A New Evil? A New Good?

Let's agree that both the PlayChess server and the ChessClub server have two fundamental but surprisingly useful flaws: One, that you have to pay to really get the most out of them. Two, that you have to download software to use them. The latter flaw makes them unlikely candidates to destroy your desk-job, to leave you staring into your computer screen until the early hours, as life bubbles on all around the city without you, as you play out just one last 1+0, before finally getting down to that report due yesterday, that you tell yourself you're really about to do, this time... Meanwhile, the former flaw creates a prosaic boundary many flinch at crossing, for reasons of personal finance, pride, self-image, priorities, whatever. Thus we can find it within ourselves to resist these two perfect dealers of the stuff our addiction is made, to deny ourselves their unending rollercoaster ride of adrenaline and dejection, mixed with lectures and live coverage, ending with a migraine. FICS - free but otherwise similar - has a distinctive second flaw: the general absence of any strong players there to play blitz chess. So, we can stay mostly safe from the evil that all three might bring to our lives, and their flaws for our addictions are revealed as really gifts to our sanity.

Now, imagine a chess website, free to use, requiring no software, capable of the same kind of chess, smoothly running blitz, that kind of thing, and strong players to boot; imagine the danger to our daily life. On which note, allow me to introduce: ChessCube, which I've been trying out this week. First of all, the positives. The interface is attractive, the playing board smooth, there are extra features like chat-rooms, and all the normal things you'd expect, like choice of time-limits, take-back requests, pre-moves, that kind of thing. There are also strong enough players to decimate me. (For comparison, when I used to play on Playchess or Chessclub, my rating would typically bobble just a bit under 2300.) Although, there are several downsides, too. Chesscube is still in beta, and sometimes it really shows. Occasionally you will be disconnected without reason, sometimes various features freeze, and for a while every time I accepted a rematch, my opponent and I switched colours - but did not switch clocks! And whilst there are strong players, there aren't that many, yet...

So, there you go. You've been warned. Use with care. And in moments of particular weakness, recall the words of HG Wells:

The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations. The least satisfying of desires. A nameless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess.

(On the other hand, if you are feeling bored out of your mind, your finger twitching over your mouse as if a trigger, recall that Soren Kierkegaard wrote: "boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings." And human-beings created chess to cure boredom, to keep us from evil. At least, that's what I've been telling myself.)