The following table compares some of the features that we think are most important and lists the feature that we liked/disliked the most about the service.

Square size is the size of each square on the playing board.

Players shows the relative popularity of the sites. We recorded the number of players reported by each site at several times of the day. Although the absolute numbers vary throughout the day, the relative numbers remain fairly constant across the sites. As we mentioned in our first article, this says nothing about finding a game and an opponent, which is easy for both services.

Since we used MSN as a baseline in our first two articles, we weighted the other sites accordingly in this article. When you find 1000 players at MSN, you will find around 0.3 * 1000 (300 players) at WCN and around 0.6 * 1000 (600 players) at Chess21.

Which service do we prefer? When we started we preferred the Chess21 service. Its simple, clean interface is one of the most professional we've seen. As we continued, we came to like the WCN service, which has many interesting functions hidden in its different options. We ended having no particular preference for either service and enjoyed playing on both. We'll have more to say after we've looked at all the online play sites.