic and real). I understand that could be attractive for someone but I believe playing a game gives other immaterial earnings.

On-line Chess - Part 1.17 - Other stuff

Playing chess on-line attracts several people, from the field and not. So it is not surprising that a web site providing the possibility to play has a store of chess material (boards, chess pieces, chess clocks, magazines, books, training material like videos, collection of games and so on). Another interesting feature to attract people mad of chess is chess puzzles. You are asked to solve the problem of the day typically. Sometimes the web site holds news from the chess world, tournaments, top players events, chess social events or international events with video, photos and articles. What about people who are not close to chess world? They want to find only an opponent to defeat or to chat with, the rest is useless…but is nice to have for the chess community.

On-line Chess - Part 1.16 - Population

It is very annoying to log-in, create a game and wait plenty of time because no one else in connected. Some popular web sites are full of people ready to play so that you don’t have to wait more that few second to find an opponent. Some other is completely unknown or less popular and the risk is to waste your time. There are some interesting web sites still unknown that are worth playing at, so I don’t want to give the advice to leave them empty. On the contrary I want to foster visiting those web sites, try and let them take off, especially if they are free!

On-line Chess - Part 1.15 - Graphics

Beauty is a subjective parameter during the evaluation of a web site. What does it mean? When you play chess at home or in a chess club it doesn’t matter if the board is made of cardboard and the pieces are made of plastic. What’s really matter is the game, the battle and who will win. Is it really true? If you have the chance to chose between a cardboard chess board and a wooden board with sheesham chessmen, which one will you chose? Now, back to the on-line chess. There are a lot of chess pieces pictures on the web and the game providers let their user to choose between different styles, colors and dimension of both sets and board squares. Sometimes the number of possibilities is limited if the subscription is free while if you pay for a premium subscription the choice is greater.

Figure 13 - Graphic interface Come2Play from www.come2play.com

Chessboard and sets are not the only graphic parameter to judge. Font is another parameter. Sometimes the font is too small or the text components in the web page are too close, or on the page there are fonts of different kind. If the web page contains too much information with small font together with bigger and different font, it could be difficult to find the information you need.

Anyway the beauty is subjective. Someone prefers simplicity: few things but very good.