IMPORTANT: Sadly, when I copied this from a Word document to here, much of the formatting did not carry over, and the images disappeared. I will gradually fix this and post individual topics to the Forum. In the meanwhile, this has the basic information. If you want the full document, please send me your email via messages.
Cincinnati Chess Club – Chess.com: THE BASICS
This document discusses some basic concepts for using chess.com to access the online Cincinnati Chess Club. There are many other things to do on the site, and many ways to do some of the things that are useful, but hopefully this will help you get started.
This document will be posted in the Cincinnati Chess Club Forum section.
If you want the document emailed to you, send a message to jsdavis with your email address.
Chess.com account
If you see this, then you already have a chess.com account!!
Cincinnati Chess Club
Main menu: In chess.com, on every page, you’ll see this on the left-hand side:
Hover over “connect” and click “clubs.” Type in “Cincinnati Chess Club” (or just Cincinnati) (you may need to click “Find Clubs”).
Click Join. You are now a member of the online Cincinnati Chess Club.
Home Page – Messages and Profile
Go to the Home page (click “Home” on the left-hand side of the screen). There are two options of interest here:
When you hover over Home, there is a “Message” selection. You can send a message to someone (such as the club Admin – jsdavis), or check your messages – club news, tournament invitations, message from Admin, etc. If you have messages waiting, you’ll see a circled number next to “Home.”
There is a “Profile” selection, where you can change your username, actual name, etc. Consider putting in some identifying information such as your first name so that other club members know who you are. This is optional, of course.
Cincinnati Chess Club
Whenever you want to go to the Cincinnati Chess Club, you can hover over Connect on the left-hand menu. Click on Clubs at the top, or the tab “Clubs” half-way down the page on the left. In either case, click on Cincinnati Chess Club, and this will take you to the main Cincinnati Chess Club page. At the top, you should see the Deer Park address, founding date, and number of members.
The Cincinnati Chess Club may also be listed under Clubs on your Home page (right-hand side, you may have to scroll down), if you have it set up that way. That’s an even easier way to get there.
In the Cincinnati Chess Club, click on “Members” at the top (there’s also a selection “Members” on the right-hand side). This will show you a list of members by username (and real name, if the member included it in their profile). You can sort by various ways. A green square on the photo means they are currently online (also says “Online Now”), an orange square means they are in “Live Chess” (also says “In Live”).
You can sort by “Highest Rating,” but this rating is based on “Daily Chess.” To see other ratings, on the right-hand side of the main Club page, click on “Player Leaderboard.” From here, you can sort by Daily, Rapid, or Blitz (etc.) ratings.
From the members list, there is a list of icons (the first one is a diamond) next to each member:
Roll over the icons to see the function of each icon. Some useful icons are:
Challenge
“Challenge” – this can be used if you want to challenge a member to a game – either “Daily” or “Live Chess” (more on the difference later).
Messages
“Send message” – you can send a message directly to that person.
Friend Requests
“Add Friend” – sends a request to that person to be added as a friend. The advantage of friending members is that you can find them easier to see if they are online and in the “Live Chess” section of the site (i.e., they’re playing chess games, or ready to do so). So you may want to send friend requests to those members you might want to play a game with.
Go back to the Home page. Note that if you sent any Friend requests and have received replies, you can see your friends on the right-hand side under “friends.” Again, a green square means they are online, an orange square means they are in the Live Chess section.
Playing Live Chess
OK, how do you play a live chess game? There are many ways, but we’ll focus on a couple:
From within Live Chess:
On the Home page, roll over the “Play” button, and click “Live Chess.” This will take you to the “Live Chess” section of the site. You should see two tabs on the right – “Play” and “Tournaments” (and maybe “Game,” depending on your settings). You want to be on the “Play” tab.
Notice under the Play tab (and above the big orange “Play” button) there is a time, such as “10 min.” There is a dropdown box, where you can change the time control of the game you want to play.
If you now click on Play, a random challenge will be sent to everyone in the world who’s on chess.com and who wants to play the same time control and is within a certain rating range (200 or 300 points, though this can be changed). After waiting a bit (usually a few seconds), a blank board will pop up (usually in a tab marked “Game”) and you’re ready to play. This is a good way to establish a rating, if you don’t have one.
OK, but what if you want to play a friend?
