Why play turn-based?

yah man, i dont understand why anyone would take a month to play a game of chess.  apparently a lot of people like it though...(???)

i usually set my time controls for 15/10 on live...most my games are done in under 20 minutes.

live is the only way to play whether online or over the board.  decision making in the moment is what shapes a true competitor.

just my thoughts,

-Sensuinaga

There isn't much of an endgame in Live < 30. Blitz is fun but it is more like a twitch game.

People's ratings may be higher playing correspondence, but people are likely to play better with time to think anyway. I don't see how any of it matters. You're still playing people on a level playing field.

I'm pretty sure that the gap between my level of playing live, quickly, and playing with more time is larger than average. I'm no good in an exam situation either. Whenever I feel rushed I don't think clearly. If I played live I'd be playing against myself as much as anything. I'd let myself down and get pretty disheartened probably.

So I enjoy correspondence and as I said previously, why should it bother you how people enjoy paying chess?

I'd better stop playing then. Thanks for pointing it out. Do you have any other directives for us? I might be living my whole life incorrectly! :-/

I'm better at live.  I tend to forget what my plan is in turn based, but I think it's good practice to look at a situation and try to figure out what the best move is if you can't remember the purpose of your last move. 

That's why there's a "notes" area for you to store your ideas. And I only have a few games going at a time, anyway, so it's easier to keep track. In the past, I've gotten too many turn based games going and ended up getting them confused and forgetting things. Now I limit it to 5 or 6 at a time.

--Fromper

People's ratings may be higher playing correspondence, but people are likely to play better with time to think anyway. I don't see how any of it matters. You're still playing people on a level playing field.

* I have some doubts about this. All right, both sides will have 3 days per move but one side might have the time to actually spend 3 days thinking on a move while the other side might be spending half a minute on a move. Also, correct me if I am wrong in thinking that the side with a larger library and better electronic databases will have a large, if not decisive advantage.

I find turn-based chess to be much more EXCITING chess because the concepts are often much deeper than live or over-the-board chess. The strategic ideas are more profound, the tactics more complex, the precalculated variations longer, and the extraordinary discoveries and surprises frequent. For me, this is the REAL CHESS. 

 Maybe above 2500, but those guys, if they are for real, would already have serious databases. I doubt it has much effect around us patzers lower than that . I'm not sure though. My confused 50 cents.

Well I am pretty sure that if I played the Evans Gambit or the Sicilian Dragon against someone who has a few good books on it and can consult them during the game I know what the outcome would be. It might not be so in some more positional games though.

I agree. I don't think the players I've been playing are using huge databases to plot every move. I don't personally use them. I don't even own them.

One thing I would say is that the rules could be made clearer. I downloaded the chess.com app onto my iphone and started playing without having any idea what the rules were. I assumed, correctly it seems, that it's the same as correspondence chess generally, but anyone not knowing those rules would be clueless.

The rules are here on the web site. It's been a while since I looked, but I thought they were pretty clear when I started. Books and db's are ok. Engines are not.

--Fromper

Sorry, I meant the rules should be more visible to newcomers. I downloaded the app onto my iphone and started playing. No rules are mentioned.

You're right, the one with the book would probably have an advantage, with everything else being equal. I was rather talking about the difference between a regular internet database (with 3.5 millions) against a serious database + several digital opening books (like chessbase ctg format) + books including detailed analysis + some other various statistics for openings. That still makes a difference of course, but I doubt it would be decisive in a significant percentage of games.

Well, in order to play, you have to sign up for an account. Stating that you have read the rules is part of the account sign up process. That should cover it.

Being new to chess, I enjoy the turn based games more. I'm much more prone to make foolish mistakes in the blitz games. Having time to consider moves carefully definitely helps me play better games until i build up my chops.

Blitz and turn based aren't your only options. Maybe on this site, they are, but I play "real time" games with time limits of an hour or more all the time, either OTB or on other internet sites.

--Fromper

I think that playing longer games is a good idea for someone who wants to improve (on any level), but even here you can play longer time controls in Live Chess. It is certainly not impossible to find an opponent for a 15-20 minutes game. Well, just mentioning though you seem to be on the right track basically.

The answer is simple and can be discovered by looking at the percentile rank of players (I think you must be a paying member to get this data).

My ratings:

Turn-based 2019     Top 95.6%

Live Standard 1692   Top 98%

Live Blitz 1798    Top 98.8%

Live Bullet 1750   Top 98%

My live ratings are lower, but my percentile ranking is higher. The top players at this site do not play live here. Indeed, I can only rarely get a live game against someone rated above me. The rating drops more with each loss, and climbs less with each victory as a consequence.

 I play some live chess here, but I prefer to play live against live people!