Originally posted by buddy2There are, to be sure, better places to play. Rather than list the reasons here I'll refer you to http://www.edcollins.com/chess/yahoo-vs-servers.htm for a good comparison. But you're not a bad person for playing there.
Any time somebody mentions playing chess at Yahoo, he gets sneers, insults, etc. Is actually playing on the site that bad? You people who've had experience, I'd like to hear from you.
Originally posted by buddy2I started playing chess on yahoo before moving to FICS then finally to ICC. And besides what was mentioned about features, the crowd is generally much better on FICS and definately ICC (few people are willing to fork out cash just to act like a fruitcake... though...*cough cough*).
Any time somebody mentions playing chess at Yahoo, he gets sneers, insults, etc. Is actually playing on the site that bad? You people who've had experience, I'd like to hear from you.
Although I *HAVE* encounted players with bad attitudes on ICC or FICS (I recently had one player offer me a draw every move for about 10-20 moves starting from the move where he lost his queen), the players at Yahoo are probably the worst of the lot. This is partially due to the fact that the interface and the general maintaince of Yahoo chess sucks big time and is condusive to cheaters (I have a friend who used fritz to run up the ladders just to show me that they don't get caught, one of the reasons I stopped playing there), players who start a game by asking you to resign etc.
And really, there's no reason to even consider playing at Yahoo once you start playing on FICS, which is also free, can also be played using java, and is just so much better.
I also have a subscription to ICC for blitz. Although you don't run into many,there are fruitcakes on ICC. I've learned to turn off chat because some of them never stop babbling, insulting, threatening remarks during thegame. I've never played on Yahoo. I just wondered why everyone was giving it a bad rep.
Originally posted by buddy2To truely appreciate ICC, you must first play on Yahoo=P The top of the mountain looks much better when you start from the bottom, as they say.
I also have a subscription to ICC for blitz. Although you don't run into many,there are fruitcakes on ICC. I've learned to turn off chat because some of them never stop babbling, insulting, threatening remarks during thegame. I've never played on Yahoo. I just wondered why everyone was giving it a bad rep.
Most of the people I've played with on ICC aren't too bad... I've encountered a few wierd people like one who insisted he could force checkmate with 2 knights but other than that its been pretty pleasant for me.
I have played some hundred or so games on Yahoo. It is a good place to play when you play those that are there to play. The down side is name calling, attitudes, and cheaters. To date I have been cheated by a hacker tactic, had the time changed from a twenty min. game to a min. game and the starting of the game, had a few programs used on me, ect. . P.S. A player rated 950 destroying a player rated 1700 pluss is a good indication that the player is useing a program. I once saw a player with a 3000 pluss rateing that had zero losses. Is that player a program?
Originally posted by gambit3LOL I ALMOST FORGOT THAT! Yeah, in yahoo, you make a "room" where you can control the time control etc. So there are alot of f***s who set say 20 mins on the clocks but when you join and have to "sit" (another stupid idea) they change it to 1 min and there's no sound played or whatever so you wouldn't know unless you were looking out for it. And besides, it would be pretty disconcerting if you were prepared for 20 mins and only got 1 min. And I suspect you may be right about the 3000 rated guy... a GM could probably do that but GMs play on ICC =P
I have played some hundred or so games on Yahoo. It is a good place to play when you play those that are there to play. The down side is name calling, attitudes, and cheaters. To date I have been cheated by a hacker tactic, had the time changed from a twenty min. game to a min. game and the starting of the game, had a few programs used on me, ect. . P.S. A p ...[text shortened]... m. I once saw a player with a 3000 pluss rateing that had zero losses. Is that player a program?
For Real there are tons of cheats on yapoo .. i play there myself quite alot but have been playing most on chessbase servers recently because they have some kind of cheat detector.. but its 100% true players with low ratings against players with high ratings.. if my rating gets to 1400 I start to bump into a lot of cheats..
and find if I play somebody twice who I beat 1st game they all of sudden turn into a GM..
best way to play I found is games less then 10mins.. 5mins even better as this dont give them or their computer enough time to make the moves.. you also find a lot of people wont play 5min games .. there join your room then quicky run away..
My rating on yapoo is like a fart in space suit.. up and down up and down.. when i get to 1400 it dont take long to get back to 1200.. then starts to slowly go back up..
Originally posted by CenterNutThose cheaters are the more common ones on Yahoo. They also have scripters who run scripts on 1 min blitz.
For Real there are tons of cheats on yapoo .. i play there myself quite alot but have been playing most on chessbase servers recently because they have some kind of cheat detector.. but its 100% true players with low ratings against players with high ratings.. if my rating gets to 1400 I start to bump into a lot of cheats..
and find if I play somebody twi ...[text shortened]... .. when i get to 1400 it dont take long to get back to 1200.. then starts to slowly go back up..
Originally posted by BLReidHow's playchess.com? I play on ICC which I like alot...
There's even a fool who advertises a program that will play for you on the Yahoo server. He advertises it in the Yahoo chess rooms! That is perhaps the single biggest reason that I don't like Yahoo or Pogo. I use RHP and playchess.com almost exclusively.
I like Playchess.com. The two blitz sites I use are ICC and Playchess.com. Usually I play on Playchess daytime here in U.S. Over there it's night, so there's usually plenty of opponents. I play ICC at night. Of the two ICC has tons more opponents. When you seek, you get a game within five seconds. On Playchess.com sometimes it'll take 30 secs to 1 minute. Playchess has chart which tracks your rating, which I like. they also have a neat graphic of the world and where all the players are located. When I play I find most players are english, german, dutch, etc. ICC is mostly U.S. but you can still find lots of extra-U.S. players. I've also looked at Chess21 and like their setup, though I don't feel like paying for another site.
Minimal features for a chess site:
1.rated and unrated games; available 24/7
2.games automatically saved in PGN format, or a proprietary format for software that can create PGN files
3.adjournment and noescape options
4.timeseal or timestamp (lag mitigation)
5.rules correctly implemented by server (castling, en passant, draws, time loss)
6.ratings based on ELO formulas
7.color rotation
Yahoo offers only the first of these minimal features.
See Edward D. Collins comparisons at http://www.edcollins.com/chess/yahoo-vs-servers.htm. He lists 39 features, of which only three are built into the yahoo playing environment.
There are many gaming sites where one may play chess, and there are many excellent chess sites. Pogo and Yahoo are for people too lazy to find a decent chess site, or for people who never use their own computer (or for some other reason can neither install decent playing software, nor are bothered by the malware that lurks in the darkness at sites like yahoo).