There are multiple ways to do this. One way: Go to Play >> Live Chess. On the right-hand side, on either half-way down the screen is a series of tabs:
The third icon from the left is the Friends icon. Click on that and you will see your friends who are online and in the Live Chess area).
To the right of the name will be either “Playing” or “Online.”
If playing, then they can’t accept a challenge right now. If you click on the word “Playing,” you will go to the “Game” tab and can observe their game. Kind of like walking around the club and checking in on other people’s games.
If the word is “Online,” then they might be interested in a game. Click on the word “online,” and a Challenge box opens, where you can set the time control. Click on the big orange “Play” button and a challenge goes to that player, with the time control. If they accept, then your game starts.
If you click on the player’s name, then you basically get the same choices as the previous #8.
Note that while you are on this page, you might get a challenge to play, because your friends can see you are in the Live Chess section, and so assume you might want to play a game. There will be a popup box in the lower right-hand part of your screen, listing the player and time control, along with options to Accept/ Decline. If you accept, the game starts immediately.
A caution: If you are hanging out in the Live Chess section, then others will assume you are open for a game and may challenge you. If you go away from your computer for a while, go back to your Home page, so you aren’t shown in the Live Chess section. Otherwise, people may challenge you and have to wait a while before they realize you’re not really there.
What if I want to play a chess club member not on my friend’s list?
First, go to the list of club members (Connect >> Clubs >> Cincinnati Chess Clun>> Members), and look at the icons next to each person’s name.
The second button from the left is “Challenges.” You can challenge members from here. Note that you only want to challenge members to a live game if they are actually online (green or orange square).
Newcomer status – When you try to challenge someone, you might get a message that reads:
"Challenge failed. You are unable to challenge Title and other protected players until you have played more games."
Players who have joined within the last 48 hours or have played fewer than 8 games have “newcomer” status.” This means you cannot challenge “premium” players (those with paid memberships) or titled players. Most players are not paid members, so generally this won’t be an issue. To get around this: 1) Play somebody else; 2) Send them a message asking them to challenge you; or 3) Wait for 48 hours and play at least 8 games before challenging them again.
Even after this, you might be denied because your "relative deviation" (essentially the certainty of your rating based on recent games) is too high; the only antidote here is to play more games and get a more-established rating before challenging that person again.
Live Tournaments
How do I play a live tournament?
Chess.com always has lots of live tournaments going on in nearly every possible format. In addition, the Cincinnati Chess Club will have some live tournaments during Thursday meeting times.
To play in a live tournament, go to Play >> Live Chess and click on the Tournaments tab (upper right). You’ll see a list of tournaments run by chess.com. You can click these and join, then play the tournament when it starts.
Cincinnati Chess Club Live Tournaments
The Cincinnati Chess Club will host live tournaments on some Thursdays during meeting time, probably starting at 7ish.
We will send an announcement via various means for the start time of the tournament (generally on Thursdays during meeting time).
Go to Play >> Live Chess, and click on the tournaments tab. The tournaments are listed in order by start time. Find the advertised tournament name, click on it, then click on Join.
You can join up to an hour before the tournament starts.
The tournament will start at the advertised time, at the stated time control and number of rounds, using the usual Swiss pairing rules (or in some cases, Arena rules).
Daily Chess
How do I play “Daily Chess?”
“Daily Chess” is similar in concept to the old-fashioned “Correspondence Chess.” Each side has a day or more to make their move, although usually players make multiple moves in a day. The most common time control is three days per move, though other players prefer two days or one day. Daily Chess lets you take your time in thinking about moves (and so is good for study) and you can play multiple games at once. You can play a move or two when you don’t necessarily have time to commit to playing an entire live game. On the cautionary side, you have to log in to chess.com often enough so you don’t lose on time (using the phone app is useful here), and some games can drag on if one opponent takes the maximum time for every single move.
Here’s how to play Daily Chess:
Go to Play >> Daily Chess. Under New Game, click the orange “Play” button.
Note the screen above says “vs. Random.” Under “Time,” choose a time per move (suggest 3 days per move as a start). If you now click the orange Play button, a challenge will go out to others on chess.com looking for a 3-day-per-move game, and who are within a certain rating range (usually 200 or 300 points of your rating). When the game starts, make your move if you play white, or wait for your opponent.
