The "New" Chess.com

I was a diamond member there. Believe me it is not the money. I would have never left chess.com for say FICS just to play for free. FICS is worse than chess.com. I left chess.com because lichess is better. If I had to pay for lichess and chess.com was completely free, I would still play here.

What I got at chess.com for money was arrogance and zero innovation. My threads that I posted in the forum landed in obscure places when I was a diamond member. Get this, since when I'm a free member at chess.com I was not moderated a single time.

Yes, I still post at chess.com's forum, this is the only feature that I need and is better at chess.com.

Oh, users are now able to access their own games with a basic membership. Impressive.

For clarity sake, here's where lichess officially stands regarding chess.com: www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/4251l5/introducing_the_new_chesscom_version_3/cz8hpym

People views in this forum are their own.

Chess.com's case reminds me the story of Britanic Encyclopedia, a fantastic encyclopedia that lost its battle against the computerized enciclopedyas (such as Encarta) due to its immobility; instead of adapting the encyclopedia to the new times, they thought that their (well gained) reputation would be enough to keep the sales of the paper version.

When they decided to change their strategy, it was already too late.

I try to be very objective now.

For how long in the main forum of chess.com a thread in its title mentioning lichess and all the discussion in the thread being about lichess's features would be tolerated at chess.com before sent to off topic or deleted?

10 minutes.

No. I rushed to judgement. I promised to be objective.

It may be 15 minutes.

Lichess and Chess.com are different.

As a commercial platform, their management take decisions with the intention of increasing their market share and increasing profits. They are a business, and this is to be expected. On the other hand, we're free and open source. We lose nothing in people discussing competitors; chess.com potentially loses a diamond subscriber.

My personal opinion of chess.com is that it's a rip off for what you get. Their content is very good, but of course, being a business they can afford to pay for the media (and pay GMs, such as Nakamura, to play exclusively there).

That being said, they've obviously put in a lot of hard work to be where they are, and it is not easy to code such significant updates to their site. I don't wish them the best (because I think they rip off their customers who are often ignorant of other sites), but I do congratulate them wholeheartedly on this upgrade. In my eyes, the perfect chess site would be lichess' ethos and UI, with chess.com's money and content ;)

It's easy to fall into the trap and assume that chess.com is "copying" lichess in some way. However, the information they display is generic information which a lot of chess sites and chess services offer. Indeed, chess.com has shown all of that information since before lichess has been around. Similarly, there are only so many ways you can clearly show move times, average loss and a graph is most intuitive for that. Similarly, it is only logical to create a hub for videos and other features.

So, don't jump to conclusions, and let's keep it classy.

Capitalism is about two things: innovation and value for money. These are the things that make capitalism legitimate. If these two are present, then there can be some arrogance towards those that are not willing to pay.

At chess.com everything was reversed. I payed, there was arrogance, but no value for money and no innovation. For weeks the tactics trainer was down. I posted a complaint, nothing happened. Is this value for money? Don't they have the money to have a paid team to fix bugs? What is all the arrogance is all about then?

I know what I know. No amount of propaganda can convince me to the contrary.

I enjoyed my chess.com membership when I had it. Unfortunately, lichess offers more for less. Chess.com is motivated by money, and from what I hear it's less the company and more the guy running it who is obsessed with cash.

dat reddit message
you are too cool man, too cool :D

Wow, very professional response, @thibault! Kudos!

However, after I (MSC157)'ve been muted from Chess.com because of their bug, there will be no surprise if my time spent on Lichess overcome Chess.com by a few hours (per week).