Chess.com Reviews 1,586

Your rating on this site has no relationship to your real FIDE and USCF rating. If you play here your rating soars high then dramatically lowers, over and over until you end up in a vicious cycle of up and down while the site tries to sell you lessons. I've spoken to many players on the site and those I spoke to had the same experience. No one improves. We all just go in circles. If we go to other sites our ratings are completely different and increase gradually according to our skill development and not in the artificial and dramatic ups and downs on Chess.com which seem more about ego than about chess. The extreme ups and downs in rating, which take place on Chess.com and not in real life in OTB games or other sites, makes the site more addictive yet more depressing. You come away feeling like your game never gets any better and you stop enjoying chess if you only play on chess.com

Don't use this app, it's only the most famous, which allows them to give poor service, since they have the popularity already, that gets them customers.
1 - only 1 proper analysis allowed a day, compared to infinite on lichess.
2 - banned my account for cheating after playing thousands of games with about half the games being losses, many of which against cheaters who were down 5 points in material out of the first 10 moves, then suddenly started playing like engines for the rest of the game.
3 - chess.com detection for cheating is so stupid you can basically play a game on it and use the engine on another screen, then purposely make some inaccuracies during the game so you win anyway but don't get caught.
4 - they keep asking you to buy premium and it's super annoying
5 - the most unbelievable thing, they either don't have human support, or for sure they try their absolute best to avoid you getting in touch with them, by using AI that understands none of the questions you ask, ever.
6 - in the game that (probably) caused me the ban, i played a line i know very well, up to move 12 or 13 or something, with my opponent resigning in a lost position, this was enough evidence for them to ban me. If the same line had been played by Hikaru, this wouldn't have happened. So basically strong players are allowed to play a line they know very well. Normal players like me (2250) are not allowed to play a line we know very well. If we do, it must be cheating.
7 - the app stupidly pairs your two years old account up against users who created the account 4 hours ago and have 10 wins out of 10. ridicolous.
8 - chess in general is a game played by people who don't have a sense of sportmanship, will abandon the screen when they're losing, mock you when they flag you in a lost game and chess.com does absolutely nothing about it.

• Easy to find games fast.
• Has lots of learning tools (puzzles, lessons, analysis).
• Big community — millions of players worldwide.
• Fun events like puzzle rush, arenas, and tournaments.

The only thing I don’t like sometimes is:
• The chat/toxicity from some players.
• Lag or disconnections (rare, but annoying).
• The “brilliant move” system feels random sometimes .

But overall → I’d say it’s one of the best chess apps out there.

I’ve been paying for a Diamond membership on Chess.com, but I am now unsubscribing and quitting the platform altogether. The experience has been absolutely terrible.

I’ve reported countless obvious cases of cheating and reached out to support multiple times, yet nothing meaningful is ever done. Every time I raise a ticket, I get the same canned, copy-and-paste responses with zero transparency. They refuse to explain how cheaters are being handled, and from what I can see, nothing changes.

I’m new to chess, sitting around 400 ELO, and yet 17 of my last 20 games were against players who were clearly cheating. These accounts are brand-new, running at 98% accuracy with engine assistance, and they don’t care if they get banned because they just create another one. The entire system is broken.

At this point, Chess.com is completely unplayable and unenjoyable. The platform is overrun with cheaters, support is useless, and paying members are left with a ruined experience. It’s a shame, because it had so much potential, but I’m done wasting my time and money here.

Literally everything costs money, there is no way to improve your skills without paying them, honestly so frustrating

Terrible, tons of cheaters. Lichess is much better.

Too many bugs and issues. Do use.

Terrible website, no support, too much advertising, just rubbish

There is no way to improve your rating or monitor how well you are doing because most players either cheat (use an engine or a book) or claim to be at a rating much lower than their actual ability. How many times have I been +4 points of material up to suddenly face grandmaster moves? It is absolute nonsense. And yes you can report these players for cheating. And then chess.com does absolutely nothing about it? Why? Because their entire financial model is based on number of site users. I get that but it renders the whole purpose of the site - fair chess for all - utterly meaningless. And the ads that pushed onto me are totally random and meaningless. If you do play on here, don't give them a penny of your money.

So much cheating with Software

I've used it for a while the features are nice but the site has become too focused on pushing premium, free users faces too many ads and limits .

Tried this site for a week and EVERYTHINGs broken.
Matchmaking - broken
Rating - broken
Game stats - broken
Game records - broken
I can't believe a site that's been around for so long can be such trash.
This is probably why everyone uses Lichess for chess variants.

Best part of the site/app is that you get to play against people. The rest is questionable business ethics practice at best interpretation, and fraudulent at worst. The summary is that chess.com doesn't have a product worth buying, so it must goad people into paying. This may seem harsh, but please read on.

