Opinion: Chess.com cannot be called a real chess website

Chess? 'Tis a wonderful game. For many thousands of years humans have been exploring it, and still we haven't found all of the best moves yet. What is white's best first move? Is it 1.e5? 1. d5? No one can say for sure. Can white force a win, or is chess drawn with perfect play? Or maybe even black wins. There are opinions, but no conclusive answer yet. 

Even in the comfort of his own home, playing correspondence chess or analyzing openings, one may well fail in finding the best moves. How much harder is it in a real game to find great moves? You have to think on the spot, and always there is the chilling presence of a loss lurking behind you.

Sure we have made much progress. Titled players, world champions, they all came much closer than me to being perfect. But even these amazing players sometimes take 30 minutes in only one move! How much more time do I, a simple patzer, need to analyze a position?

There is probably a good reason why people that play chess for a living play long time controls. It is a complicated game, you need time to analyze a position sometimes. I say that a REAL chess game is a long game. Not only because that's what professionals play, but also because in long games there are fewer mistakes. A player can't as easily say say, "Well, I lost, but if I had more time I would have probably won that patzer." In a long game, if you lose, in general it will be because you thought badly, not because you did not think enough. A long game is a real game because it is a game in which you really thought about your moves. 

If you're a blitz lover that's ok, time pressure is obviously a part of the game as well. But even still, REAL players that do this for a living play long games! 

And why is chess.com not a REAL chess website? 

Look at the standard time controls in chess.com. The moment that you log in, the "pre-defined" seek is 10 minutes for each person. Then if you click on "more", there are these options: 

10 mins, 5 mins, 3 mins, 1 min, 15 | 10, 3 | 2, and 2 | 1. 

As you might have noticed, none of these time controls are even that long. That's ok, you might tell me, "but who has the time to play a long chess game?". I point out that sometimes people spend hours playing bullet. But that's kind of besides the point. 

THERE ISN'T EVEN A PRE-DEFINED OPTION OF A REAL TOURNAMENT GAME IN CHESS.COM! 

A real game is like the games that carlsen and caruana play. The kind of game that bobby fischer played against spassky. It's 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, and 30 more minutes for the rest of the game, always with a 30 second increment. 

At the very least, for chess.com to be called a real chess website, it has to have a pre-defined option to start a REAL chess game. 

The most you can do is click on "custom challenge", which, however, you can't tweak to become a real game. 

I will give you this, chess.com is a great website, there is also correspondence chess for players who like to think a lot like me. Many good puzzles, computer analysis, articles, everything. 

But it's unforgivable to not have an option for a real game. The longest pre-defined game challenge is 45 minutes with a 45 second increment. And when you make a longer game, to resemble the tournament games, chess.com says: 

"Get matched more quickly by selecting one of the standard time controls."

That sends out the message: "Hey, you wanna play a longer game? That's a bit weird, we don't usually do that around these parts." Also the standard time control, I argue, is the time control that real games are played at. The word standard means "norm". These games are not the norm.

Also, a minor point that I just noticed, is that if you click on a player's profile, they have three ratings: Blitz, bullet and rapid. The word blitz implies speed. The world bullet too. And the word rapid also implies speed.  If you only played long games, chess.com would still call you a "rapid" player, which is strange. Why isn't the rating of long games called a standard rating, or something like that? Does chess.com think that the only games that exist are fast games or something?

I could go on and on, but I must end here. The conclusion is that since in this website you cannot play a real chess game, then it cannot, in my opinion, be called a real chess website. Thank you for reading. 

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But it's unforgivable to not have an option for a real game. The longest pre-defined game challenge is 45 minutes with a 45 second increment. And when you make a longer game, to resemble the tournament games, chess.com says: 

"Get matched more quickly by selecting one of the standard time controls."

That sends out the message: "Hey, you wanna play a longer game? That's a bit weird, we don't usually do that around these parts." Also the standard time control, I argue, is the time control that real games are played at. The word standard means "norm". These games are not the norm.

Also, a minor point that I just noticed, is that if you click on a player's profile, they have three ratings: Blitz, bullet and rapid. The word blitz implies speed. The world bullet too. And the word rapid also implies speed.  If you only played long games, chess.com would still call you a "rapid" player, which is strange. Why isn't the rating of long games called a standard rating, or something like that? Does chess.com think that the only games that exist are fast games or something?

I could go on and on, but I must end here. The conclusion is that since in this website you cannot play a real chess game, then it cannot, in my opinion, be called a real chess website. Thank you for reading.