13 May 2008

Bookmark Purge

It's time to get rid of some bookmarks that I no longer use, but perhaps someone else wants them.

The engine at Accoona keeps learning, or so they say, but I dislike the inability to save a game if I play a good one against it. The board is also too small.

I enjoy turn-based chess (a form of correspondence). Not all sites offering this sort of play are equal, however. ChessHere.com is good, but not top class.

Chess Mail is another turn-based site that lacks the quality to put it in the same league as ChessWorld.

ChessLive
has morphed more often than most insects, and the quality has improved ever so slightly. It has never been a bad place to play, but it has never been worth the cost either, except when they offered free accounts to USCF members. Internet Chess Club acquired World Chess Network and Chess Live, merged them into World Chess Live, but keeps them separate from ICC. As they share the same software, it becomes difficult to maintain accounts at both ICC and World Chess Live. In any case, ICC is no longer the leader it was a few years ago. Playchess has taken the lead while the ICC administrators have focused on corporate growth more than chess site improvement.

2 comments:

  1. When was the last time you tried ICC?

    http://www.chessclub.com/tryicc/

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  2. I had a six month membership at ICC April to October 2007, and currently have a six month membership at World Chess Live. Playchess seems better than ICC, but also sort of costs less. That is, as long as I buy one new chess engine per year, the membership to Playchess is included. Rybka is next.

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