It’s screen names, but sometimes the screen names look like real names. Impossible to know.
No.
Yahoo is the only one I know that offers chess for free.
Probably. I’ve read about cheating on forums online. I see a pretty clear consensus as to what’s going on.
Yes, I want to start playing over the board again. But the cool thing about online chess is that you can play whenever you want, night or day.
I don’t think that would work.
The basic reason is that the AI 1) is too good and 2) does not play like a human (e.g., making human-like mistakes, etc.). Now, if I were at the grandmaster level, playing the AI would be a reasonable challenge and a way to sharpen my game.
You can set the AI to play stupider, so to speak, but it is still not like playing a human. For me, chess is fun because it is like a puzzle. How do I capitalize on the mistakes of my opponent? How do I respond in a particular situation? I am not trying to raise my level to that of master or grandmaster; I know I will never be that good. But I like the challenge of battling people at my own skill level and gradually improving my performance.
Yep, I was Scrabble and Words with Friends with friends on Facebook, and I had one friend that I was pretty sure was cheating, and so I was cheating too, and eventually I was like, “Enough!”
So, thanks to those who recommended chess.com. How is it for a Mac user? Do you need to download a specific interface for that, or do you simply use the browser? How easy is it to pick up a game at any time of day?
I recommend gameknot.com. Tremendous interface, thousands of players, and there’s the option of playing for free (although they frown on one account, more computers, as well as more accounts on one computer). I can’t vouch that there’s no cheating on there but I’ve played over 500 games there with no other frustrations than my own continuing failure to stop making dumb mistakes.
No, it’s online on the browser. It’s great.
Now, picking up a game, I would say is moderately easy. The reason I am not praising this aspect of chess.com too much is that people can sometimes get very picky about who they want to battle and it’s not uncommon for some dude to just abort after seeing your noobish or too good rating. 
But other than that, they are great, and pretty free of cheaters.
ETA: Like I said earlier, they even have a message board that goes with this so you can talk to other members and experts (NMs, IMs, GMs) about chess stuff.
And if you pay up $14 per month, they offer awesome instructional videos and other great features that are very useful to a chess player (tactics trainer, analyzing engine which is not top-level but still decent, etc.) I remember using the unlimited tactics trainer the most. Honestly, it may seem like a lot of money, but it really isn’t because it costs a lot more to get that kind of training offline (which I do recommend to an extent, you don’t want to do all your training online). So they are right about them offering thousands of dollars worth of chess enhancement and training materials being offered to you for $14 a month.
I’d echo the recommendation for chess.com. What time controls do you prefer to play?
Any Dopers on chess.com will find me under the name of Gil-Gandel. SixSwords is there as Gracious_Lunatic.
Doublepost, nm.
I am Anonymous_User at Chess.com.
I remember teaching someone how to play chess with chess.com.
In a matter of a month, they were beating me flawlessly. I stopped teaching them because they didn’t understand the chess concepts they were using to beat me.
If they can’t explain the merit of the moves they are making, there’s your sign they aren’t the one making the move.
In addition to chess.com, I strongly recommend you take a look at Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition if you are really interested in learning about chess. Listening to lectures of International Master Josh Waitzkin something to almost be proud of. No, I wouldn’t use this for an analyzer if you are serious (use Fritz 13 if you need a chess engine), but this product is most worthy in its great tutorials. Josh Waitzkin teaches you about the heart of chess, the psychology, the endgame, and even…life. One of his many courses that he offers is literally called The Art of Learning, which basically includes the content of his book, The Art of Learning. You can learn some great life lessons from this guy too. Game-playing is pretty decent on this computer program as well. But like I said, the main thing I would use this for is to listen to lectures by Josh Waitzkin.
In Soviet Union, chess play YOU!
I agree with you that cheating is bad at isc.ro. But what do you consider cheating? If you consider only the use of anagrammers or scrabble dictionaries as cheating, I think those two things happen rarely. If you think that people who play challenges look up your words and then challenge or don’t based on their legitimacy I agree this is rampant. I therefore do not play challenges.
I feel your pain. However, Chess online - or any strategy game that has no element of chance involved in it will not survive.
Games like Blood Bowl have no good simulator but still require strategy. If they turn on any sort of tool to help them they will more likely play even worse.
You might as well get out of chess online and move on to other strategy games that the computer AI cannot compete…like Blood Bowl! 
Even in games like Blood Bowl, there are 23 teams but not all are meant to be equal. There are several teams that are meant to be tough, some that are meant to be not as tough but viable, some borderline viable and a few that are meant as joke teams for experienced/good players that want an extreme challenge.
Added to this, there are 2 teams that are top notch but during the conversion to Online and ‘permanent’ leagues have become truely stellar.
So…guess which teams you meet?
out of the 23 teams available, about half the time you will meet one of 2 teams and another 45% of the time a different top notch team. Rarely will you get matched up to a more challenging team to play as. Coaches with large win records and hundreds of games play as these top teams and not even as the still-viable but not top notch teams.
This makes me despair of people. The just HAVE to win…even when it means NOTHING and you don’t even KNOW the person you are playing against…where both of you will not remember the game 2 days later…and where you can’t have gloating rights because if you go on and say how leet you are…people will just look at your record and say “but you only play as the easiest teams”.
