And the winner is…

by Tuirgin on Apr.01, 2009, under Chess

For the last couple weeks I’ve been playing at both Chess.com and SchemingMind and I’ve been trying to figure out which site is going to give me the biggest returns on my investment of time and money. I also tried out LetsPlayChess, and just today RedHotPawn and GameKnot. I’m sure each has its devotees, and perhaps they all have some stand-out feature. As I’ve already discussed I like SchemingMind’s simplicity, lack of distraction, and the ratio of its affordability to feature set. LetsPlayChess underwhelmed me as being rather an old interface and not very clean, though the community seemed nice. GameKnot and RHP—well, I really didn’t spend long enough with them to give them a fair evaluation, because the reality is I kept finding myself coming back to Chess.com and liking it. The one oddity I kept coming across both on RHP and across the web was the teeth gnashing certain members of RHP were doing in respect to GameKnot. I don’t have any clue what the history is there, but someone’s cheerios got pissed on somewhere at some point. So… the winner of my coin is Chess.com. I’ll be taking on more games and get into some tourneys there. I’d still like to do some standard games on FICS, but my time is just too unpredictable right now. If anyone wants to friend me at Chess.com, my nickname is “Tuirgin”. I’ll still be around SchemingMind and will still accept matches there. But the bottom line is I like the added features of Chess.com. Maybe I’ll see you there!

Update: Okay, okay, call me fickle but I can’t decide between them, so I’m fully embracing both Chess.com and SchemingMind. I’ve already got a dozen games going at SchemingMind and have joined the Chess Improvement Club over there. My only question is, with all this playing, when am I going to find time to study the game?

:chess sites

10 Comments for this entry

blunderprone
April 1st, 2009 on 8:34 pm
oh and BTW.. I mirror my “original” blog at chess.com as well. http://blog.chess.com/Blunderprone I reach a larger reader base and currently got ranked int eh top 10 bloggers of that site

Reply
- Tuirgin
  April 1st, 2009 on 8:50 pm
  Does Chess.com let you import RSS feeds, or is there some other way of automating it? If so, I’d probably do the same thing. The more people I can meet to help keep me going along this path the better.
  
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Chris L
April 2nd, 2009 on 12:39 am
The XFCC feature is one of the things that tips the scale towards Scheming Mind. I’m starting to really appreciate SCID (despite owning chess assistant and hugebase)… my biggest problem is getting past the block that this free piece of software, with an interface that takes some getting used to, can actually do so much. And the developers are very responsive… where CA is at the end of its life (according to the developers) and all their time is going into the Rybka Aquarium product.

And the extreme friendliness of everyone I’ve met and/or played against at SM bests them all. Chess.com has a lot MORE, and is well worth the $$ they charge, but I find some things about the interface annoying, some of the admins are rude and there’s a lot of noise. Still, we are fortunate to have so many good choices!

Your posts are interesting because so many mirror my experience.

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- Tuirgin
  April 2nd, 2009 on 1:07 am
  Do you find yourself having any problems with the Xfcc client functionality in SCID? It seemed pretty buggy when I was using it. If I did everything in a certain order, all was good with the universe, but if I fumbled with the controls at all, or forgot to open the correspondence database prior to retrieving the games, I’d end up totally locked up.
  
  I should probably test the features on Windows and Linux to see if it’s an OS X specific quirk.
  
  CA feels like it’s been end of life for a long time. When I bought my copy in 2006 or 2007 it already felt aged, like a hanger-on from the Windows 98 days, practically. But ChessBase is just too expensive and it has it’s own problems. Not to mention SCID is cross-platform, and CA will run on Linux and OS X under Wine.
  
  Aquarium is pretty nice for what it does. I still find apps made with the ribbon style UI are actually less intuitive to use than traditional, admittedly inefficient, menus (but that’s why you have keyboard shortcuts, right?). And it’s database functionality is seriously lacking. One main database and one reference database is all you can have open at the same time???
  
