Two popular chess servers

I am going to discuss about two popular chess servers, chess.com and FICS. I have played in both and i feel, it's much less competitive in chess.com than in FICS. A person with 1600 rating in chess.com is equivalent to 1200 in FICS. Also a lot of LOLs playing in chess.com with higher ratings making silly errors (not really expected of a person having that rating)

What's your opinion? Have you'll tried in these two chess servers? I rate FICS an ideal place for a tough battle, what do you'll say?

Concur with Predator, but I am biased because I have never played on FICS. I can't even say that I know what it is.

Love your avatar PP.

I have the most experience with FICS and ICC. FICS is free, so I use it for that reason, even though ICC is better (tons of IM/GM, lots of videos and such). ICC kept raising their prices, and didnt' seem to be upgrading their servers or anything (still at ICC, last time I was there, at 230am EST every day things would slow down to a crawl as they did server upkeep, it's like they are in 1996).

Chess.com I don't like the interface very much, sort of amateurish, the seek window isn't as intuitive and useful. People there tend to be less serious about chess too. Lots of dilettantes.

The people I encounter at chess.com seem to be quite serious about their chess... but like any large group in a free environment, you get a huge range of people, lots of idiots, lots of the mediocre and lots of great people!

It's a bit unfair to compare a free environment to a charged one though... of course ICC would have better behaved people since everyone there has to pay, so they value their membership. Lots of the idiots on chess.com are those that are 'free members'. If they had to pay for their membership perhaps they would value it more and behave better ;-)

Yes, i agree with BlueDevilKnight. BorgQueen you are correct about what you said, and the worst thing is when people make you wait for 10 minutes, because the next move they are loosing, and they either disconnect or make you wait.

One more disadvantage of chess.com is that they don't support chess variants. FICS supports almost all.

kingsmasher1 wrote:...the worst thing is when people make you wait for 10 minutes, because the next move they are loosing, and they either disconnect or make you wait...

Doesn't that happen everywhere though? Cheats and the pigheaded are everywhere on the Internet!

I agree you BorgQueen

The best server is the OTB one though, by far!

OTB people are so much better behaved, you find very little cheating going on, variants are supported and the face to face component is makes for a good atmosphere!

OTB? You mean the "On the Board" chess ? But it's not a server. I agree it is the best form of chess for which there is no substitute.

Yeah, otb = over the board :-)