www.bigfoot.com doesnt fit the bill.
Its giving same error.
And I have found a sweet simple site www.instantchesschess.com.
My search is going on, and am looking for more suggestions.
www.pogo.com is also no good.

Beetlejuice wrote on 07/18/06 at 20:58:10:

I don't think there's really any difference at all between ICC and FICS as far as basic commands go (e.g., 'say' and 'tell' are the same commands on both servers and work exactly the same way).

Oh yes... Another thing I hate abt Yahoo is that the host can set a certain time control which might be to your liking; say 20 mins. So you enter his room expecting to play a 20mins game & then he changes it to blitz say 2-3min as soon as you settle in!   The other thing i noticed there is the highest rated ones only want to play blitz, & neither are they too keen to play against a much lower rated opponent. the average rated ones tend to choose mostly lower rated ones. So sometimes its hard to get a game, AND lower rated opponents tend to take forever to make a move!

But the best part abt yahoo is that its THE place if you wanna play your mates online. Just arrange  with them to meet via sms, meet up & play. We can chat, catch up & discuss moves/ideas along the way. Something you cant do over at FICS.

There was this one guy too, who was a real sport, we exchanged ideas during a rated game! . But of course....many rude ones as well

sikander wrote on 07/18/06 at 11:07:07:

This is probably a way for the server to limit certain types of abuses (e.g., multiple accounts for a single user).

The website where I just started playing chess before any study (and got up to around 1300) was: www.flyordie.com.   

This is a nice place if you want to just play informal games.  The disadvantages are, however: you can only play 5 minute blitz or 20 minute rapid games (sudden death).  Also their rating system isn't elo based, so it makes it more difficult to figure out your rating.  Also, if you disconnect you lose.  I still prefer this to Yahoo chess where my opponent can close the internet window or leave the table if they want and I have to wait for 10 minutes until I can call it a win.  But I think 20 minutes is only enough to play a decent middle game, there isn't enough time left to work on your endgame.  Also, now my connection is worse, so I don't want to lose due to disconnecting.  The flyordie graphics design takes a while to get used to.

www.flyordie.com has the advantage that there are a lot of players there from countries all over the world.   

I think FICS is the best free place, however.

I now play 30/30 games and I have enough time to win if I have a won position.  I hate it when people time me out when I have a completely won position.  I doubt that this cheap strategy would be as effective in a standard tournament game, since 2 hours should be enough to finish someone off.  Occasionally I play people, however, who play really fast (on purpose) from the start and get a bad position.  Then I have time trouble, even though I was playing reasonably, and they end up turning the game around and winning.  But I guess learning to deal with stuff like that is part of what it takes to get a high rating.   

I think that when opponents play on in a dead lost position, it is quite disrespectful, unless the ratings of the players are low enough that there is a chance the winning side won't know how to checkmate with a queen.  If I am in a losing position and I have some counterplay, I would probably play on though since swindling can win lots of games.  I recently had a game where I had a queen + pawn vs. a rook + bishop + knight that I ended up winning by moving my queen all around the board and threatening to fork stuff.

http://www.buho21.com

..., absolutely for free.

The website: free internet chess server http://www.freechess.org/

This website usually has a few hundred people online.  I have found it a lot better than Yahoo because:

(a) They usually randomly choose a color, unlike yahoo where host always chooses color.  They do have the option of choosing a color, but almost no one uses it.

(b) They don't have blatant abuses like yahoo chess.  I remember one time on Yahoo I was winning a game and the host kicked me out of the table.

(c) They don't have that annoying feature where you can accidently walk into a game and take someone's seat, and the only way to exit is to resign that person's game for them.

(d) There is more Blitz than standard, but it is easier on this website to find normal time control games than on Yahoo.  On Yahoo everyone seems to play 1 minute games, especially the people who are "2000+".  On ths website, you can still get some longer time limit games.

(e) This website has about 20 or so free lectures which cover opening and endgames topics, and some tactics.  These are pretty interesting to watch.

(f) Games are adjourned.  This is an advantage because if you disconnect, the game is saved for later.  Sometmes, my modem disconnects for a minute or two and then reconnects and I continue the adjourned game.  I'm pretty sure on Yahoo I would just get a bunch of losses because of my bad connection.

There is also ICC, but you have to pay to join that.