90% of them also follow the same strategy. It’s easy to do and it works pretty well but there are better ones. However that requires thinking and experimentation. This seems too much to ask of most gamers.
Still fun, but I despair of people sometimes.
I also started playing chess on yahoo in the 90’s. It was great then, and there were so many players online at any time. I remember it being a miracle of modern science… all of a sudden, we could all play chess together without any computer crashes or internet disasters. The internet was new then… this was something unexpected.
The Yahoo chess sever back then was the green and yellow board. They changed it to some 3D crap nearing the millennium, but you could still access the old board if you logged in through Yahoo canada. I played there for years, and loved it.
I once used an engine to see what it was like. You’re right, Aeschines, it was really boring. I felt like I was really pulling a fast one on people for a while, but then it started to suck. Eventually I was playing this other guy with an engine, and we got down to a pawn and two kings and there were about 100 moves with the kings just jockying for positions that neither of us could understand. I decided then not to do that again.
Around the turn of the millennium I started noticing that more and more people were using these engines. At first I didn’t mind, but then it got annoying. My solution was to play more speed chess. While speed chess can destroy your brain, it also makes it harder for people to cheat because there’s more time involved in going between two programs than just one. I got used to beating the cheaters on time, and eventually saw that the cheaters stopped trying to win at speed chess.
However, a five minute game is still long enough to have an engine to destroy you. I started playing 3min, 2min and 1min games. While this is terrible chess, it was a fantastic way to brush up on all the opening variations you want, by repetition. If you play someone who develops differently in the opening, you stand a chance at experimenting with that opening maybe twenty times over twenty rematches if your brain can handle it. I used to email myself the games later and study them for further study.
I stopped playing on yahoo when they finally forced us all to play on the 3D board. (Consequently, if someone knows how to access the green and yellow board server, please email me). I searched long and hard for a replacement, but I haven’t found one worth their salt. I was excited when Chess.com started up because I assumed that with a name like Chess.com, they’d have some major backers in terms of standards and morals, but they’re actually pretty bad. The sped games time out, they close the site for maintenance at least twice a week, and they treat the players like sheep (If you press the abort button before the game has started, they tell you that you have violated the Fair Play Policy, which kindof hurts, cause - you know - they put the button there, why do I get blamed for using it?
However, I am pretty sure that Chess.com in all it’s crappiness has some pretty rigorous screening for chess engines. I’ve never once come across someone playing a perfect “engine” game, and I’ve played a lot on there (both slow play an speed chess). If you’re looking for an alternative to cheaters, that might be the best place to check out. Just don’t download their mobile app (you’ll lose ratings and pleasure when it looks like the other guy timed out, but then when his clock runs out, they tell you that you lost on time); don’t abort games before they start, even if it’s someone who is harassing you; and don’t expect the infrastructure of the site to make any sense. It’s the worst “social network” I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen more than most due to my profession.
What am I saying here? Well, it’s a long rant.
I loved Yahoo Chess, and would play there again if they only showed me how (the green and yellow board of the old days… you know, the one that never crashed, and emailed you your games without a price tag attached?)
Chess.com is the next best thing for free, but it’s run by a bunch of drunks who don’t even appear to like chess.
and
Cheers,
Alvin A.T. Chipmunks
murno.gladst@gmail.com
I just registered here to reply to this post about chess cheaters and because I find myself on this site more than I would expect.
About seven years ago I had an established rating of 2024 in Canada. Granted I am not currently at that strength I expect to routinely beat 1200 rated players. I have played on FICS and ICC and was getting demolished by these same 1200 rated players and came to the conclusion that engine cheating is ubiquitous; I gave up online chess as a result.
@BlinkingDuck
What you’re talking about is deliberately bad game design. All teams should be designed with the intent that they are in the same tier. They might win in different ways - some might win by attrition while some might win by running touchdowns every second turn - but they should all have a fair chance of winning.
The game would have ended quicker if you’d used a Nalimov tablebase, which could certainly have won or drawn the position for you, if it really was just a pawn and two kings. 
I once played a member of the chess.com staff and I asked him if he really thought they stopped cheating on the site and at first he said that cheaters really don’t bother him, and that he likes to play cheats because they squirm in time trouble (which is sometimes, but rarely, true). When I said that even at 2/1 time controls it is possible to cheat just using an engine, not even addressing the issue of bots, he admitted that there is really nothing they can do to stop cheating. Sometimes I will analyze games with an engine after I play and I have seen players rated 900! (you start at 1200) match the 1st or 2nd moves that my engine suggests for 20 or more moves in a row… I can’t tell you how many times I will get an advantage out of the opening and then all of a sudden my opponent just plays perfectly and wipes me out. I think many cheaters play the opening themselves to avoid suspicion and to make themselves feel like they have a role to play in the victory. I would guess that 90% of the people rated over 1200 use an engine to some extent. The top German grandmaster, Arkadij Naiditsch, once admitted to using computer help to win an online chess tournament in his youth. He said it was obvious that everyone else was using one too. So even grandmasters are not immune to the cheating bug. Online chess really is unplayable… Many video games are the same way. You get hackers who ruin those… Games are no fun anymore… 