From Mark Weeks,
Your Guide to Chess.
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(January 2007) If you like to play chess, but have never played online chess, our first question is, 'Why not?' If your answer is, 'There are so many places to play, I don't know where to start', then the following is for you.

We asked the visitors to About Chess to identify the Best Online Play Site for Newcomers. They spoke and we listened. Our initial criteria were:

• Free
• No downloads
• Guaranteed to find other players

Based on their initial feedback, we added a few other points:

• English language
• Both players online at the same time (not correspondence style using email)

They identified five playing sites: FICS, InstantChess, MSN, Pogo, and Yahoo. Using those five sites, we created a poll Best Online Play Site for Newcomers (Poll). From those five sites, they selected two by a clear margin over the others: Yahoo and FICS.