ICC, learn from FICS
FICS has all their games on a web site ficsgames.com. Over one-hundred million games. Thanks to signalman for the great find!
I'm now looking into switching over to FICS.
I'm now looking into switching over to FICS.
posted by Blue Devil Knight at 2/27/2010 01:35:00 PM
10 Comments:
that is a good find.
i have a question for you, at one time, did i read here or somewhere you had a online chess coach? is a online coach, worth it? can you really get much out of a online coach? what are you opinions.
thanks
Everything else being equal:
in-person coach >
phone coach >
online coach >
no coach
The more actual real social interactions the better, the reasons may be partly those we talked about a couple of posts ago.
Note I said everything else being equal! If you have a crappy in-person coach you don't get along with that is probably worse than an online coach you really like and is helpful.
A loooong time ago I started out as a FICS guy and recently checked out the ICC, but I don't see that it has any advantage over FICS aside from a greater quantity of titled players playing there.
FICS has a greater range of interfaces to download and use, has more or less the same interface, has the online archive, and is free.
Stupidly, my biggest gripe against the ICC so far is that none of the interfaces they provide have "two click moving." They all use "click and drag" which is far more prone to mouse slips. It's two click or bust, for me...
I haven't been playing much online chess lately, but I'd love to meet up with you there sometime....I'm realizing that my one tournament game a week isn't quite enough to keep me sharp, so I'm hoping to get back to the online play as part of my study. My handle there is "zweiblumen"
For some reason Java isn't working on my computer once I get that up and running I'll start up with FICS!
It also has an annotate feature I recently discovered while using the site (http://rockyrook.blogspot.com/2010/02/fics-db-annotate-feature.html)
Also ... I'm not sure if ICC has the same thing or not, but after playing in T41, I found that watchbot has a similiar site (http://mekk.waw.pl/mk/watchbot/index)
I agree that FICS has better interfaces ( Babas is remarkable ) and I am surprised that ICC doesn't provide more than Dasher/Blitzin. Even the basic UI with Chess Assistant and its associate ChessPlanet are way ahead of ICC & FICS ! ( and chessplanet is also a neat playing site...so many Russians playing there, I can't but help improve :)
I prefer ICC simply because paying usually means that I have some sort of comeback if anything happens. At FICS who can I contact ? It's a free service run mainly by volunteers, which is wonderful up to a point.
I think one of the major benefits of ICC is the exceptionally well run T45/45 League, the regular STC tournaments and now the daily standard tournaments. Those you don't have on FICS : loads of blitz tournaments, but apart from its own version of Team League, not so many chances for regular standard tournaments.
Maybe FICS has changed, as I haven't been there for a while.
Anyway, glad you enjoy the website. Another useful one that is FICS-related is this ( http://mekk.waw.pl/mk/watchbot/ ) which has FICS games, but only those demed 'interesting enough', usually long time controls. This also will retain the kibitzes and comments which can be both good and bad.
On the same site is a few goodies for the www.schemingmind.com chess site if you happen to play there, and some great discussions and ideas for FICS improvements.
Anyway, wherever you choose to play, enjoy your chess, as that is what it is all about !!
ICC does that.
Mrs Chessloser
@Signalman, there are T45 tourneys that run on FICS as well. The STC has a list of players for both servers, and while FICS' might be smaller, it's not nonexistent.
@Blue Devil: forget java, just start running linux and use eBoard! Also, I don't know if you follow my blog, but it's finally up and running at http://njord.org/~steve It's not 100% chess, but I do have a chess specific RSS feed.....which it occurs to me I should put a link to on my site. Stay tuned.
Steve, ICC interfaces (blitzin, dasher) have click and click move entry. Edit -> Preferences -> Playing there is a box called Piece Movement, you can switch from Drag & Drop to Point & Click.
@ Loomis, I'm playing on a Mac, so Dasher and Blitzin aren't options for me. I haven't tried all the java and mac interfaces, but so far they seem kind of poor. I guess I could check out one of those other two under parallels....
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