It’s worth mentioning that chess is an entirely different beast when you have an opponent facing you on the other side of a real-life chessboard, especially with slower time controls-and a great way to make new acquaintances, too. You can earn yourself FIDE-recognized titles by earning and maintaining high enough ratings (you can find a breakdown here), and prize money competitions and strong qualifier events to big tournaments also provide added appeal to an otherwise somewhat barebones platform. Here, it’s the prestige of a “real” rating and the chance to compete in meaningful tournaments that serve as an attraction. There’s also the world chess federation’s own platform, a recent addition to the world of online chess. But they also offer their own client for a fairly vanilla chess-playing experience, with a couple hundred to a thousand players online at any time, a perfect way to play if you’re in love with the Chessbase interface.

Nowadays, Chessbase is best known for its powerful offline analysis software and gigantic yearly database of over-the-board games, both of which are must-haves for tournament-level players.

Online chess with real players