Chess at ICC, play & learn

I have been playing in this app for a few years. It was simple, easy to get a game, and gave you a fairly accurate reading of your rating. There were some bugs but they generally fixed them. The new interface is horrible. It’s distracting when playing, it takes longer to get a game, and I lost all my previous ratings.. the one feature they added that was a positive was it shows you how it calculated your rating score at the end of the match. But it’s not enough to put up with this and I will not be renewing my subscription.

I reviewed this app years ago and talked about the challenges of an IOS user not being able to delete completed games. Well that hasn’t been resolved as of yet but I’m not mad. It’s still a strong chess app even for IOS users. The function to manually accept challenges isn’t working for me. I wonder if that too is an IOS thing.

Several years ago I reviewed all of the major online chess playing apps. ICC, while arguably the best online playing environment for live chess, had the worst app. It is much better, but still a little awkward in its design. Using it required some counter-intuitive adjustments that are easily learned, but that will requires re-learning if you only play every few months. For bullet, however, it is best avoided. In a recent game, my time was running down two, three, and four seconds before my opponent’s move appeared on the board. I one-minute chess, this handicap is fatal.