Why you NEED a Chess.com Membership!

So, I see you've been a free user on chess.com for a while now. You've come across chess.com while searching the internet for a suitable, usable, and good chess website. Now you're looking to improve and stumbled across this specific blog to decide once and for all if that premium membership for chess.com is worth it, I will be covering that here. 

Beginner/New to chess

Now there's no other place that even competes with chess.com in lessons as chess.com has lessons from top players worldwide, backed up with stockfish. If you don't really have lots of time for chess and chess and just want to do a quick lesson with a puzzle run, I recommend a Gold membership. It has all you need, unlimited puzzles, unlimited lessons, an opening explorer, a huge database, and other small features like no ads that aren't very important right now. This is also the membership plan I recommend for beginners because as a beginner, you aren't playing a huge amount of games but instead, you're doing lessons and puzzles to improve your skill before you hop into the chess board.  (Not playing a huge amount of games doesn't require unlimited game review that higher tiers like platinum offer)

Intermediate (Assuming you want to improve fast) 60 percent average accuracy

Now you've covered basic topics like all the mates, developing, and all the other stuff, it's time you start playing some games. I recommend at this level you start a chessable account at chessable.com as it's a great platform to pick up openings. Another tip I usually give to people at this level is that you start playing 1-2 games a day and review them, no short time controls and no over-excessive playing that commonly leads to a rating drop. Review your games and learn from them ask yourself "what could I have done differently to change the outcome." This will in terms keep you on your toes and will lead to drastic improvement. My recommendation for this level? I still recommend gold as you don't need a lot of game reviews, and that's the only difference between gold and platinum.

ONLY FOR THOSE THAT ARE LEAGUE POINT GRINDING!!!

I'll make this short but if you're grinding for league points, for whatever reason I do recommend platinum and that you play at least a 3+2 time control so that it's not too fast and it's most efficient for league. Note: don't forget to review every game you play win or lose as you can learn something from it!

Advanced 80+ percent average accuracy

Now that you've improved, let's see your progress with insights, you'll see when you play best, what color you play best, and how often you miss or catch a specific tactic. We'll also improve your chess rapidly with coach explanations. You can now see what the coach recommends and you also will start getting explanations for why your move was good or bad. (This tier is also the best for daily games as you get more vacation days as a diamond member) 

Final Verdict?

Overall I think the best membership is Platinum. Why? Because it unlocks all the lessons and puzzles you need and most importantly, the game review function. You don't need coach explanations and insights as most people aren't too crazy about chess and just want to improve.

-Richard