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Comment by no_wizard | Hacker News Reader

Gotta ask and I ain't trying to start a flame war here.... how's the community compared to say, ICC? I was a big time user of ICC back in the day simply because the average player was high caliber after FICS started to become a bit of a dead zone for standard players (I like 45 5 or higher timed classic games )

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There are more high level players on ICC because that's where the high level players are. Chess.com also has a decent interface, but they particularly excel in chess news, event coverage and community support.

That said there are plenty of verified expert-level players there, whom are probably at least 1 standard deviation above and beyond satisfying 99.99% of the world population of people looking to play chess.^1

[1] - https://en.lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz

> There are more high level players on ICC because that's where the high level players are

It appears this is not the case, anymore. I logged in to both servers this afternoon, and counted the number of players rated over 2350. Lichess had 50, ICC had 6. I logged in again tonight and saw roughly the same ratio.

Those data points could be valid, but it's important to note that chess ratings work relative to the players involved. A site that only allowed pre-schoolers, for example, would still have 2300+ rated players.

WHAT ratings though? Ratings are not comparable across different player pools.

My Lichess & ICC ratings are typically within 50 points of each other. It's the same for a friend of mine who plays on both servers, too.

ICC is basically dead, even top players are leaving. Takes forever to get a game.

I'm not sure about the quality for standard, but the overall chat community is more like modern-day Reddit than 00s ICC. That place was a garden.

havent used this, but icc ftw!

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