• Chess.com

Chess.com

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Overview

Chess.com has a rating of 1.3 stars from 208 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally dissatisfied with their purchases. Reviewers complaining about Chess.com most frequently mention customer service, fair play, and new account problems. Chess.com ranks 1060th among Games sites.

  • Service
    63
  • Value
    63
  • Shipping
    31
  • Returns
    38
  • Quality
    60

This company does not typically respond to reviews

Positive reviews (last 12 months): 0%
Positive
0
Neutral
0
Negative
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How would you rate Chess.com?
Top Positive Review

“Pretty dang good, like it.”

heyaa guy. h.
10/11/23

I absolutely love this site! I can see the problems with it but nothing bad like that has happened for me, in my personal experience everything went right. Don't buy the premium though its wasteful. Just buy an actual chess set or use the free one, the premium can have a lot of things go wrong with it.

Top Critical Review

“DON"T PLAY ON CHESSk.COM - IS A SCREWED UP SITE - WiLL CHEAT YOU!”

Tam L.
10/21/24

I have played on this site since 2021 and has recently been playing for hours almost everynight and has gone down from 600 to 200 or less now due to the SITE's MESSED UP IT not taking care of their end and blames the players computer and it has been already checked on by a technician. I sent numerous of Reporting players and yet Chess does not even respond back nor check any cheated play on their end but to mess players up so they can be frustrated and not be done fairly to enjoy the game. Chess.com needs to be BANNED from the website if this is how they HATE people to play on it as long as they get THEIR MONEY from people that's all they care about! Look how FAST I keep losing because their system is so SCREWED up. THEY DON"T LIKE YOU if you keep complaining about their site even though you get cheated said I violated them! I heard this system is happening from overseas and Eric A. (Pres) of Chess doesn't do anything about it. This site won't take my shot screen to show how screwed up Chess.com is. Again, I've gone down on 1 min play from 600 to almost less than 200 that quick in time due to Chess.com's site that is lagging on my end to purposely have me lose everytime when I played since 2021.

Reviews (208)

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Reviews that mention popular keywords

account (20) premium membership (5) user experience (3) phone number (3) game (46)
Thumbnail of user notishkor
Norway
1 review
2 helpful votes
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October 6th, 2023

Getting randomly banned, support will not answer and it feels like a scammer site. I got banned for no reason after paying for diamond membership. Contacted support and have not heard a single word for weeks now.I filled a form for refund and no answer there either. Stay away from this site!

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Thumbnail of user davidk345
Nich B. – Chess.com Rep

Please write to us at support@chess.com for assistance with your Chess.com account. We can also help with a refund if you're no longer able to make use of your membership.

Thumbnail of user mickm25
Canada
1 review
15 helpful votes
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April 9th, 2017

These guys closed my account for NO REASON. I played advanced bullet chess for a few weeks and all of a sudden i cant login anymore. Banned with no questions asked!
And I couldnt even appeal my case.
Sorry guys you lose a great player.

Thumbnail of user alanh235
Florida
1 review
10 helpful votes
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January 28th, 2019

I was a paying member for 2 years then I stopped when I realized that my game is not getting any better. Not necessarily the chess.com fault I agree, but when I went back to play as a non-member the 3 minutes and the 5 minutes games the system would freeze my pieces and take away my ability to move my pieces in the last minute or saw and always when I was winning! I remembered the same thing used to happen to my non-member opponents in the past, they would be winning and stop playing with only 1 minute to go when they were winning! What a shame. The 4th time this happened to me I promised myself not to ever play chess on this website and probably never online. They made me hate online chess. Will always recommend against this website.

Thumbnail of user davidk345
Nich B. – Chess.com Rep

Dear Alan. I am really sorry to hear that. Could you please email me at david.kaufmann@chess.com so as we can take a look please?

I would be more than happy to help you with all these issues.

All the best,

David Kaufmann
The Chess.com Team

Thumbnail of user yihongy
Maryland
1 review
7 helpful votes
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June 1st, 2022

The company accuses members of violating their fair play rules and closes their accounts, but they do not provide you with any evidence. How can you in the real world accuse someone of wrongdoing without providing evidence? This is ridiculous. My son is a chess candidate master with a USCF rating of over 2100. I looked into his eyes and knew that he would not cheat in his games. There is just no reason or any motivation for doing that, yet his account was closed twice. There are much better and free chess-playing websites sites like chesstempo.com or lichess.org. I would recommend any serious chess players avoid chess.com

Tip for consumers:
For sure not get a paid membership because once they close your account, you lose all the money.

Products used:
lichess.org

Service
Value
Quality
Thumbnail of user jimnok
Italy
1 review
2 helpful votes
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May 31st, 2021

That site is great for a "quick" game of chess, but the chat is also full of spammers, non-sensical users (as in users that do not play chess and just try to hit on people, or attention seekers), and they also still refuse to add checkers, and most users keep doing that elitism that "chess is better", despite both being different. There are at least some chess variation, such as 4-player chess, which was added way too late to be relevant. TL; DR: Good for playing, terrible community, and service. Also the UI glitches a lot.

