Time to Quit Playing....

I am active on LiChess. Look me up (ExtraSugarFreeGUM) Near identical results, but the difference is I get all the stuff for free.

@RubberSoul54 "Good grief. Why post this topic? "

@RubberSoul54 I'm glad you asked. You see when I canceled my premium account, I'm still paid up thru February. it's my duty to [removed -- MS] the remaining balance away.

I'm still not convinced anyone I'm actually talking to or has posted is a real person 🤔

People pay money to use this site...LOL.

I got a star membership to stop the ads. It's pretty cheap. I extended it to diamond, because I was about to run out of vacation days in one period of ill health. So far, about $100/year isn't a big strain, especially comparing it to a minimum of $50 paid every time I go to the supermarket for an evening's food & whatnot.

I used adblocker

The site raised premium rates once in 2021. A good coach can help you pinpoint weaknesses more quickly and come up with a customized training plan. That's going to cost 20+ per hour and finding a quality coach that just doesn't do the hard work isn't necessarily easy.

The site resources can be used to improve, but as with anything, it takes effort and most people don't really put in the required effort to get better

Just doing the lessons, puzzles, and playing games can help but there's more to it than that. In addition, there's realistically an upper level any individual is likely to reach, even with explicit and well targeted training. Getting beyond that point may not be possible or mate take considerably more time and effort and many people won't, or don't want to, out in that amount of effort and time for something that's just a hobby.

Got to agree with Martin, the main points of the comment are totally valid. Im new here from Lichess (about a week in) and thinking about a paid membership, the only debate for me at the moment is how much effort Im willing to put in, after all you only get out what you put in! Until I decide I’ll just enjoy both sites for free, each are enjoyable in their own way.

People pay money to use this site (for extra features or just giving their support to the thing that they love), and because they do, you and the others that don't can play for free here. Or do you think that money for running the servers (for millions of people to play on them), paying the staff and all the other things that chess.com is doing (organizing the events, broadcasts, prizes, etc.) is just falling from the skies?

Yearly diamond subscription is £120 or so, that's what I spend on food in a week time. So what's the issue? For all the time I spend here, seems fine to me. If it wasn't for chessdotcom, 90 % of all people playing here today wouldn't even know chess exists. FIDE puts zero effort into publicity of chess even today, they don't stream & comment their tournaments for public, they don't have a chess TV, they don't sponsor people across internet to promote chess. Like what are we even talking about. Most of my subscription will probably go to a winner of some tournament here. Guess what, I am totally happy with it

Hey.. I don't wanna tip my hand at how long I've fought with myself on this. But I've had more than one account at each to the membership levels at this point. I can tell you this. the graphical element of their tools is spot on... but the data is about as reliable to me at this point as letting your grandma who's been in a coma for 10 years make your next stock picks.... Save your money.
All they are doing is reskinning Chesscom's own engine and telling it to talk to you everytime the eval bar changes or using Stockfish's. The rest is YOUR game data. There are apps that can record your pngs and do the same or better I would bet.... If not there's a business idea for someone out there.
Bottom line for me.. The rating system here doesn't work.... If it does I have not seen any noticable change in my what ~4 years on this account I think it was like 10 on my last. And with a swing (500 ELO) depending on the week, Its hot garbage that they charge you for ANY of their tools.
MY HOPE WITH THIS POST IS THEY WILL CONSIDER REVAMPING THE SYSTEM SOMEDAY. LOOK FOR OTHER WAYS TO SHOW PROGRESSION.

Well I mean I guess if you like wasting money I'll take a 20$ I can hook you up with a venmo. Seriously though... It's not about the money for me as much as the value they aren't giving us.
90% thing is a line though. Not saying ChessCom isn't a part of it, but YouTube, Streamers and Sponsorships made chess what it is today. Now like I said somewhere up there.. DONATIONS are different. I'm ok with calling it a donation, but don't put a paywall up and the biggest advantage is ads come down for 20 bucks. The rest are all gimmicks that promise a path to "perfect" chess play or atleast a path to measured improvement, they should deliver a grading methodology that is tied to your rating if that's the case.
You probably aren't old enough to remember Yahoo chess. They were the OG of Live chess for me back in the day. It was great but what killed it was lack of moderation. It got to the point on there, you KNEW you were playing BOTS, because everything was moving the speed of your processor. I don't want to see that for Live Chess here, I want to see a community and have a way to be reassured I'm playing somone who is just that much better. The way it stands now, you have GMs sniping as low ELO players, BotAccounts in the mix, and players who have ELO flexing 500 points in either direction... It's not great..

I think they make a FORTUNE ($Billions$$) off of people trying to climb the rating ladder and never succeed. Their bigger money comes from things like Ad revenue, Streamers working for ChessCom, sponsored events, branding, all the "Learn how to be UNDEFEATED" Youtube vids out there right now aren't coincidence.. They are generating user interaction with their website which equates to real currency.. They care less about their low rated users because we bring them NOTHING other than a reason to have to buy servers. The paywall system is just one more way to ensure they're making their quarterly earnings benchmarks.

I guess my biggest point to this post is I know I'm not alone in feeling like the community average rating community (was better), I am noticing a shift in the types of users I play more. I see them trying to get after some things publicly, but at the end of the day users (like me) will start to ask themselves what we're actually paying 20 a month/ 100 a year whatever for. I'd be happy to pay MORE MONEY if they can do better.

...and vacation days.