Article refers to Instant Chess, the online chess community:
Part of the Chess Play Area
Instant Chess
Instant Chess is a web-based community for both casual and more competitive Chess enthusiasts, alike, created by Talento Technologies - a Russian group of software programmers - in 1999.
Interestingly there are now more players from the United States and Britain, than from Russia. If you subscribe, you can expect to find and compete against players from 147 different countries.
Play For Free
At the very basic level, you can simply create a player name for yourself, then click the "Start Game" button and the website will begin its search for other visitors who are waiting to play someone.
If it's you that's clicked "Start A Game", you'll be playing as White - so just make your first move, as soon as an opponent becomes active, else you may find they lose interest quickly and quit your game before you've begun.
Look, here's one I played earlier (Tuesday 29th December 2009, to be precise):
I don't know who Z93 is, but he/she took up the challenge and I was playing within 5 seconds of clicking on that "Start Game" button, which is "Instant" enough for me.
At the end of the game, you're able to choose whether to have a re-match with that opponent or not - at which point, you're able to play back through the moves and study what happened.
But, that's about as far as things go with the free version.
Pay & Subscribe For More
If you want to be able to Chat and more, then there's a paid subscription service, for which there is a choice (prices correct when captured, 2009):
- Standard Subscription
This is aimed at the "Casual" player and, rather than signing up for a monthly plan, you pay per batch of games - 100 is the minimum, costing about $6.
The major differences between this and the Premium version is, with the Standard subscription, you:
- Don't get a Played Openings Report
- Don't get to enter Live Tournaments
- Don't get to view opponent's playing Record
- Don't get Ad-free content
- Premier Subscription
With this subscription option, you pay a monthly fee - about $7-8 per month - and in return, you get all the analysis data about your opponents, as well as the Standard Chat, Time control and other settings.
Is It Worth Bothering With?
There aren't any Human-vs-Computer settings with Instant Chess; it's all Human-vs-Human, which is great for testing your skills against real people ...
But, you can't expect to restart a game mid-way through, or Undo moves that didn't work, as you'd soon likely get a poor reputation and find nobody will play you.
Far better to first study a bit with some good Chess training books, DVD-based tutorials, and analyze with a program like Fritz 12 ...
Then, when you've practiced various Chess Openings and learnt different Chess Tactics, and you feel ready to test your ability, as I found, the Instant Chess website is worth a visit - create your name and start a game.
| Click Here To Visit The Instant Chess Website |
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