Dear Premium Members

If I may get your attention for a few minutes, I would like to ask a few questions. Would you say that that options that chess.com brings such as videos, articles, tactic trainers and engines etc., which by the way can be accessed through other sites for free, are much superior? Alone, with these options are you improving as a player? 

Many premium members like to brag as if their tactic trainer rating and chess mentor rating matters and live ratings are irrelevant. I find that many play the computers as milestones to their improvement but wonder why they still lack against human players. In all honesty, it's mind boggling for me.

I guess my main question really is: Is becoming a premium member worth it? 

Yes.

Depends on what intentions you have toward chess. You should first analyze in depth your values in life.

Take these 25 free ChessMentor courses out for a test drive and make up your own mind.

http://www.chess.com/blog/webmaster/free-chess-mentor-courses

I enjoy my premium membership. It does add to the experience, has helped me learn to an extent, but I still maintain the best way to learn is 1) play over the board chess at your local club and learn from the older players and 2) get a coach.

Kang, please ban necro from the group.

                    "Is Premium member worth it?"       Well it beats trolling.

Thank you, baddogno. I believe that chess mentor does provide good advice but my reasoning is, these kind of advices can be found else where FOR FREE. I mean, I did the "master" lessons and maybe it's my talent, idk, but they seem fairly easy. 

As mentioned above, 

Yes.

The question is if it is worth it to you or not. I was a premimum member because of the videos, mentor and the tactic trainer. They each made this site worth pating for. When I discovered chesstempo.com, I found the best setup for tactics anywhere. The videos and mentor still made it worth the money for me.

After time, I found I was not getting as much out of the videos. Not that the quality went down, but where I was at, I needed something other than videos to improve.

So I decided not to renew here, but use the money in other ways.

So, basically, take advantage of a free trial, see what it would do for you and them make your decision accordingly.

I mean I would do the free trial but

  

HA HA HA! I laughed my pants off :))

The point of a trial is that you might at some point want to pay because you got to try it. If you have no ablility to pay, the owner has no incentive to let you "try before you buy" because you cannot buy.

And I fail to see where someone who will not pay has any grounds to complain about not being given a free sample.

So that you don't scam them by getting free memberships all the time.

You would do the free trial butt?

                     They DON'T need your credit card #.  You can pay with pay-pal.

Isn't there a way to prevent that? I know for ICC you could only use the trial once. Even if you reinstall the client/app you're restricted access. No credit card required. Hm?

@eric that's the thing. It tries to catch you offguard. Because if you don't cancel before the end of the free trial you get charged. That's pretty funky stuff, huh.

Not everyone has paypal and it's the same thing really. Just another alternative. To be honest, I don't agree to either. Pretty shady imo

                      How can you not NOT agree with pay-pal. You only keep in the account the amount you want to send.  So what if Russian cyber gangs get your account number. The're not looking for accounts that have 0 balance, or insufficient funds.  

Not really agonizing, personally i'ts more of a logic thing. Just because I can afford it does not mean I think it's worth it. This is the sole reason why this forum was made.