Originally posted by Knight SquareGameKnot plays okay for free (if you don't mind pop-ups, invasive ads, and a small board). The forums are anemic and hard to find, but sometimes offer quality. The paid memberships are the highest priced available, and the administrator is paranoid. They booted me without explanation, although it's likely because of some comments I made in the forums. Don't waste your time there, they are likely to fold in the nest few years.
Well, I've been on Gameknot and it plays well, just like redhotpawn.com does. But Gameknot is not as great as redhotpawn is.
RHP has the best forums, and is excellent for quality play. The RHP board is among the best. RHP is weakest in its database/game download features. I contibuted a comprehensive explanation of RHP's features relative to other sites in Thread 38770.
Last week I revised my site reviews at http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/wulebgr/corr.htm
See, in particular, the comparisons at http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/wulebgr/comp.htm
My top three sites are currently ChessWorld, RHP, and QueenAlice. My research goes on, but ChessWorld and RHP keep getting better, and the last few new sites I've examined are hardly worth mention. QA has an excellent board, multiround tournaments, and is a nice free site. Net-Chess remains a good free site, but the board is terribly small.
Yea, the size of the boards are an issue. You'd think the designers would take eyesight into consideration. Especially when some players are working off of already small screens. I enjoy FICS because i use Babbaschess interface which allows some nice free downloadable chess sets. The only thing about Babbas is the lag time. Playing blitz, you don't really know how much time your opponent has left. When i played a 2/12 game the other night, my opponent got an extra five minutes! Actually he didn't, but i had to wait five minutes for his move. In blitz, that's annoying. Apparently, this is one of the most popular topics: internet sites. RHP people are constantly on the lookout for something interesting online. Nice to know that Wulebgr is scoping everything out. I never heard of Queenalice before. I'll have to look that one up.l
Originally posted by buddy2With Babas at FICS, I can add laggers to my noplay list. It grows quite long.
Yea, the size of the boards are an issue. You'd think the designers would take eyesight into consideration. Especially when some players are working off of already small screens. I enjoy FICS because i use Babbaschess interface which allows some nice free downloadable chess sets. The only thing about Babbas is the lag time. Playing blitz, you don't reall ...[text shortened]... oping everything out. I never heard of Queenalice before. I'll have to look that one up.l