Chess-o-holic
I have been playing a lot of chess online. I have been using two different sites and I figured I would share my experiences.
The first site I tried is called RedHotPawn.com. It is a very tidy, easy to use website. It's interface is easy to use, and the advertising is unobtrusive. The downside is that they only allow you to play 6 games simultaneously. This may not sound like a big restriction, but when your opponents are only making a move every few days, this is a big bottleneck. They remove this restriction if you pay a modest fee of 6 dollars a month or 30 dollars per year.
The second site I play on is chesmaniac.com This website is certainly less polished, and not as easy to use, but it allows unlimited games without a fee. There is a lot of very good competition on both sites.
One downside I see with Chessmaniac is that all of the timeouts are mandatory. If either player fails to move within the prescribed time, the game is recorded as a resignation. On RedHotPawn if your opponent doesn't move within the allocated time, you have the option of sending a reminder or claiming the win. It is kind of sad sometimes to win a game because of a timeout when you where really enjoying it and would prefer to see how it would have played out. The other effect of the mandatory timeouts is that the ratings tend to be more jumpy. and inaccurate.
Here are my games so far from the chessmaniac site. Sometimes I am brilliant, sometimes I am boring, and sometimes I make really dumb mistakes.
