My Problems With Chess.com

Once the new update hits, LiveChess will be replaced by PlayChess.  When that happens...

How will I watch my friends play? I'm an engineer, good with computers, and I can't figure it out so I'd imagine I'm not the only one struggling.

I'm a big fan of Chess.com to say the least. Check out my number of games and you can tell I've basically lived on this site for the better part of the last decade.  But in my honest opinion Chess.com is biting off more than they can chew (and more than is necessary to chew). The top three most important/useful/impressive features of this site are as follows.

1. Playing live chess - 2. Seamless game review - 3. Watching Your Friends Play

The league thing was pointless because it's just based on how much you play. If you manage to make it to the Legends League you can play for prizes but good luck because it's already flooded with world top Grandmasters... Following the pros is cool. Following mainstream chess events is cool. Having a ton of lessons and learning material is cool... But nothing topples those top 3.

1. Playing Live Chess - Really doing well here but playing high level 3|0 on the app is not possible.  Please make a feature for multiple premoves on the app!!! I don't know much about the service connection and bandwidth here but I can make multiple premoves from a google chrome app with chess.com pulled up so why can't I do it in the Chess.com app??? And on the mobile web server I can't cancel a premove so please also fix that.

2. Game Review - The game review is one of Chess.com's claims to fame but it's been so buggy lately.  When I click Review it behaves differently every time, sometimes walking me through the games and other times not registering. Usually when it doesn't register it's on the website and this feature is actually more successful on the app which is pretty much the only reason I still have the app on my phone, which is unfortunate to say.

3. Watching My Friends Play - So much fun and very important.  The app has basically hidden it. You need to click on "Watch" with the binoculars and scroll down past the all the chess events/news to get to the streamers page where there is 'sometimes' a box that says "Playing Now". For me, a lot of the time that box isn't even there - it's a bug.  I have to delete and redownload the app. Once you manage to get that box there you tap it, and then there's a tab at the top that says "Friends" that you have to click on... Horrible design! Make watching my friends more seamless please, por favor! In the binocular watch section there is no reason I should have free scroll rights; it should be pages so I can easily learn to swipe to the page I need at least to get to the one I want. That way you also stop the bug of things randomly disappearing because it will always load with the page.  Stop making me jump through hoops to watch my friends!  Finally, if my friend fires up a rematch I'd like to continue watching. The app allows me to automatically watch a rematch but the website does not. I need to manually click on my friend's name every rematch they play. As you can tell, I use your products A LOT.

In summary, I love that my favorite website/app strives for growth, but I hope in the midst of adding more and more features that they don't lose site of the things that brought me here in the first place.

Amen. Perfectly said. 

I agree sith everything you said and live chess is just fine! It doesn't have to be replaced 

Hail Satan

game review hasn't been a problem for me. 

Maybe you're talking about the app?

But I like live chess too. Especially the part where you can do almost anything in the commands. 

For watching your friends, the show up under the Players tab and Friends. If you sort by Status, tiul be able to easily see anyone that is playing.

doesnt bug me at all I LIKE THE NEW AMERICAN WAY, go play server i love the new interface!

Great post!

Your rise has been meteoric.

well, I quit using live long time ago, play seems to be much better and easier to use, everything in one place. You might not have tried it well enough, like maybe do not use tabs (besides the new game tab there are also highly usable games and players), maybe haven't noted it yet. The play is really cool and since some time all features seem to be fully covered.

I'll move to play as soon as I can find the settings for piece animations 

The main site settings have that as does the gear icon at the top right of the board.

Yeah, I see that, and my animation type is already set, but it doesn't appear during games. (natural)

None of this stuff has ever really bothered me. Although /live lets you have live analysis while watching a game and I liked the old piece animations better, /play is built better and has less lag. I wish chess.com could just combine the features from both of them instead of deleting one.

Are you sure it's not working or  just doesn't work like you expect? Also, is it not working for any time control?

You can have analysis running while watching games in Play

I guess I don't play enough or understand enough to grasp what is going to change.  FWIW (nothing) I like chess.com just the way it is and wouldn't change it.

I too love live chess, but what I have observed so far is, /play has almost everything which was there in /live. Even if /play lacks something as of now, I am very sure that chesscom is gonna take of those things once they update their servers. 

What so you think is missing?

Alright! It might sound silly, but I miss that dark red colour when you right click on the squares to highlight. That looks so beautiful 😍. It's missing in /play. Highlighted square looks very dull here. And overall, I feel the interface looks very intense and beautiful to me in /live. /Play interface looks somewhat mild when compared to /live. Correct me if I am wrong @Martin_Stahl 🙂

There are some slight visual differences on those things