Another option is to “Play a Friend.” To challenge a friend, select the option “Play a friend” on the screen above, choose a time control and friend’s name from the list, then click on the orange Play button. A challenge will go out to your friend, and the game starts when they accept.
You can also challenge any member in the Cincinnati Chess Club by going to the Members page, then clicking on the “Challenge” icon next to their name.
When you have started a game or a few games, and it’s your turn, you will see a number in red next to the “Play” selection on the main menu on the left of your screen, like this (this shows that there are 4 games on which it is my turn):
Click on Play to go directly to a game, or (better) hover over “Play” and click “Daily Chess” to see all your current games. You can adjust the view to see the positions on all the games you are currently playing.
Daily Chess Tournaments
As with Live chess, you have the option to play in a Daily Chess tournament. On the Daily Chess page, (i.e., Play >> Daily Games), click on Tournaments:
Within tournaments, Click on “Daily Tournaments” on the right, and you’ll see a list of tournaments to play. Click on a tournament to read the details, then click on “Join.” You’ll be registered, then the tournament will start when it reaches the maximum number of registrants, or at a specific time, depending on how it is set up.
Cincinnati Chess Club “Daily Chess” Tournaments
CCC Daily Chess tournaments are run as “Invite Only” tournaments, so that only CCC members can play in them. Once a tournament is set up, all online Club members will receive an invitation from the Club Admin/TD. This invitation will contain details about the tournament. You can “Join” the tournament directly from this page. Or you can click on the tournament name to take a look at the tournament setup and see players who have registered. Then click “Join” if interested.
A few specific notes about CCC tournaments from the Club Admin/TD (jsdavis) (NOTE: you don’t really need to know this detail to join a tournament, but it’s here for those interested):
I prefer faster time controls (1 day), although 3-day is the default and preferred by many players, so I’ll have a mix of everything. If you sign up for a 1-move-per-day, make sure you check chess.com every single day so you don’t time out.
Tournaments are usually limited to a 10% time-out rate for the past 90 days. If you exceed this, you won’t be able to join a tournament until your rate is less than 10%. The way to get your rate lower is to finish your current tournament games with timing out, and to play non-tournament games without timing out! Or wait 3 months. Or you can contact me (jsdavis) and I can adjust the settings.
Tournaments are set up so that the players are in small groups (say, 30 players are divided into 6 groups of 5 each). Then one round is played, so that the players play two games each (white and black) with each opponent. When ALL the games in that round have finished, the top 1 or 2 in each group go to the next round, and so on. The problem with this method is that, when you finish a round, you have to wait for all other games to finish, which might be a month or two or more. Then, when you least expect it, when you’re on a vacation in France or something, you have a new batch of games to play and 1 day or 3 days to make your moves. The tournament can drag out forever. I am setting up tournaments consisting only of five players total. Each player plays one game against each opponent (four games total), and when a game ends, you play another game against that opponent (switching colors). When you play all 8 games, your tournament is over, and the tournament is over after everyone plays 8 games. So the tournaments don’t drag on forever.
Daily games in general and some tournaments allow for “vacation” time. This means that, if you go on vacation, you can pause all your games. Thus, one person who decides to pause their games for a month delays the whole tournament. I set up the CCC tournaments so that vacation time is not allowed (and who can go on vacation now, anyway)?
Many online tournaments post the tournament and then wait to reach their maximum number of players. So if you sign up, you might have to wait a long time for the tournament to start. I plan to set up a tournament for a maximum of 5 players, but I will manually start the tournament within a certain period of time (probably 3 days) as long as at least two people have signed up. In that case, the tournament will be fewer than 5 players, and fewer than 8 games per player. This way, you know that once you Join, the tournament will start fairly quickly, and not in the distant future.
I’m willing to set up tournaments often enough to make sure everyone is included. If you would like me to set up a tournament, please send me a message, with a suggested time control (1 to 3 days). Also let me know if you want the tournament restricted to a certain rating range; so far, all the CCC tournaments are open rating to encourage unrated members to play and get a rating, but eventually I’ll set some up by certain rating ranges (under 1200 vs. over 1200, for example).
Online Etiquette and Ethics
Don’t use a computer to analyze your games while they are ongoing. Afterwards is fine. Chess.com has an algorithm to look for cheating and will kick people off the site.
Don’t accuse somebody of cheating unless you have really good evidence! Maybe people have cheated against me – I can’t really know – but every game I’ve lost, I’ve deserved to lose.