Tip for consumers:
don't pay for premium. beside the ability of playing multiple games at once, there really is not need to.

Products used:
just the free portion of the site.

Quality
Thumbnail of user sixthvapy
Michigan
6 reviews
4 helpful votes
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December 9th, 2022

Hello Sitejabber,

I recently discovered this webpage and to be honest I believe it is a scam. I seemingly can not win! The game cheats and uses sneaky tactics to predict your move. It is impossible and I hate seeing young gamers and epic pranksters getting ripped off.

DO NOT PLAY!

Tip for consumers:
DO NOT USE!!!

Products used:
I used the chess feature. It was very difficult for my very not smart brain,. The UI was confusing and the players were mean to me. DO NOT USE!!!

Service
Value
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Thumbnail of user ernstludwigg
Spain
1 review
11 helpful votes
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September 25th, 2014

Chess.com has an agreement with several of their "top"-members to support them by any means. Chess.com gives away your personal and of course payment details... yes... to those people who are "committed" to expose cheats. They do not even stop their support when a "top" member illegally downloads copyright photos, then distributes them in chess.com and his own blogs. THEN he accuses his victims of distributing fake photos which he actually placed there. A court case against this "top" member and chess.com has been filed.
Ernst-Ludwig Gilgasmah, author of
"Zeman's Last Game" to be released in January 2015

Tip for consumers:
just don't.

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Thumbnail of user danp776
Texas
1 review
3 helpful votes
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March 22nd, 2021

Totally non responsive customer service. No phone number or human to speak to and no response from chat with customer service or written questions.
I think the only way to keep them from renewing your membership is to cancel the credit card you used.

Service
Value
Thumbnail of user bynaturalmeans4ever
California
1 review
0 helpful votes
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November 2nd, 2023

Just.com struggles with its IT. It always forgets my profile. Even when I turn off the app and open it back up, it still has forgotten my profile. I have gone so far as to delete the app, then reinstall the app only for to ask me to create a new profile not remembering my old one only after months go by or weeks go by will it reconfigure and remember who I am total waste of time

Thumbnail of user davidk345
Nich B. – Chess.com Rep

Please write to us at support@chess.com for assistance with retrieving your profile. We're here to help! :)

Thumbnail of user tinas1007
New York
1 review
5 helpful votes
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February 22nd, 2022

In real life I am a 1600 UCCF rated player and I am very good at tactics. Per my coach's advice I signed up chess.com, paid for the expensive membership, and promptly reached 2400 TT rating after like 200 puzzles. I then started playing 15+10 and 10 games. Took me a while to get used to online 2D play, but I was making progress. As everyone knows the first couple of games you win give you massive points. Long story short, after reaching 1700 on rapid, I got BANNED for fair play! I am incensed as my games were TERRIBLE, with accuracies in the 70 to low 80s -- I analyze each game after I play, and I only won because of tactical blunders of opponents (I said my tactics and endgame were way above my openings). The worst is that I am about to start an online tournament for a club I joined. Now my name is completely tarnished by chess.com. I have heard that chess.com has started doing this to new users whose ratings climb too fast. What a scam!

Service
Value
Thumbnail of user dj232
Virginia
1 review
11 helpful votes
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March 22nd, 2013

They will accuse of cheating if you have more than one player in your family play at the same time. I have three players in my family who play chess and because chess.com collects your ip address and set cookies on your computers, they assume that your activity consitute cheating. Also, they will ban you at will if you speak up and voice your opinion in a respectful away. They want you to be followers and not shake the boat. Awful company.

Thumbnail of user kenp580
Rhode Island
1 review
2 helpful votes
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February 22nd, 2023

I was a diamond member. They cancelled my password and did not send me an email to change it. Called the customer service number and got no response. Now they cancelled my username and I have no recourse

Tip for consumers:
Find another site!

Service
Quality
Thumbnail of user mandys53
Australia
1 review
10 helpful votes
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August 16th, 2018

Well in chess.com my opponent was a time cheat, I played bullet and my opponents time went slowly, while my time went at the speed of light. Also one player forced a draw when they were losing, it was the same move again and again.

Thumbnail of user angeloa1
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
5 reviews
9 helpful votes
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July 17th, 2012

Great place to play and it's free. If you want to run your own tourneys, look at stats, you have to pay for that. But there's three membership offers which are all cheap. Great site and for me the best in the world for online chess.

Thumbnail of user applet13
Canada
1 review
0 helpful votes
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March 19th, 2024

Site advertises they match ppl skill. UNTRUE. I was matched with 225+ plyers over my pts. UNFAIR play

Tip for consumers:
I abort games where I see the other player is more than 100 pts above my level but that abort button has disappeared. I have just started to learn to play chess since November 2023 and being so overmatched prevents my learning, it becomes frustrating to play. This is like playing a fixed game . Nobody likes to play anything that is fixed. There is no way to contact them directly, they made sure of that.

Thumbnail of user davidk345
Nich B. – Chess.com Rep

Hello! On Chess.com you can use a setting to limit your game pairings based on opponent ratings. That way you can always pair with someone close to your rating!
https://chesscom.helpscoutdocs.com/article/1962-how-do-i-choose-what-rating-my-opponents-are
Please write to us at support@chess.com for assistance. We're here to help!

