Choosing an Online Chess Site: ICC
October 4, 2010
Tags: Learning Chess Articles, Teaching Chess Articles
Written by guest author Jason Repa for Wholesale Chess
In the early days of the public internet, there were few choices for those seeking to play chess in cyber space. On top of this, you had to contend with slow response times, crude graphics, and a limited number of prospective opponents. Live, or what is referred to in chess vernacular as over-the-board (otb) chess, was still very much alive and well as many chess aficionados didn’t want to make such concessions.
Today there are many dozens, if not hundreds, of chess servers, sometimes with tens of thousands of users logged on at once, offering everything from turn-based email chess, in which players may take days, or even weeks, to make a single move, to nerve-wracking bullet chess, where all of your moves must be made within a minute or two. In addition to that, some sites also offer chess variants in which the rules and objectives of normal chess are modified in order to provide a refreshing new challenge whilst the general flavour of classical chess is still present. There is a wide variety of offerings and the quality of the interface functionality and resolution at some servers is so high that many players have opted for online chess instead of attending in person at their local club. At least in North America, attendance at tournaments has dropped almost across the board, compared to the days just prior to online play.
For the real time servers, my personal pick is ICC.
ICC has been around the longest and it shows. They charge about $70 USD for a year membership, but offer a 2 week free trial. When first becoming a member at ICC, you are prompted to download their client software which enables you to play chess on their servers. You may chose between a fully-featured graphical client, named Dasher, and their latest incarnation of telnet client, named Blitzin. The telnet client is less user-friendly but enables advanced users to perform quicker command inputs. Both clients provide customizable chess boards which are at a resolution that is easy on the eyes. ICC provides a rich community experience with everything from popular chat rooms, categorized by nation or interest, to tournaments and chess training lectures, as well as their popular ChessFM broadcast which features Grandmaster colour commentary and analysis during major international tournaments and matches, along with chess trivia where prizes are awarded. They also host the largest number of chess variants, such as shuffle chess, loser’s chess, atomic, three-checks, etc, for those who want a change from classical chess. These variants can be very addicting and now have a large following of regular players.
My only criticism of ICC is their lack of coordination with an offline chess client for offline study and analysis, such as is the case with Playchess.com and their Chessbase and Fritz software. Non computer savvy folks might find it daunting to have to locate then import their ICC games into a database.
More reviews from Jason: Playchess.com and Yahoo Chess.
Jason Repa is a CFC rated national chess expert and part-time chess coach from Winnipeg, Canada. He has been a tournament chess player since 1995 and has been teaching chess since 2002. He can be reached at jasonrepa @ hotmail.com
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of Wholesale Chess. We welcome open discussion on all aspects of chess on the Wholesale Chess Blog. If you would like to be a guest author on our blog, please contact us at marketing@wholesalechess.com.
