Many of us, at one time or another, must have come across free online games websites. I worked (current “in-between jobs”) in the IT industry, and believe me, I have seen my share of “illegal” online games clients installed on company PCs. Well it’s “illegal” in the sense that games aren’t “company approved” software and hence, shouldn’t be installed.
(As a quick aside, yes us IT folks can see who has installed what on the company PCs. We’re just busy enough not to go around and harass you to remove them, but oh yes we know).
Recently I’ve had this “chess bug” bit me, and thus I wrote the previous entry on Power Chess. Since I don’t relish the thought of installing my old, old, OLD copy of Chessmaster 5000 (yeah it’s that old), replete with lots of Microsoft ADO drivers to access the “chess database”, I thought I’d revisit the idea of playing chess online with real humans.
In the old days, there were plenty of chess-only multiplayer websites. You need to download their client, or a common client, to play chess online. Back then, Java was the new kid on the block, and so was Macromedia’s Flash.
Nowadays we have tons of these free multiplayer online gaming sites springing up everywhere, thanks to the maturity of Java and Flash as facilitators of this explosion. Now, these sites don’t just offer the same boring “Chess, Checkers, Reversi” combination anymore. Now, with Flash and Java, you can have almost any kind of games – Bejewelled, Candy Bar, Cowboy Shootouts, Hangman and so on.
One of the more popular free online gaming sites would probably be Yahoo Games. After all, who doesn’t have a Yahoo account? Armed with your Yahoo ID, you can log in and play any of the games offered there, and have your scores tracked.
However, I came across another site, which I thought had a better offering of games – Pogo.com. Like most other “free online games” site, it has a whole slew of games. Backgammon, Hangman, Boggle, Scrabble, etc. The amazing thing, well to me at least, is that Pogo is run by Electronic Arts, a gaming giant. When I tried to register, it said my name was already taken (darn it). On a whim, I decided to try “Forgot My Password” and checked if I had an account.
Lo an behold, I DID! Since it was an EA website, my password and ID was the same one I used for Battlefield! Ok cool, the database extended across their different games and website. Kudos!
So I headed straight for their Chess offerings. The “play against the computer” option was pretty encouraging. If you’re a beginner to chess, don’t worry. You won’t get creamed by the all-powerful computer AI. It’s just weak enough to make mistakes and allow you to capitalise on its mistakes. There’s even a crude tutorial mode, where it highlights all the possible squares your piece can move to when you pick it up.
For this trial run, I just had a blast playing against the computer. Playing against humans of course, is another thing. I did have a game with a human too, and he beat me (yeah I’m out of practice), not surprisingly. Humans have this weird knack of not always thinking (apparently) logically and when you think you had him in your trap, you’ve actually fallen for his trap!
Well Pogo was a nice distraction. Plus, I didn’t have to install a chess game to play chess.
