How to choose a platform for chess and classic board games

Start with the game, not the site

If you want chess and only chess, a dedicated chess site will serve you better than a general board-game library: deeper analysis, more time controls and more opponents at your level. The same is true of draughts and Go. If you want variety instead, chess on Monday, reversi on Wednesday and a modern board game with friends on Friday, a broad platform saves you juggling accounts.

In our catalogue that splits roughly like this: Lichess and Chess.com for chess, Lidraughts for draughts, OGS for Go; PlayOK and Board Game Arena for range; Yucata for modern board games at a slow pace.

Decide how you want to pay, including not at all

Three models come up again and again.

• Donation-funded. Lichess, Lidraughts and Yucata give everything away and ask for support from those who can give it.
• Freemium. Chess.com and Board Game Arena are free to start, with optional memberships that add features or remove adverts.
• Supporter plans. OGS keeps play free and offers extras, such as automatic AI reviews, to supporters.

None of these is better in itself. The useful question is whether the feature you care about sits on the free side. Before paying for anything, read the platform’s own membership page rather than a summary of it, including ours.

Match the clock to your week

Live games ask for a block of uninterrupted time. Correspondence and turn-based games ask for a minute here and there over several days. If your evenings are unpredictable, a platform with good slow formats will be far more pleasant than the busiest lobby in the world.

• Lichess: correspondence chess, with conditional premoves.
• OGS: daily correspondence Go on any of three board sizes.
• Board Game Arena: turn-based play for every game.
• Yucata: turn-based by design, with no penalty for slow play.

Look honestly at the learning tools

Beginners benefit from structure: lessons in a sensible order, opponents who don’t punish every slip, and a review after the game that explains rather than just judges. Chess.com is strongest at guided learning but keeps the fullest version for its paid tiers. Lichess offers lessons, puzzles and analysis for free but leaves you to plan your own route. OGS has an unusually good staged tutorial for Go.

If you already know the game and want to improve, look for analysis and study tools instead: an analysis board, an opening explorer, a way to save and annotate positions.

Try before you commit

Lichess lets you play without registering, and PlayOK has a guest option. Elsewhere an account costs nothing. Play a handful of games, notice how you feel after half an hour, and decide on that basis rather than on a list of features.

A short checklist

1. Which game, or games, do I actually want to play?
2. Is the feature I care about free, and if not, what does the membership page say?
3. Do I have blocks of time, or scraps?
4. Do I want to learn, or simply to play?
5. How did the site feel after a real session?