ChessLive.com: Review

Today I will be doing a review of an online chess playing website called ChessLive.com. There are many websites that allow you to play online chess.

What’s so special about this one? Well, let’s take a closer look from the inside and find out.

When you login to the ChessLive, the interface looks nice and clean. You can look for the game with specified parameters such as time control, time increment and opponent’s strength. The time control can be adjusted from 1 to 25 minutes, increment from 1 to 15 seconds and opponent’s strength from 1500 to 2600.

Everything looks clear and bluish (I like this color scheme, you have probably noticed it already from TheChessWorld.com layout).

Searching for Game

Once you have created a game, it appears in the chart below. Since I haven’t played any of the games yet I’m assigned a provisional rating of 1500. That seems a little bit too high, most servers give you a standard 1200. The chess players are denoted as chess pieces by the relative ‘weight’. For example, 1500-1600 is a pawn, 1600-1800 is a knight, 1800-2000 is a bishop, 2000-2200 is a rook, etc. I must agree with ChessLive team, I also usually favor bishops to knights (except for dead closed positions)

Playing Environment

When the game is started the chess board page appears. Everything works smoothly, without any lag or freezing (at least for me). The board and pieces are big enough and easy to distinguish. Clocks are also fairly visible. Chess pieces make cool clicking sounds when the move is made. There is also some special ringing sound for captures.

That’s useful for some, who like to browse the web while waiting for the opponent’s move. You can also play with the account’s settings and change the chess board theme to brown, lilac (purple!) and gray.

Training Environment

Not only you can play on ChessLive.com but you can also improve your tactics skills. This section however, is only available for VIP members. Thanks to Mr. David Kaufmann, I was able to take a look at it for the review purposes. There are various possibilities for training as you can see below:

This is one of the tactics problems, can you find mate in 2 for White?

White to move and mate in 2

I don’t typically play bullet (1 minute time control) games, but I did it here for testing purposes. You can see the game below. Don’t judge it, as Rashid Nezhmetdinov stated He who analyses blitz is stupid.

Verdict

ChessLive.com is a new, awesome website for playing chess online. It already has around 14,000 registered members, so finding a game is not a problem. The interface is clean, responsive and easy to use. The tactics exercises are also a valuable resource for those who wants to improve.

I was a little surprised with a small range of time controls, it can only be adjusted to 25 minutes max per side. Some people like playing longer chess games, so adding 30, 45 and 90 minutes controls makes a lot of sense. Other than that, the site is pretty awesome!

I recommend you to check the ChessLive.com out, play couple of game and leave some comments below!