Pro's and Con's of Chess.com

Hey forum...In this topic I would like to discuss the pro's and con's of chess.com. I would also like to discuss what chess.com needs to work on. I would like for people who read this to post to think about what they like and dislike and then type it out and post it.  Here is a example:

What I like about chess.com :

1: Great Forum's 

2: Tactics Trainer

3: Groups and Teams

4: Online chess and Live chess so you can chose your speed

What I don't like about chess.com :

1: If you don't have a premium membership you can only do 3 tactics trainer problems a day.

2: The iPhone/iPod Touch Application ( it is very slow )

3: "meebo"

 They are providing a free, high-quality place to play chess.  What more do you want?

What I don't like about chess.com :

3: "meebo"

That can be disabled.

Premium membership isn't super-expensive anyway but chess.com is nonetheless a very high quality service that is free and allows access to features that you can not get anywhere else. Chess.com is awesome

why would you find meebo annoying?

Pros:

tonydal

Kacparov

ozzie_cobblepot

Con:

Tryst

what is meebo?  is that the dippy thing at the bottom of the screen that keeps telling you that you can see when your friends are online.  if so you can have that only appear on your homepage from the settings menu. 

I can think of plenty of pro's but struggle to think of any negatives.

1.) ALOT more features for free subscribers then i have found on ANY other site. For example you have; analysis board, can take notes and save them, have a computer analyser, which i don't find u get on other sites. Tactics trainer in first place is good, so why complain you only get 3 goes? when i don't get any other sites without first paying for membership. You get to play in a rated tournament as a fee member without having to be invited personally, which is great.

The only Neg i can think of for free members really is the ever annoying adds that sometimes jumped on the screen in front of you.That and you can't get 3D chess men and board which is a bummer.

For paying members you get options for how much you pay and even has small amounts over monthly installments if u haven't got a lot of money. You get great amount of features as a paying member such as the ones already described by others.

I think the site could use a visual facelift.. (i cant be the only one that thinks the site graphics are prehistoric).

Other than that I dont think theres a better place to play chess online

hey dudes, cut back on your apostrophes...  or if you prefer:

hey dude's cut back on your apo'strophe's

I like playing against the CPU and being able to copy the file and replay on the analysis board. I wish there was a way to get the game analyzed by computer at the site though.

Tactic trainer would be good if there weren't so many problems like "find the forced mate in 7, but don't choose the forced mate in 10, because that is wrong". However, it is understandable on a site dedicated to CC -- any reasonable CC player knows that every move, no matter how obvious might look, must be double-checked with a computer.

exagerrated censorship are other  con of chess.com.

[edited - don't bring cheating into the forums]

@TobusRex

You can get a computer analysis of your games by going to "your games archive" clicking on the game you want analyzed and once you go into it click on "computer analysis" It should say it is processing and it will send you an alert when it is done.

I guess as a free member you get 3 tactics trainer problems plus the daily puzzle so thats 4 problems a day.

I don't think that this is enough because a WGM ( Natalia Pogonina I think ) said that you should do a hour of tactics everyday. 

I completely agree with your last sentence

just to name a few things:

pros:

* remarkable and successful anti-cheating policy: Cheaters are being identified and banned effectively, while I have not yet experienced a single case of an innocent person mistaken for a cheater.

improvements to be made:

* there should be more moderation done in the forums

---------------

bondocel, when you encounter such tactics trainer problems, you are welcome to report them, they will be deleted from tactics trainer.

I was told by a staff member that problems in which there is a difference of at least 2.50 in evaluation between alternative lines are considered OK. So, if you can take your opponent's rook for free, that is a wrong move if you can find a combination which wins your opponent's queen.

Personally the biggest thing I don't like about chess.com is the app I have for my iPod Touch. I am on firmware 4.0.2 which is the latest from Apple. Whenever I open the app at least half the time it crashes and if it doesn't crash it takes me several minutes to get to my games, because it is so slow. It would be nice if I could just use a mobile version of chess.com but I can't find one.

NOTE: I have disabled meebo it is just very annoying to me when I am trying to concentrate on a game or a problem.

The discussion is here:

http://www.chess.com/tactics/server.html?id=93475

That explains the huge number of problems which, in my opinion, are incorrect. At my level, that is about 30%.

C'mon lets keep this topic going.