April 2026 State of Online Chess

As I learn shogi, I am disappointed that there are few online resources outside of YouTube. As I learn chess, I wish there could be fairer and healthier competition and innovation. Allow me to list novel products and services not yet assimilated into the Chess.com monoculture (not sponsored, alphabetical order):

• Chess 2: The Sequel - beautiful, creative variant for those who find chess too drawish

• ChessBase - not just quality products, but also an online play zone

• Chessboard Magic - repertoire builder tool for organizing and refining your chess openings

• Chess Dojo - free goal-directed progress tracker with paywalled content

• Chessly - GothamChess’ service (paywalled content) which I mention for its quality

• Chess-o-tron - brilliant chess experiments (esp. blunder-o-tron and the old feature-o-tron)

• Chess Tempo - donation-supported puzzle training and discussion platform

• Free Internet Chess Server - home of upside-down chess (wild/5) and sometimes bughouse

• Geochessr.io - guess where pieces are on the chessboard in real Lichess chess games

• Internet Chess Club - home of kriegspiel (Wild 16)

• Novelty Hunter - game database searcher which discovers rare moves

• The Chess Mind - FM Dennis Monokroussos commentary on all things chess

• Tim Krabbé’s Chess Curiosities - diary on recent news and encyclopedia of chess trivia

• Tom’s Live Chess Viewer (TLCV) - chess game web broadcast server and client

I’m sure you will comment and it’s possible I may update this list if I am impressed, or remove entries if Chess.com buys them out. There should be so much more competition and innovation (e.g., I’d like to see “guess the move” on live games like US Chess Live had decades ago).

Please enjoy this ChessBase India interview with Lichess about Take Take Take: