Debate: What to call "Online Chess"...

That stat is for Online Chess. And it's the number of people who have played at least one game for it. I imagine most have played just one and never came back.

Well not most but the actual number of people who play online then is somewhat less than a quarter mil.

babs, playing chess is losing its geekiness, if it hasn't already done so, at warp speed. Just look at what is happening in scholastic chess, for example.

Chess or call of duty?

Chess.

I recall trying to encourage my son to play chess for his school a couple of years ago, as a hobby. He said to me "Mum, only the nerds play chess". I said to him chess is a very cool game, it's not just a game for nerds.  But he was younger then. We have an OTB game occasionally and he does enjoy it, but I keep beating him.. he wouldn't enjoy that. lol.

His passion is golf, so I tease him and say "only the snobs play golf". lol

Which has as much lack of truth as "only nerds play chess:".. 

golf is hitting a really small ball into a really small hole really far away.  lol.

lol, when he gets a few games under his belt there will be no stopping him.

It does get closer and closer. lol

Just takes a bit longer for some more than  others, and some an eternity.. lol.

netzach at #685, so do I.

As a baby I was always drawn to water... now my golf balls are..  lol

Yeah, but maybe i am old fuddy-duddy set in my ways :)

What I dislike is the abundance of drop-down & context-menus. Passing the mouse over the page (for those neandrathals amongst us not using i-pads or similar) is like watching ''Avatar 3-D''. I would like to see 1-sec delay built in to the IT-setup so that simply moving the mouse across the page (to check messages for example) does not assault me with visual-stimuli ?

& '' pictorial-chess-boards '' should be selectable-option not default !

Whoa.... Am I in the right forum here ?? :) 

Problem is I don't like losing.  I can't throw a game, even with my kid. lol

He has come close to  beating me, usually because I do help him sometimes in the game. If I see him doing an obvious blunder, about to give me his queen for example, I will say "Are you SUUUUUURE you want to move there?" and he will wake up. But when I see him starting to gain advantage because of my help I put the brakes on and go into kill mode. lol. 

I recently played an OTB game with a band musician.. he was over for dinner with my cousin who he's dating.. he told me he hasn't played for ages, has no time as is playing at gigs and practising and studying and spending time with his g/f, and my cousin doesn't know how to play chess. He said he doesn't know any openings really, had heard of Ruy and Sicilian  but that's about it, was playing it up that he is very out of practice..  so here I was thinking am going to whip his ***.

He beat me!  grrrrrrrrrrrrr

Mind you I was distracted by other guests I was talking to/joking with at the same time as playing him (excuses excuses), but now I want REVENGE and am living for the day I can get him back! lol

In his defense, he is getting  better, blundering a lot less, and sooner or later he will be able to  beat me without my help... I'm sure I'll cope. I think. lol

He`ll get you one time when you fully expect to win, then there`ll be another and another, i got my mrs into chess and now i struggle to beat her, she joined this site and now so do most others. 

I can honestly say I have probably never said correspondence as part of a sentence in my life, nor would I feel the need to. it is hardly everyday English.

But to the point, I can find only a single link between traditional Correspondence Chess and the modern current Online Chess this server uses. That of notification, and only if you set that option.

If there were an overwhelming number of overlapping parallels between the two I could understand keeping it. But all of the parallels are not true. For example you can play an entire Online Chess game without ever leaving the page. You do not have to wait a full day to make a move. You can wait a day, but it's not required. You can make pre-moves in advance.

None of these things can be done with traditional Correspondence Chess Pigeon Chess is closer to actual Correspondence Chess.

To me Correspondence Chess refers to email and letters. Why keep an outdated term and try to jam it into a different newer format because you can't think of a better alternative. What other sites do are irrelevant here. Are they more popular? They have the "serious" players? What are those anyway? Maybe this site is for the vast majority casual players, which are not "serious" players. And how serious can you be if you refuse to play on a site that uses a different term.

Someone said that a player on another site wouldn't play here because they don't have Correspondence Chess, not realizing that Online Chess is their version of that. But you like to argue that people can look up stuff if they really wanted to know what it was.

This site AFAIK has never used the term. It's always been eChess and Online Chess.

netzach, I, too, hate it when I am moving my pointer around and suddently have a large window suddenly pop up in my way. There is such a thing as being TOO helpful! Also, have you noticed how helpful numbering the posts in a forum is? Why are the boards in a team match not numbered? It would be so helpful in finding your way about in the rosters of large matches and keeping track of the progress of the registration process.

And they are probably playing Angry Birds right now

What does what he believe have to do with it? You said yourself that in online chess there might only be 5,000 to 8,000 members playing. I don't think it so far fetched to think that in the world the number of active chess players is around 5 million (or less). Unless they're all playing off line.

I find it far easier to find someone to play against online than in the real world. There's probably more players now because of computers.