SWJediknight wrote on 12/28/12 at 13:26:11:


1) If they have disconnected a game and their time starts going into negative values, continue waiting. It can take up to twenty minutes but provided you have autoflag on, it will work. 

2) If they simply disconnected and you are clearly winning (especially if you have a mate in x), you can easily get it adjudicated quickly on the fics website.   

It's rare that either of these things happen.

Deflation? Do you mean rating deflation?

My problem with chess.com is the interface. There have been numerous problems reported there for their live games. They are aware of the problem, but it's been a problem for years.

I too prefer Babaschess to chess.com's interface. But this is only comparing free interfaces on computers. I have no clue which work best on mobile phones and the like.

Transformation has made this helpful chart which confirms what the folks at FICS have said that 12:00 server time (pacific) is the general peak activity time for the server.  Forever FICS....

http://dk-transformation.blogspot.com/

[written very fast, on my way to work:]

This is bound to upset a few.  But that's me.  I provoke.  First, that FICS broke from ICC, to provide a free service is truly admirable.  This deserves respect.  But for how long?

Many, many years have gone by.  If you don't want to pay at ICC ($ + old legacy system, in SOME ways still the best, but falling behind fast), or PlayChess ($ + de facto tied to chessBase), then the choices are clear.  Chess.com. 

I do not have a commercial relationship with them.

In fact, early on, years ago, I was a BIG skeptic, calling it the McDonalds of chess.  Not true.  Their volume has surged, they police rudeness completely, such things are very very rare.  The esprit de corps is actually generally polite.  I love the place.  They created a great place.

ChessCube has a great interface, and by that, I only mean the board.  I love the way it functions.  But thats it.  It looks like some UK British Odds on Betting Site, total schlock.  These are harsh words.  Why knock yet one more free place?  I tell you why.  I have never, never in my life, seen so many persons ask for takebacks.  I might be wrong.  Go and check. Maybe they got rid of it.  They as I recall had a tb function billed into the toggles.  Amazing.  When I slip, I am the sort who resigns ON THE spot.  Take it like a man.  One punch.  Down.  OK.  I just don't like its overall interface, as a total user experience.  To be clear, I said I love their BOARD.  But chess.com does as much and more.

FICS.  This is old line.  The community there is excellent, truly great, dyed in the wool sorts.  I just want a lot more volume, and an easy, ready to go interface.  Temposchlucker was very kind, with great effort, to help me set up BabaSoft.  I used it.  I hate it.  But I used it a lot in 2006 t0 2007, was it.  It also saves your history to pgn files, but has some very, very odd quirks.  Torture me with it.

Again, folks will be upset.  OK.  Lets talk about it.  The truth comes out, even if the truth is that I am wrong.  I had my account, and let it go inactive.

I use chess.com to pour in lots of chess to my brain.  I use ICC to measure myself (I am inactive right now, retooling my brain, but made very heavy use of my old account, dk-transform.  10k games, but checking now, they removed the history.  np).  My account is a bit new, scrubbed to zero, but I fully aim to use it a lot more, as I rebuild my chess (massive CT-Art 3.0 now, and back to the fabulous, ne plus ultra ChessTempo.  Richard created the best place on the web).

PlayChess is great if you download the free chessBase light, a truly incredible, free program.  If you are not using it, you are missing out.  My recent posts at my blog discuss this.  Try living in 620 and being an academic without Latin, being an educated Korean and not reading Chinese, a Gupta Empire scholar without Sanskrit, classicist without Greek, run a restaurant without Spanish (I say this respectfully, tons of hard working persons of great skill and dedication).  'I don't like chessBase.  Its too expensive'.  You have got to be kidding me.  Amortize ChessBase, $500 over four years, 0.30 per day, but no, we can afford cigarettes, beer, soda, RedBull.  Seriously.  Chess is your sport.  Or use the light version.  ICC:  22 cents per day.

At ICC you can link your pgn file to your play. At playChess your games, and viewing of GM games, are AUTOMATICALLY saved in chessBase format, to myInternetGames and MyKibitzing respectively.  This is gold.

At chess.com, they let you email your game files, 100 at a time.  This is wonderful.

If you do not view your own games, you are not going to improve.

ChessCube will let you copy one SINGLE pgn at a time, it is maddening to me.  I do understand business, and they want you to pay for it.  What?  For something not 20% as good as chess.com, which is for free.  Chess.com has premium features, which I respect, $.  They earn their keep.  Blessings.

Yahoo Chess used to allow you to email your game files to yourself, but broke this function five years ago, yet still show it.

RedHot pawn is a very smart place for turn based, correspondence chess.  But chess engines, if you ask me, ruined this sport.

Playchess allows guests.  Try it out.  And enter the site through ChessBase light, rather than the stand alone client.

It will allow you, for example, to view Wijk aan Zee, by one click, fourteen top boards.  Can you imagine?  Anand, Aronian, Nakamura, Carlsen, Kramnik, one click, London, whatever.  This is gold.  Also free.

Ok.  Here it is:

PlayChess to be up to date in the lingua franca of chess, including contemporary play, cum ChessBase Lite.

Chess.com to play.  You cannot do better.

ChessTempo to study.  The smartest chess place on the web.

ChessVibes for quality videos, the single best comments on the web in English.  chess ninja went on the vine.  This is the place real smart talk happens.  Thomas, all those guys.  Chess in Translation (Slavic).

ChessCafe.com for the best full articles.  The main library if you will of real knowledge.

Chess Tactics Server, to drill lots of tactics.  Not the place to learn them, but to drill them.

If I had to pick two:  chess.com and chessTempo.  The first is powerful and easy and efficient, the latter is amazingly smart. Smart is not the word for it.  The Cloud comes to tactics.  My god.  Smarter than sh_t!.  Smart.

OK.  I kicked the dust.  Have at it boys and girls.

Asking about time of day, with no disrespect to anyone, is like asking which has more nutrition, the dollar burger at McDonalds of Burger King.  The real question is brown rice versus potato, fish versus produce, vegetable and soy, and beans.  Lots of ways to compare.  Many of these are healthy.  Salmon, Cabbage, Kale, Beets.  Now that's food.  The proper question is what do you eat, where, and to an extent, when.

PS If you go to the blog, you can see the full spreadsheet which will take you directly to my Google Drive (new name for Google Docs), with the full spreadsheet, a project I did in view of chess.Cafe, etc).  Click line to file.  Have fun!

Transformation wrote on 12/12/12 at 07:09:16:


Thank you David.  Perhaps you can lets us know when your chesscafe article is published (am not on here all that much so if you could post a link of sorts in thread that would be fab). 

Smyslov_Fan wrote on 12/10/12 at 21:35:18:



Good idea yeah, or just schedule to meet friends or people I know there already.  Remembered reading mention of FICS slow hours here: http://dk-transformation.blogspot.com/2010/05/letters-to-not-so-young-blue-devil... (where he does a general comparison of the chess servers, is a little dated but still worth reading imho).  Anyway, if I can't find out the peak activity time for FICS there are other ways of being able to schedule matches there as you mentioned.  Long live FICS!!!

Am in California and was wondering if there's a way to find out when FICS is usually at its pinnacle of activity here.  I know there are much more active servers but FICS (w/babas) is by far my first choice in interface and application.