For example, they have in the past advertised that you will accelerate your learing by XX% with a diamond membership. This can be interpreted as fraudulent in several countries. For a high rated player such miraculous improvement is hardly the case. Another example is the widespread use of starting paid memberships after trail periods. This is unethical business practice due to consumers' prevalence to accept paying if it's too much bother, even if refunds can be requested. This can be done by using AI customer service and general tedium which generates additional barriers to refunds. Further, chess.com has history of censorship on their community platforms when their competitors are mentioned, which is well documented outside of the website. But I am unsure if this practice continues today. One of their lesser unethical elements is the constant gnawing about "brilliant" moves that will be revealed in the game reveiw. This remains pure fluff to lure impulsive buyers to get unlimited game reviews. Unfortunately, it nets them nothing of value, except the money they lost (net negative).

The verdict almost writes itself. Chess.com's behaviour suggests it intends to making money in spite of their customers and players, not because of them.

Edit: I am sure the terms are “clearly outlined,” thereby ensuring the platform’s business practices remain entirely appropriate and fully aligned with its stated “values” and commitment to “customer experience.”

UPDATE - 25/03/26

They still haven't inputted moves from a draw with their top-rated bot, yet I have decided post-emails to like them all the same.

UPDATE - 08/11/2025 (old rating, two-stars)

My game was deleted.

They cost me a lot of study and my achievement and drawing with their top robot.

ANOTHER UPDATE - 07/11/25

Their 'bot' ratings when you perform well against them, despite being FM, IM and GM (and 'super-GM', i.e. above 2700) equivalents, only appear as FM standards and which is complete nonsense. The platform knows full-well that were said-bot to win then the bot's rating would be as its given rating appears and so making the lower ratings attributed to drawing and losing bots merely a way to excuse their standards of play and sustainment of people's opinions that the bots are impossible to beat when the bots are playing at full strength; this probably also has something to do with the rating of the bot's opponent, i.e. if a player has an equivalent given-rating then the bot's rating for that particular game will be higher whether winning or drawing or losing. And I know the given ratings are wildly askew because the feedback during game-reviews is not always as accurate as it could be.

I'll keep Chess.com at four-stars as it is an amazing resource and at least they try to provide explanations when there are technical complications as opposed to Lichess which simply allows or instigates cheating on their platform.

My latest peev with Chess.com, however, is that their top-bot of 3200 won't accept a draw in an interlocked stalemate position and I've been moving my piece backwards and forwards to the same squares for over twenty moves to the point that the game has frozen - the best the platform can come up with, is for me to delete cookies and play on in a drawn position; I can honestly say that an arbiter in an OTB-game would have disqualified the player or made them forfeit their game as a result of bad sportsmanship. The lack of serious reply to my concern almost annoys me as much as the inability of the bot to perform the obviously required three-move repetition so that the game can come to an end. Not appreciated.

UPDATE - 01/10/2025

Time-lags are due to latency and also the fact that we are sometimes playing against people from over the other side of the world and which causes clock-issues. This has been explained to me in technical detail via correspondence with a Chess enthusiast who works for Chess.com, over the course of the last two weeks. A white flag was woven and waved and now I know that you have to take the rough with the smooth because sometimes you do just get individual players who decide to cheat (and who are simply cheating themselves).

The platform consists of much resource. Many openings to look up. Worth a subscription, if you can dedicate a reasonable amount of time to the mind-sport (it's more than a game).

Unbeatable robots, and which you can play offline! A great way to advance your playing-strength, and my sole method of improving...seeing that I don't have much time at my disposal.

The site is jam-packed with IMs and GMs and the top players all competing in tournaments should you wish to follow what they're up to.

The lost star is because improvement is definitely required when it comes to monitoring potential cheats and also using modern means to fix or at least reduce the frequency of internet-related time-errors.

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Update

One thing they get up to on Chess.com...if you're winning too much, happened again and obviously had happened before, is that they dive-bomb your time. A normal game, they make your time vanish. For instance, I just had forty-seconds left and it suddenly ran out and I lost. They don't try and explain, either. This outsourcing set-up with Chess.com cheapens the game / mind-sport.

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Update

I might believe that were I to experience the odd player, but not a string of them - same for Lichess, where the situation is even more pronounced.

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Old review

The second time I have found players to be playing at a much higher strength than their ratings reflect.

If you have a run of wins, they have users to play with computers. This is certain.

I do make mistakes, this is online Chess, playing positionally almost on auto-pilot, yet you get a sense of whether a game is genuine and especially when you have a history of Chess playing - played for country, county and club and county and club was top-board for a while before I then quite the game at fifteen. My BCF grade was 190, edging upwards, myself winning tournaments around the country, so I would know. The game is almost built into me.

I notice that these platforms don't like emails and that you have to get in contact via these annoying Ai chat-support features, leaving` no room for argument.

Free trials will be charged yearly without warning. If you thought you'd be charged for a month after your trial, you are sorely mistaken.

Connact support? It's an ai chatbot with automatic responses. Write an email? Automatic response that tells you to talk to the chatbot.

If you do get to talk to a human, it's incredibly slow "due to high volume". Still waiting hours for their first response, even though their picture reads 'active'.

Don't bother playing chess here.

