Do you prefer online chess, offline, or a mix of both?

Today, on March 10th, I played a board game for the first time with my friend. He's around a 1300 elo rated player (FIDE), and I'm around 1700 on Lichess.

Surprisingly, it didn't prove helpful compared to online chess. It's a completely different world for me, at least – not easy to track all the pieces and plan moves ahead. Online play is more convenient, and I came to realize why offline matches can be challenging.

1. I'm curious to know about your experiences playing offline board games.

2. Do you find them more or less challenging than online play, and how often do you engage in offline board games?

3. Is there a specific aspect of offline play that you believe adds a unique twist or challenge, perhaps not present in the online match?

For those interested in the game result, it ended in a draw.

1. I became passionate about chess by attending a real club for about a year. Many years later I got the urge to play chess again, so a year and a half ago I started playing online, not having the opportunity and time to attend a club again.

2. As said before, for me online chess is just a surrogate, because I can't attend a club. Therefore, less challanging. The only advantage of playing online is that you always play with someone at your level, so it almost never happens that you get bored because you find yourself one much behind you.

3. There is no comparison. It's one thing to come face to face with your opponent in the flesh, to have a chessboard and real pieces in front of you, it's another thing to sit alone in front of a screen and waiting for the move to come from who knows where, made by who knows who. No comparison.

All this obviously from my point of view, and it is certainly conditioned by the imprinting I had.

@Ranger_ein said in #1:
> It's a completely different world for me, at least – not easy to track all the pieces and plan moves ahead. Online play is more convenient, and I came to realize why offline matches can be challenging.
I wouldn't put it like this, after all, it's still the same game with the same rules. But if it was your first OTB game, it's quite natural that you are not familiar with watching a position on a physical board and getting your head around it is harder. For people playing OTB exclusively, first experience with playing on a computer screen is often just as difficult. But I believe that in either case, with some games played, you'll get familiar with it and it will be only about your chess skills again.

One psychological difference IMHO is that people tend to take OTB games more seriously. It's natural, you have to make some effort for an OTB game to happen, you face another human being so you subconsciously want to make it count. Online, people play whenever convenient, often not very focused, against someone they usually never saw and never will. Therefore it's harder to focus fully and easier to take the "who cares" attitude. There are exceptions, of course; e.g. in 4545 League or Lonewolf, players seem to be quite dedicated and take their games seriously.

For my background: I played chess for ~7 years while in elementary school, nothing special, I only reached a level that would correspond to something like 1300-1400 FIDE ELO before the 2024 transformation or 1600-1650 after (back then, ELO was only for those who played on much higher level). That was all OTB only, of course. I stopped in 1988 and played almost no chess until last October (perhaps some 10-15 casual game in 35 years). Then I started playing online on lichess and now I tried to attend two OTB tournaments.

I don't seem to have problems with either, both OTB and online work fine for me, except for obvious lack of practice and awful time management - but these problems affect both. The OTB tournaments didn't go well but the real problem was rapid time control, not playing OTB; now I'm tempted to try an open OTB tournament with 90+30 time control at the beginning of July.

There is also an option to mix the two worlds: mirroring an online game on a physical board. Yesterday I tried it for the first time and while copying the moves is a bit annoying, I liked the experience so I'm going to experiment with it more in the future. The physical board and pieces somehow feel more satisfying to deal with. (To me, that is.)

1 , It fluctuates, if I played Online for a while, I'll hang a Rook Over the Board and forget to press my clock. And if I played Over the Board for a while, I'll hang a Queen online. Still I do prefer over the board as it's somehow easier to calculate on. (Despite you can't draw arrows with a Sharpie.)

2 & 3, It's more challenging as there is actually a Person sitting infront of you, and you actually feel the Stress. Whereas online you really don't feel that at all. (+ About 5 games / 2 months.)

I can play both but I miss otb tournament

For speed, definetly online. Even 5 minutes is stressful otb. For slower games, definitely in person/otb. I can focus better surprisingly. I play both, but I play online a lot more and feel I'm a lot better otb.