I joined this community over a year ago - primarily as a way to play online chess in speed games.  At the time, I was not a paid member, so the disconnects or slow downs or other issues were part of the deal.  After all, Live Chess was beta, and bugs were bound to happen.

I decided to invest some money into this site in the hopes that it would help to identify and rectify the issues with Live Chess.  And for a while, it seemed to be getting better.

But now, even with using high-speed cable connections and faster computers running Firefox and/or Chrome, Live Chess has become virtually unplayable for me.  1 minute games - forget it.  2 minute games - maybe 25% of the time.  In other words, it's worthless.

I've checked the computer countless times for disk and resource issues - there are none.  I've checked the Speednet site to confirm my connection and download/upload speeds, and they are excellent.

So the issue comes down to software, server or hosting bottlenecks, which obviously haven't been dealt with.  Not to mention all the 13 year old wannabe thugs chatting up garbarge every 30 seconds.

Chess.com needs to tell it's paying customers what the focus is here, and what is being done to fix these issues.  I can deal with reasonable beta periods, but not even Microsoft has 12 month betas.  If Live Chess is not the focus, then drop it and make the rest of the site the best it can be.

My subscription runs another few months.  After that, if Live Chess isn't a viable platform, I'll be renewing my Fritz/playchess account.

Rick

This has bothered me a bit too.  When I joined, I assumed Live Chess would be playable in a matter of 2 - 3 months tops.  5 months later, I still can't even hold a connection on Live Chess.  I end up using my Online Chess games as my Live games.

I've never understood all the complaints with live chess- while using Chrome, I've never ever been disconnected. Sometimes when on a laptop and using Explorer it happens, but on this computer, I've never had a single problem. It leads me to wonder what the difference is between mine and every other computer on the planet.

I've heard this alot from people about Live chess' disconnects. For me, surprisingly, I' ve almost never been disconnected. I've been playing here about a month or so and have only gotten disconnected 1 or 2 times. Its interesting how the number of disconnects varies so much from person to person.

I've had mixed results in my limited experience with Live Chess; there have definitely been some issues serious enough so that my real-time-chess friend and I have (happily) moved our games over to the e-chess UI.  (We aren't big sticklers for the clock or blitz players anyway.)

But that's all beside the point, really...

The fact is that the folks who build this site have had to make what was probably a pretty painful decision to completely rebuild Live Chess, pretty much from scratch.  If you're waiting for Live Chess (as we know it today) to suddenly improve (the disconnects vanish, etc.), then you're waiting in vain, I'm afraid.  I think the decision to start anew (treating today's Live Chess as a learning experience) was probably the most mature and effective thing to do, but total rewrites don't happen overnight either.

The good news is that we stand to gain more than just today's Live Chess without the disconnects, because I understand that a much improved user experience & interface are part of what's in the works as well.  :)

I don't remember being disconnected even once from Live Chess while using Google Chrome.

I cancelled my comcast cable modem a month ago.  Have been using neighbor's Verizon FIOS WIFI modem to connect to the internet.  NO DISCONNECTS since converting to use their system.

Teshuvah, a Tech in Oregon is quite right. 

    I'm a retired electronics specialist, and agree totally with his opinion above, disconnects mostly come from the ISP, not from the server at chess.com.

They also choke down the pipeline sometimes to control flow and keep cost in line. 

Comcast, and most ISP providers, play fast and loose with their juice and take advantage that most of us have poor understanding of how the medium actually works.

New fiber optic technologies will ease some of the clogging, but then people will just increase file sizes anyway to reach a new stasis of cluster-effing anyway....

i too NEVER play live chess anymore for this same reason.  but, i'm of the "i couldn't care less" school these days.

Disconnects aren't really a problem for me, it's the lag.

maybe chess.com should take some examples from other sites and hold small rooms with 100 people each. lag is the biggest problem for me on live chess.

Rick:

Fair call. I'm frustrated too. The good news is, we're getting VERY close. I have a very good feeling you will be renewing ;)

Erik

i know nothing about this kind of thing but i wish dumping the chat room was the answer.  i hate that thing.

LOL.  2nded.  The parade of stupidities.  I think its only effect is to cultivate misanthropy.

you wanna blame isp...but when we don't face the same problems with ICC or other chess networks...it doesn't add up.  

Good point.

For the original poster: if you want to play live, it is known which site is the best. Other than that, the admins of this site never said that the issues woth live chess will be fixed shortly. 

The disconnections are likely caused by your computer. Have you looked up how much CPU and memory resources your browser takes up when running live chess?

i know for the last few days, id start a game then my board would go black. id either lose on time or resign.

Appreciate your comment.  Please re-read my post.  My computer is just fine, as is my internet connection.  As I said before, it makes no difference if I'm running Chrome, Firefox, IE7 or IE8.  Same challenges.

Regarding the comment "admins never said it would be fixed shortly", well... just what is your definition of "shortly"?  2 years instead of one?

I could be wrong but from what I've been told...a proximity to their server in California makes a huge difference in how well you'd stay connected currently.