Generally speaking, 8/10 people you run into even at low elo are using opening memos, or just straight up an engine. Most people are smart enough to not play the best move every time, but will pull 2500+ elo moves out of their ass the second they get behind. It's a meme. Further, chess.com does absolutely nothing to remediate this. You can report these people, and there is no consequence. Unless we're all assuming that 600 players simply got 3-5x better since the release of stockfish, it's pretty clear what's happening. Cheater's haven. Nothing more.

To further add to this, the site somehow suffers from extreme performance issues after games, or loading new pages during/after games.

This service has the potential to be good, but it isn't. The game has sandbaggers who are crushing lower-level players, and they can lower your rating so that you have to deal with them even more. In addition, the advertisements for "Premium" service are annoying and everywhere. There is no room for a learning curve, the system is cold and clearly bot-driven. Distasteful overall - they need to fix many things to even be deserving of a 3-star review.
EDIT: As usual, the normal "answer" from the useless AI at Chess.com (get real customer service!)

As everyone already knows, this chess platform has a number of issues. But I’d like to talk specifically about the tactics puzzles on chess.com, because that’s actually the main reason I’ve been using the platform.

Lately, I’ve been getting puzzles rated no higher than 1800, even though my tactics rating is over 2800.

I contacted support about this issue — a bot replied and promised that my request would be reviewed within 1 to 4 days. It's now been 5 days, and I still haven’t received any response.

Good thing I didn’t buy a subscription to chess.com.

Unbridled discretion of moderators on Chess.com unjustly shut down several Christian youth clubs and banned club owners and some other administrators. I believe they disabled some non-Christian clubs too.

Chess.com has been excellent in many ways, but "one bad apple spoils the whole bunch." It is like a dead fly in what was good ointment. It contaminates the whole thing. I hope the CEO rethinks the position of the moderators and takes some steps to rein in the unbridled discretion of those responsible for this travesty of justice. More details follow below.

Most of these events happened between mid-May and mid-June of 2025. Until recent events, I would have rated Chess.com as a 4 star. They would have failed a 5-star rating only because of their servers getting overloaded at times. They have rules to enforce and encourage camaraderie among all peoples and groups who have a common interest in chess. They gave freedom for people to create their own clubs with club rules individualized by club so long as they follow Chess.com guidelines. If members are abusive, you can block them and/or report them. All these are good things, and I commend Chess.com for them.

Chess.com has also expanded very rapidly in the last couple of years. The CEO is much too busy with high-level decisions to be able to manage day-to-day activities. However, he welcomes short positive and encouraging messages from members. He has assigned Investigating alleged rules violations to a team of moderators.

What changed my opinion of Chess.com is what seems to be unbridled discretion of the moderators who recently disabled several Christian clubs for young people and banned the club owners for "violating the user agreement." The engaged moderator would not give specifics about what the violations were, citing "privacy laws." He could have easily provided examples of the alleged violations without violating privacy laws, but he refused. He gave no opportunity for the other side to present their case. Instead, moderators disabled two clubs, each of over 650 members. Even if a club owner and some super administrators did technically violate some of the rules, it would have been better to give them an opportunity to correct any specific violations. The actions of the moderators responsible for disabling these clubs and banning leaders hurt a lot of people.

These club owners and other administrators that were banned have no recourse left to them. The two club owners have spent literally over 20,000 hours over eleven years ministering to the young people, some of whom were suicidal or engaging in self-harm. I was a super administrator in one of the clubs, and the two banned club owners have been my closest online friends on Chess,com for over five years. They and several banned administrators are good people with a heart to help young people. None are perfect and some may have technically violated the user agreement in some way or another. I suspect most people have.

The way the moderators have handled these situations has left a bad taste in the mouths of many. The affected young people can only speculate why their favorite clubs were disabled and why the administrators were banned. Several are fearful of getting banned by unwittingly violating one of the rules of the user agreement. Thousands of hours of beneficial research and writing that went into these clubs is no longer accessible to hundreds of youths. The young people contributed most of the posts in these forums.

Online discipline of young people that is corrective cannot always be done through just muting or kicking them from a club or reporting abuse. Loving discipline requires honest communication about what the problems are. These leaders sought to do that even if it may have sometimes technically violated some Chess.com rules. Now they are gone, banished by the moderators! I think the CEO of Chess.com trusts his team of moderators too much. They need supervision and the rules need to be clear and enforced in an even-handed way.

This problem stemmed from a few youths feeling they were mistreated and finding a way to bait a club owner and capture his response on the screen and convey it to a moderator. One youth was spreading a false rumor that the older guys overseeing these clubs were pedophiles. A club owner decided to set the record straight. There was zero evidence to support the libelous rumor which was even spread beyond Chess.com. Other administrators didn't even know or necessarily approve of what this club owner did to try to stop this youth from spreading libel against him and others, including me. The moderators did not review the context of his violations and overreacted with a severe overreach by shutting down two clubs, affecting perhaps 1000 youths. I hope this changes.