Be nice. Besides being a good principle in general, you might meet the online members at the club someday!
If you’re in a losing position, don’t just stop playing and let your time run out. This goes for both Live Chess and Daily Chess. This is frustrating to the opponent and a big waste of time and life. This is doubly valid for tournaments – because then everybody in the tournament is waiting on one person who doesn’t even want to play.
If you’re in a Live Chess tournament and only want to play the first few rounds, that’s perfectly OK. But please withdraw after the last round you want to play. Otherwise, somebody gets paired against you and they won’t have a game to play. Very frustrating and wasteful.
What else can you do online in the Cincinnati Chess Club?
On the Club home page, there are options for News, Forum, Notes and Chat. The Forum is where we plan to post topics to get feedback from the members (e.g., preferred time controls) or offer answers to questions – suggest you go there to post a question, and we will try to answer it. The Notes is more of a running commentary on whatever strikes you (chess related, of course).
Club virtual meetings: Thursdays, 6:30 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. or whenever
The Cincinnati Chess Club will meet online on chess.com on Thursdays, 6:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. or whenever. Members can log in at that time, knowing that there will usually be other club members and friends logged in. You can then play chess games, look at other people play chess games, post notes, look at the group chat, or whatever.
In addition, we’ll have live tournaments for Club members during many meetings.
The purpose of having the online meeting at the usual club meeting time (Thursdays, 6:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. or whenever) is to support the continuity of the club during the virus shutdown.
Of course, chess.com goes 24/7 and you can always log in. In fact, there are often several club members online on most evenings (as shown by the green and orange squares). There is also a lot more to the site than discussed here – e.g., puzzles, articles, videos. I’ve focused on the group Club activities rather than individual activities.
No cost: You can do everything described in this document for free on chess.com, but there are other things you can do with a paid membership. I’ve had a paid membership since 2012 and think it’s worthwhile, and it’s a good chess site to support. You can join the online Cincinnati Chess Club online for free, too. However, if you want to join the actual Cincinnati Chess Club as a show of support, or renew your membership, you can pay online at cincinnatichessclub.com, go to “About,” and then “Memberships.”
Symmes Library Chess Club on chesskid.com
The Symmes Library Chess Club used to meet at the library on Tuesday nights, but now meets online at chesskid.com. (Chesskid.com is oriented toward kids, not only in design and content, but in watching out for kids’ safety – no chat, no friending with adults, etc.) If you have a kid who might be interested, send an email to jeffdavis@cinci.rr.com.
IMPORTANT: Sadly, when I copied this from a Word document to here, much of the formatting did not carry over, and the images disappeared. I will gradually fix this and post individual topics to the Forum. In the meanwhile, this has the basic information. If you want the full document, please send me your email via messages.
Cincinnati Chess Club – Chess.com: THE BASICS
This document discusses some basic concepts for using chess.com to access the online Cincinnati Chess Club. There are many other things to do on the site, and many ways to do some of the things that are useful, but hopefully this will help you get started.
This document will be posted in the Cincinnati Chess Club Forum section.
If you want the document emailed to you, send a message to jsdavis with your email address.
Chess.com account
If you see this, then you already have a chess.com account!!
Cincinnati Chess Club
Home Page – Messages and Profile
Cincinnati Chess Club
Roll over the icons to see the function of each icon. Some useful icons are:
Challenge
Messages
Friend Requests
Playing Live Chess
On the Home page, roll over the “Play” button, and click “Live Chess.” This will take you to the “Live Chess” section of the site. You should see two tabs on the right – “Play” and “Tournaments” (and maybe “Game,” depending on your settings). You want to be on the “Play” tab.
There are multiple ways to do this. One way: Go to Play >> Live Chess. On the right-hand side, on either half-way down the screen is a series of tabs:
The third icon from the left is the Friends icon. Click on that and you will see your friends who are online and in the Live Chess area).
To the right of the name will be either “Playing” or “Online.”
If playing, then they can’t accept a challenge right now. If you click on the word “Playing,” you will go to the “Game” tab and can observe their game. Kind of like walking around the club and checking in on other people’s games.
If the word is “Online,” then they might be interested in a game. Click on the word “online,” and a Challenge box opens, where you can set the time control. Click on the big orange “Play” button and a challenge goes to that player, with the time control. If they accept, then your game starts.
