I play on ICC, Playchess.com, and FICS. Playing blitz is a good way of balancing your game with RHP. For some reason FICS has the strongest players. It is a free site, and with the Babbas interface (also free) looks just as good as ICC. It doesn't have as much bells and whistles as Playchess, but, after all, who wants to know the outside temperature while you play. Now, i may be wrong, but the reason i call it the strongest site is because my rating there is much lower than ICC or Playchess (pretty much equal) by about 250 points. This would logically mean that the playing population is much stronger (discounting engine use of course). Has anybody played on FICS and ICC or Playchess has found this to be true also? The only drawback is that FICS has the fewest players, and you're more likely to play the same person several times.

Originally posted by buddy2
I play on ICC, Playchess.com, and FICS. Playing blitz is a good way of balancing your game with RHP. For some reason FICS has the strongest players. It is a free site, and with the Babbas interface (also free) looks just as good as ICC. It doesn't have as much bells and whistles as Playchess, but, after all, who wants to know the outside temperature while ...[text shortened]... hat FICS has the fewest players, and you're more likely to play the same person several times.

Originally posted by o0obruceleeo0o
I'm not sure why, but it seems that most people's FICS blitz rating is about 250-300 pts lower than their FICS standard rating (which is about = to my rating at the other sites I play at)..

Yea, i tried uchess some time ago and the program was doing peculiar things. Why is it any better than FICS?

Originally posted by LanndonKane
If there is one good thing about uchess, its that its good for blitz.

and its better than FICS at blitz.

Originally posted by o0obruceleeo0o
I'm not sure why, but it seems that most people's FICS blitz rating is about 250-300 pts lower than their FICS standard rating (which is about = to my rating at the other sites I play at)..

Which big names play blitz at FICS, Playchess regularly sees the likes of Adams, Short, Radjabov, Nakamura, Yasser. etc etc, with quite a few players who are playing around their level but wont give real names.

FICS is good because it's free, and the BabasChess GUI is almost as good as blitzen, but the site is no where near as good as ICC or playchess.

My noplay list (players that lag--often 30 sec over a 180 sec game) has grown quite long.

Originally posted by buddy2
Yea, i tried uchess some time ago and the program was doing peculiar things. Why is it any better than FICS?

Originally posted by LanndonKane
I like just like the simplicity of uchess, and it's far easier to catch a fast game (instead of opening up an interface or waiting for java applet after java applet to load.)