#Is chessbase free to play chess for free#

The two Granddaddies of commercial chess servers are undoubtedly ICC (Internet Chess Club) and Both have their supporters and both have a lot to offer in terms of functions and content.

Such servers generally required a yearly fee, but then offer many more features and much more content than their free counterparts. Ultimately of course, this lead to commercial chess servers services that you had to pay for, but could offer so much more functionality and sophistication than the free to play servers - often using a custom-made dedicated Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the purpose. Chess on the Internet had finally grown up, all you did was log on to the Internet, and you could get a game with someone any time of day or night, anywhere in the world.

#Is chessbase free to play chess for free#

The final and logical step came in the form of huge web-based chess servers like Yahoo chess, where literally thousands of people could play for free using a basic javascript interface that ran in your web browser. Originally, you could play over early internet services like IRC (Internet Relay Chat) or Telnet, then commercial chess programs offered online aspects to their software, so you could - with the aid of the chess program and a dial-up modem (I sometimes make beeping noises when I log in to my wireless broadband just out of nostalgia) enter into online play against other humans in REAL TIME over a dedicated chess server.

And that relies on you finding someone willing to agree to play such a game in the first place.īut then, from out of the wilderness came The Internet (with capitals) a vast global technology network, the “Information Super-Highway” and it appeared to some as though it was designed with chess in mind. It can prove tricky to find the enthusiasm for a game that may not get into the middlegame for several months. At this rate, moves take days, and whole games could last years. And when you consider that clubs generally meet maybe once a week - and may have matches or other events already scheduled to take place, it can take a little while to become a regular playing part of even a friendly welcoming club.Īnother option was to take up postal (sometimes called “correspondence”) chess, sending and receiving the moves via the postal service - perhaps using specially printed postcards or windowed envelopes. Unfriendly clubs can put newcomers off within minutes, despite the fact that clubs need a regular stream of new players and beginners coming through to survive, you would be surprised how many times I’ve turned up to a club, finally got someone to play against, only for them to crush me two or three times in a row, then grunt and move on. But the quality (and friendliness) varies enormously, (believe me). You could join a chess club – if there was one local to you. Back in the dark, dark days when the internet was a mere stripling, used mainly by the government and the military and the World Wide Web was something you only heard about on the news or “Tomorrow’s World” style technology programs there were only a few ways to get a good game of chess. This entry was posted in Uncategorized by admin. The only problem of chessbase, if it could be considered a problem, is the fact that almost all of the functions of the website are paid, which limits the number of people who sometimes just don’t want to pay in order to play chess online. Quite often the games of the greatest players are broadcast online accompanied with a commentary by a famous grandmaster, which makes the whole thing even more interesting.

What makes chessbase really worth using, apart from the fact that it is a chess community where thousands of chess players play every day, is the live broadcasts of big and not so chess tournaments. In chessbase, every day you can take part in a number of chess tournaments where according to the Swiss system hundreds of chess players at different levels can participate. It sounds fast, right? A chess online game with a time control 0+3, for example, is really extreme. There are even better options for chess online in which in order to end a game the chess player has no time, even a second, and the only thing he can count on is the increase added for each of his moves. The games that are usually played online are the blitz games of five minutes and some of the most popular are the fast games of 1 minute for every participant to end the game. In chessbase you can find at any time more than 2000 chess players with whom you can play a game of chess online. Chessbase is probably the biggest platform for chess online and the place which is much bigger than a common platform for chess online.