If you click on the player’s name, then you basically get the same choices as the previous #8.
Note that while you are on this page, you might get a challenge to play, because your friends can see you are in the Live Chess section, and so assume you might want to play a game. There will be a popup box in the lower right-hand part of your screen, listing the player and time control, along with options to Accept/ Decline. If you accept, the game starts immediately.
A caution: If you are hanging out in the Live Chess section, then others will assume you are open for a game and may challenge you. If you go away from your computer for a while, go back to your Home page, so you aren’t shown in the Live Chess section. Otherwise, people may challenge you and have to wait a while before they realize you’re not really there.
First, go to the list of club members (Connect >> Clubs >> Cincinnati Chess Clun>> Members), and look at the icons next to each person’s name.
The second button from the left is “Challenges.” You can challenge members from here. Note that you only want to challenge members to a live game if they are actually online (green or orange square).
"Challenge failed. You are unable to challenge Title and other protected players until you have played more games."
Players who have joined within the last 48 hours or have played fewer than 8 games have “newcomer” status.” This means you cannot challenge “premium” players (those with paid memberships) or titled players. Most players are not paid members, so generally this won’t be an issue. To get around this: 1) Play somebody else; 2) Send them a message asking them to challenge you; or 3) Wait for 48 hours and play at least 8 games before challenging them again.
Even after this, you might be denied because your "relative deviation" (essentially the certainty of your rating based on recent games) is too high; the only antidote here is to play more games and get a more-established rating before challenging that person again.
Live Tournaments
Chess.com always has lots of live tournaments going on in nearly every possible format. In addition, the Cincinnati Chess Club will have some live tournaments during Thursday meeting times.
Cincinnati Chess Club Live Tournaments
Daily Chess
“Daily Chess” is similar in concept to the old-fashioned “Correspondence Chess.” Each side has a day or more to make their move, although usually players make multiple moves in a day. The most common time control is three days per move, though other players prefer two days or one day. Daily Chess lets you take your time in thinking about moves (and so is good for study) and you can play multiple games at once. You can play a move or two when you don’t necessarily have time to commit to playing an entire live game. On the cautionary side, you have to log in to chess.com often enough so you don’t lose on time (using the phone app is useful here), and some games can drag on if one opponent takes the maximum time for every single move.
Go to Play >> Daily Chess. Under New Game, click the orange “Play” button.
Note the screen above says “vs. Random.” Under “Time,” choose a time per move (suggest 3 days per move as a start). If you now click the orange Play button, a challenge will go out to others on chess.com looking for a 3-day-per-move game, and who are within a certain rating range (usually 200 or 300 points of your rating). When the game starts, make your move if you play white, or wait for your opponent.
Click on Play to go directly to a game, or (better) hover over “Play” and click “Daily Chess” to see all your current games. You can adjust the view to see the positions on all the games you are currently playing.
Daily Chess Tournaments
Within tournaments, Click on “Daily Tournaments” on the right, and you’ll see a list of tournaments to play. Click on a tournament to read the details, then click on “Join.” You’ll be registered, then the tournament will start when it reaches the maximum number of registrants, or at a specific time, depending on how it is set up.
Cincinnati Chess Club “Daily Chess” Tournaments
A few specific notes about CCC tournaments from the Club Admin/TD (jsdavis) (NOTE: you don’t really need to know this detail to join a tournament, but it’s here for those interested):
Club virtual meetings: Thursdays, 6:30 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. or whenever
In addition, we’ll have live tournaments for Club members during many meetings.
The purpose of having the online meeting at the usual club meeting time (Thursdays, 6:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. or whenever) is to support the continuity of the club during the virus shutdown.
Of course, chess.com goes 24/7 and you can always log in. In fact, there are often several club members online on most evenings (as shown by the green and orange squares). There is also a lot more to the site than discussed here – e.g., puzzles, articles, videos. I’ve focused on the group Club activities rather than individual activities.
The Symmes Library Chess Club used to meet at the library on Tuesday nights, but now meets online at chesskid.com. (Chesskid.com is oriented toward kids, not only in design and content, but in watching out for kids’ safety – no chat, no friending with adults, etc.) If you have a kid who might be interested, send an email to jeffdavis@cinci.rr.com.
Jeff Davis, revised 3/28/2020