Thumbnail of user ethanb15
Maryland
1 review
17 helpful votes
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October 8th, 2014

The live interface is very poor. Connection issues are regular, which are completely unrelated to internet. There is no means to abort or pause games due to poor connection either causing unwarranted losses to accumulate.

Thumbnail of user joshuac423
California
1 review
5 helpful votes
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June 27th, 2020

I signed up for a two week trial of premium membership and was charged for a year after I forgot to cancel and now they wont respond to any of my support emails that I have sent them from over 4 days ago when they said I should get a response within 24 hours

Thumbnail of user davidk345
Nich B. – Chess.com Rep

Hi Joshua, we've experienced severe delays with billing concerns due to a very high volume of requests lately, but if your refund has not been issued yet, please let us know right away at support@chess.com. We'll get this taken care of!

Thumbnail of user bruceg14
Florida
9 reviews
11 helpful votes
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March 12th, 2014

A good website it is! Here you can play online.
You can have opponent or playmate outside/other countries.
You can also invite your friends.

If you are a chess player who loves to play online. Just log on here. Have fun!

Thumbnail of user samd521
Czechia
1 review
0 helpful votes
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January 28th, 2021

I am loving chess.com. There is great lessons and the interface is easy to use. I sent a query and they responded quickly and were very understanding, managing to solve the issue. I highly recommend Chess.com

Service
Value
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Thumbnail of user chrism208
Illinois
1 review
20 helpful votes
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November 11th, 2015

The main drawback of this site is the complete lack of ability to handle lag. The result is that games are regularly lost simply because of a slow connection. Individuals on the site will continue clearly drawn or lost games in the hope that lag will affect their opponent. The fact that the site has not managed to program a time stamp on moves is a testament to the fact that they simply do not care about chess.

Thumbnail of user jerrys137
Georgia
3 reviews
2 helpful votes
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March 6th, 2018

The main drawback of this site is the complete lack of ability to handle lag. The result is that games are regularly lost simply because of a slow connection. Individuals on the site will continue clearly drawn or lost games in the hope that lag will affect their opponent. The fact that the site has not managed to program a time stamp on moves is a testament to the fact that they simply do not care about chess.

Thumbnail of user zachv9
Arizona
1 review
6 helpful votes
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April 28th, 2019

I like playing chess, and I like playing online. The site does not allow for moves at very convenient times. The computer is meant to beat you, no matter what you play or at what difficulty. I played at difficulty 1, and you would think that it would be easy, right? No. I have a rating of 1600, and I lost consistently. Out of 7 plays, I won 1. I do not recommend this site simply because it does not teach you anything, it just puts you in defense where you cannot do anything.

Thumbnail of user davidk345
Nich B. – Chess.com Rep

Hi!

If the computer levels seem to be an inaccurate representation of the difficulty, you might want to try challenging the live chess computer. If you go to live chess (https://www.chess.com/live), in the right side menu there is an option "vs Computer." These computers are all rated based off of their games with other players, so they are likely to have a rating that is an accurate representation of their difficulty.

Please let us know at support@chess.com if you have ideas about how we can make Chess.com more to your liking.

Thank you!
-The Chess.com Team

Thumbnail of user onela
Philippines
1 review
16 helpful votes
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April 9th, 2016

I remember my match that I have 2 mins and my opponent have 1 min left i was happy cause I know i will win but then two moves later my time was 30 seconds and my opponents time was 1 min still stupid! I was soo angry be fair chess.com I thought you have a fair policy which is useless! F****

Thumbnail of user yk28
Japan
1 review
13 helpful votes
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February 25th, 2021

I have been on Chess.com for over 10 years. Just recently, I got a well paying job and decided to upgrade to Diamond membership. A day later, my account was closed for 'Fair Play' and money was not refunded. I suspect that it was because I had beaten an NM a week before, but my OTB is 2035 and beating NMs or CMs is not out of the norm for me.

Btw, I have years old accounts on both Lichess and Playchess which have never been banned or accused of cheating.

Tip for consumers:
Don't bother, go with free options like Lichess or professionally curated options like ChessBase.

Products used:
Lessons

Thumbnail of user jamesm2173
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
1 review
1 helpful vote
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October 23rd, 2019

I play many many games on chess.com and have had an excellent user experience. I have upgraded to diamond membership and love the videos, lessons, tactics and training. I have recommended it to all my chess friends.

My son and I also love the TV content, including the excellent coverage of the Isle of Man tournament in October 2019.

Thumbnail of user davidk345
Nich B. – Chess.com Rep

Hi James!
I'm so glad you and your son have been enjoying Chess.com and the content we're working on. The Isle of Man tournament was an awesome event all around! Keep an eye out for more great events to come, and thank you for supporting Chess.com!

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Play chess on Chess.com - the #1 chess community with +20 million members around the world. Play online with friends, challenge the computer, join a club, solve puzzles, analyze your games, and learn from hundreds of video lessons. You can also watch t...

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Thumbnail of user davidk345
Nich B.
Typically does not respond to reviews

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