RHP has the best forums; GameKnot the best amenities for non-paying members; ChessWorld is the best chess playing site--best boards, most features, strongest players (but free memberships are more limited than other sites).
Net-chess is excellent, aside from the extreme rating inflation. It is free and carries no advertising.
Originally posted by buddy2You're absolutely right in that respect. Their forums are truly boring. In fact, they disabled their general forum, saying such a forum might leave them with liability problems. Like you said..."paranoid supervision."
The actual chessplaying side of gameknot is good. But their forums are bland to the point of boring, because of paranoid supervision.
I was actually banned for a month from forums because my comment was "off topic." On RHP the topics meander around, sometimes on topic, sometimes off, and that makes it interesting. My comment was harmless. If i remember correctly, it was something about someone can't be all bad because he liked cats and boom! I was off. I'm very careful about profanity and insulting people, etc, and I was offended by this so I erased Gameknot from my favorites and never played there again (even tho I paid.)
chessgames.com is a good site... I don't think it has email chess like RHP, but it's interesting reading... they have forums on individual players (and there are literally hundreds of players i.e. Grandmasters past and present as well as IMs, who have their own pages where you can post comments...
One thing that's neat about that site is if you go to Susan Polgar's page, for example, you will find she actually takes part in the discussions... same thing with Raymond Keene... people can ask these great players questions, and they will usually respond... it's cool.
Not only can you involve yourself in a discussion about a particular player, but when you look up a player, you will find a database of all of their known, recorded games... you can go to the games themselves and find that even the individual games have forums...
Chessworld.net (aka letsplaychess.com) is a good playing site, with forums on all topics, chess and otherwise... I think it's about $20 /year for full membership...
Originally posted by TheBloopOnly problem with chessgames is that their database can be found lacking quite often. They have a database of 317,000 games according to their frontpage. I have 1.8 million on my home computer.
chessgames.com is a good site... I don't think it has email chess like RHP, but it's interesting reading... they have forums on individual players (and there are literally hundreds of players i.e. Grandmasters past and present as well as IMs, who have their own pages where you can post comments...
One thing that's neat about that site is if you go ...[text shortened]... on all topics, chess and otherwise... I think it's about $20 /year for full membership...
What about a site called SeanceChess.com where you could play as many deceased players as you like (for a fee, of course). On the other end would be spiritualist chess players who could get in touch with players from the other world and get their responses. You could play Paul Morphy and see how he would do against the Pirc or play the English Attack against Capablanca. Neat idea. I wonder how many spiritualist/chessplayers there are out there?
Originally posted by XanthosNZYes actually you're right..good point...
Only problem with chessgames is that their database can be found lacking quite often. They have a database of 317,000 games according to their frontpage. I have 1.8 million on my home computer.
I was incorrect when I wrote that they had all of the players' known games in their database... I didn't realize they had only 317,000... obviously that's not even close to a complete set...
I do like following the discussions there though...not only the discussions on the players themselves, but the forums on individual games... they can get pretty interesting... but you're right, Xan, it's not, by any means, the place to get a complete history on a player...
Besides the Capablanca vs Alekhine arguments, which are always fun to read, one interesting forum I saw referred to the 1910 Lasker/Schlechter match for the world title... I've always read that after Schlecther won one of the games during their 10 game match, all he needed to do was draw the 10th game, and win the world title by a 1-0 score... of course, he obtained a winning position, played for the win, and ultimately lost the 10th game, thus drawing the match...
Now, there appears to be some evidence that Schlechter HAD to win the match by 2 points in order to take the title... which explains his behavior in the final game...
One other thing about Schlechter... in one of his games, Lasker was playing White... Lasker was late for the game and the judge started Lasker's clock... Lasker was 18 minutes late, and during the wait, Schlechter went to another room, and asked to be informed when Lasker made his first move... so Lasker shows up, makes a move, but 18 minutes are gone on his clock...
Schlechter, when informed Lasker made his first move, looked at his pocketwatch and thanked the informant... Schlechter let 18 minutes go by before showing up and making HIS opening move... he didn't want to take "unfair" advantage of Lasker's tardiness.
Incredible! Can you imagine anyone doing that today?