# What's a good free online chess client? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [March 14, 2010, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-free-online-chess-client/532410 "2010-03-14T01:04:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![magnusblitz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@magnusblitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magnusblitz)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-free-online-chess-client/532410/1 "2010-03-14T01:04:32Z")
So recently I’ve started wanting to play chess with some long-distance friends. As such, I’ve been looking for a simple free online chess client to use. We tried Jin, but couldn’t get it to work right (couldn’t figure out how to connect and use the servers). We’ve been using [playchess.com](http://playchess.com), which works alright except that it seems to think a player disconnects a lot. Anyone know of a good, simple, not-so-buggy free client? ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-free-online-chess-client/532410/2 "2010-03-14T01:14:03Z")
I used to play at [gameknot.com](http://gameknot.com), which worked well enough for me, anyhow. ---
**Author:** ![magnusblitz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@magnusblitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magnusblitz)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-free-online-chess-client/532410/3 "2010-03-14T06:36:43Z")
Thanks, it looks good but I’m looking for something more real-time … gameknot seems to be more play-by-mail type (unless I’m missing something?) ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-free-online-chess-client/532410/4 "2010-03-14T21:32:41Z")
Gameknot has a real time blitz-game function as well - I had my ass handed to me in one of those games yesterday… but I think it might be the case that the server selects a player for you. I don’t know, I just don’t play that often, usually play games with a 2-day per move thinking time (which is the minimum). I’d like to play faster, and with a lot of the guys and galls it often goes a bit speedier, but sometimes games take forever, esp. when players use the postpone function a lot. Still, i like gameknot a lot