  I guess the bottom line is that there is no home run for chess software. SCID is amazing for the money. there’s a few things it does easily that I’ve never figured out in Chessbase or CA — how do you do position searches that are only concerned with pawn structure in those db’s?
  
  Ah — I like your blog. Will have to spend some time with it after some sleep. I was obsessed with literature and art long before chess, though more poetaster than bard these days. I’ve sent a friend request for LibraryThing, too.
  
  Finally — what’s your nickname on SchemingMind? I’ll add you as a friend if you’re willing.
  
  Reply
  - Chris L
    April 2nd, 2009 on 10:12 am
    I haven’t had any problems with the CC features in SCID so far, though there were some quirks. The developer of the CC features (Alexander Wagner) is also active on Scheming Mind and through that I joined the mailing list and some of my suggestions will be in a new release, such as auto-opening the correspondence db when you start to play…
    
    I also agree about CA… I was just sharing the news that it is actually no longer being actively developed as opposed to the interface just looking like it isn’t I can’t afford to spend the kind of money chessbase wants– particularly at my patzer level!–and I haven’t really messed with Aquarium. Though I have been following things on the Rybka forums and the word there is they will slowly be adding most CA features into Aquarium
    
    Reading your blog is like finding a doppelganger in some ways– some of the same topics (chess, art, literature– my former, retired art/writing blog is at http://cosmopoetica.com/blog/. I do educational technology geekery for a living, so I tuned into the overtones of geek in some of your posts!
    
    I’m ‘fncll’ across the web (Twitter, LibraryThing, etc), except at SM, where I am ‘wyb’ … I just added you on Last.FM — why am I not surprised we have a high musical ‘compatibility’ rating?
    
    Reply
    - Tuirgin
      April 2nd, 2009 on 10:51 am
      I think I’ve gotten some of my problems with the corr features of SCID worked out, but I’m still having issues with the way comments work. I’ll try it from a virtual machine running linux or windows to see if the problem follows me.
      
      I saw that bit about Aquarium taking on more CA features. I like Aquarium, and it’s priced right if you don’t need the latest greatest Deep Rybka. The i-book annotation and documentation features of Aquarium are nice. I’ll be interested to see where development goes with it.
      
      I used to blog about art, religion and culture, but kinda withdrew from the whole public forum for a few years. I tend to be quieter on those subjects these days for a variety of reasons. And I certainly never got the kind of response from my “elitist snobbery” days that I’m getting from my foray into chess improvement. It seems like a very active little niche of the world, and it’s encouraging. I’m enjoying it. I really had no idea so many people were interested in chess blogs—my friends and family certainly aren’t!
      
      And I’m “Tuirgin” everywhere except on XBOX Live where they said that “Tuirgin” was inappropriate for some baffling reason. So over there I’m “Aimergin”.
      
      It was pretty late when I looked at your Last.fm profile last night. I saw White Stripes and a couple others I listen to—not surprised at all!
      
      Reply
chesstiger
April 2nd, 2009 on 5:14 am
For me gameknot got better points then chess.com . So I guess different persons have different tastes. And probably different (chess) needs aswell.

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- Tuirgin
  April 2nd, 2009 on 8:12 am
  I liked what I saw of GameKnot, but having access from my mobile is important to me. If it weren’t for that I’d probably have spent longer deciding. Still, it’s a bit of a moving target with me. I may find after using Chess.com for a few months that it isn’t for me. We’ll see. The real question, I think is how the tournaments go—are the matches interesting, what are the people like, am I benefiting my game, etc.
  
  Reply
Chris L
April 2nd, 2009 on 10:15 am
Oh, one other thing– you might try a game with someone from the Chess Improvement Club at SM — I’m finding mine pretty informative so far. I’d like to find more higher-rated players willing to play a training/learning game!

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- Tuirgin
  April 2nd, 2009 on 10:51 am
  Thanks for the suggestion—I’ll definitely check it out.
  
  Reply