Where Can I Play Chess!

Study. Play. Reflect.

Chess is one of the oldest and most played game in the world. It is not the easiest game to play, but it is one of the most rewarding game to play.

And with the Internet, there's a lot of sites where you can easily find a game to play. But I would recommend playing at . This is simply because Gameknot has quite a clean and fast interface, with lots of tournaments, custom made tournaments, team games and others.

Let's take a look. Here is Gameknot at a glance:

This is how the front page is once you have logged in. The clean interface makes it easy to navigate and find information. On the left hand side is the navigation bar. In the middle is the game list telling you what type of game it is, who the opponent is and most importantly, how much time you have left. IMPORTANT: Gameknot is a web based chess site. Meaning, you make a move and your opponent has a certain amount of time to make his reply. This gives both of you time to think about your response. Although it is slow moving and some players do not like this, Gameknot allows you to play multiple games, so you're bound to have a fe games waiting for your response every time you log in.

Let's go through some of the options on the left hand side:

GAMEKNOT GENERATED TOURNAMENTS

This is the tournament page, listing all past and current tournaments and the group you're playing in. You're automatically and randomly placed in a group matching your skill level (ELO rating). Of course, within the duration of the tournament, you rating might rise or drop, but you're still stuck in the same group until you complete all your games. As for me, since I as rated just above 1500, I was placed in the Intermediate section.

USER GENERATED TOURNAMENTS

Being rebellious by nature, human beings love to go against any system. So, Gameknot allows the creation of custom tournaments, called mini-tournaments.

Depending on your membership level, you're allowed certain number of active mini-tournaments at any one time. In my case, I have three mini-tournaments at this particular moment. As you can see from the table above, each tournament has 11 players, which gives me about 20 games (you play twice against your opponents, once with the White piece, then with the Black piece) . You can also see the allowed player ratings for each tournament and the time control and also the progress of the tournament.

Let's look at the second tournament in the list.

As you can see, I am in the second last position. I am currently playing 4 games, finished 5 games and have 11 more games to go. Clicking on any of the 1's (wins)and 0's (losses) will bring up the game window, as shown below.

TEAMS

The best part of Gameknot is its team games. You get to join teams of your liking and their fun to play in. Team captains challenge other teams with a bunch of players and the other team responds accordingly. You have a responsibility to play to the best of your ability because any losses bring the team score down. I am a proud member of the Global Bounty Hunters, and this is ho my team page looks like :

From here you can see the overall team score, the number of matches played and each team member's team statistics, i.e. how many team games have they played, how many wins and their current rating.

CLUBS

One of Gameknot's strength is the opportunity to setup your own chess club. Each club has a purpose. For example, I am in the chess coaching club, in order to learn and get some help from other members so that I don't always end up being last in most mini-tournaments.

The club forums are quite active with players asking for advise, discussing strategies and so forth.

LEAGUES

There is also a chess league in which you can play. If you win more than you lose, you rise up the division and if you lose, you go to the division below.

USER PROFILE

This is where you keep track on your progress - are you improving, do you play better with White or Black,  download all your past games in PGN format to study (I hope) and many more.

FORUMS

The forums are the jewel of the site. Anything and everything related to chess is discussed here.

So, why not play in Gameknot after all?

To learn how to improve you chess game, check out my little snippet on Improving Your Game