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Game result (chess) B. Ozen, 2269 N. Wilson, 2121 1/2-1/2 See game 152323 |
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Here are 0 results for Ryo Kuragari in the games.
Here are 6 results for Ryo Takesue in the games.
Game_120843 Game_120842 Game_120841 Game_120837 Game_120833 Game_120828
There are at least 100 results for Ryo in the forum.
Garvin Gray (2026-05-20 05:01:42)
Call referee about game ...
Well. In the two cases mentioned above, it seems that both Herbert and I believe that there was at least a need to reply and a decision to be made.
And in our opinion, the worst decision was to 'go silent'.
If we take a similar situation in otb chess, and I imagine the same would be for go as well.
In an otb chess tournament, a player has an issue in their game, stops the clock and either raises their hand or comes over to the arbiters table to get their attention.
The arbiter would then come to the board and issue a ruling. Yes, sometimes their ruling would be to take no action, but at least the player knows that the arbiter has heard their asking for a ruling and the game proceeds.
In the two cases shown above, it seems that Herbert and I believe that we has occurred is that you have not even bothered to attend to our issue at all.
And that has left us dis-satisfied to the point where we are now having to raise it as a forum topic for everyone else to see.
Garvin Gray (2025-12-10 02:03:16)
An indication for draw offers
Sorry, deja vu again.
ICCF already handles this topic.
A player can only offer one draw every ten moves in a game, unless their opponent offers a draw in return.
I have suggested this to Thibault previously and whilst he was receptive, it was not implemented.
This solution would stop repetitive draw offers, either intentional or accidental (and accidental can happen with no equal sign applied to a draw offer in the notation) and also everyone would know when they last offered a draw in each game.
Ulises Pineda (2025-11-18 10:33:59)
Clarification of Rating Groups
I demand a button that buys a ticket automatically when a player is elegible for playing a higher rated tournament and the Epoints to pay it are available, because right now, I have no idea how to do such a feat, in that case, Jempty outsmarted us all, unironically.
Not that my demands have any weight, I think people's lives have gotten better since they ignored me, and perhaps it'd be better for everyone if these rules remained hidden and nobody ever used them again (except Jempty would continue to play a tier up when able), but it's worth a try.
I don't have a bad taste but this has caused me physical pain in the lower back part of my head, is it stressful?
It's nothing personal against George, it's just that climbing the rating ladder is one of the most difficult tasks one can do in life, so when one sees a 2400 player, one respects them, because of all the time and effort they had to put to get there, which, for all players below that tier is immeasurable, if we could measure it we could have that rating too.
But someone getting there by buying tickets that allowed them to face higher rated opposition and take shortcuts to avoid dealing with lower rated players does cheapen the meaning of the number.
I guess it's all about the money, pay to win iff someone buys the Epoints for this reason, and holds a higher rating to skip a tier (note I said iff, not if, not accusing anybody of doing that.)
It's like buying a car instead of running the marathon, and the rating doesn't actually reflect chess skill anymore.
Garvin Gray (2025-11-10 05:48:20)
Clarification of Rating Groups
George:
As I stated in my original post:
The policy as I have known it has been that a player must win a lower division, and then can only enter the higher division when the field has gotten to the last two entries.
Has this policy changed?
Your reply would fit if the player had won the lower division and was then trying to enter the higher division.
This is the rule I was quoting.
Your justifications about where your rating sits, or where your rating maybe in the future does not matter. Many players can show this pattern.
I certain have and have been stuck just below a rating cut off and when I have attempted to enter a higher division when there are two spots left open, I have been told no as I not won a lower division.
Therefore, this is why I am seeking a clarification from Thibault.
And it is only Thibault that I want a public answer from.
Either the rule has changed and it should be told to everyone, or an exception has been made for you, which is then clearly wrong as that is favouritism.
I have been told no in the past.
So, which is it Thibault?
Thibault de Vassal (2025-10-24 12:22:24)
DNS failure last week
Ahaha :) Thank you very much Yeturu... I could have sent an email to everyone sooner, but I always hoped to solve the problem quickly... I was wrong, obviously.
About the DNS config (ns.ficgs.com, dns.ficgs.com), I just can't remember what I exactly did maybe 15 years ago, but the fact is that it suddenly stopped to work, and I don't know why. So I had to change it.
Thibault de Vassal (2025-10-21 17:27:39)
DNS failure last week
Hello everyone...
Finally FICGS is back!
Noone should have lost any game on time, I added about 7 days to all players expected to move, and 2 days to their opponents (time for new DNS to spread all over the internet)
I still have no idea why previous DNS ns.ficgs.com didn't work anymore, but well, I had to change it after having solved another (bigger) issue with the server provider.
Sorry all for the inconvenience...
Scott Ligon (2025-03-29 18:03:58)
Stockfish unbeatable at modest settings?
I think there's a decent chance that the 15 million node strategy is unbeatable, but I can't say what that chance is. Maybe I overestimate it. I have spent considerable time looking for a winning line for white and I haven't been able to find one. But, I had that same opinion about the 10 million node strategy before I found evidence in my games that it loses. Specifically games in the Sicilian. I haven't found any other winning lines for white.
As for my opponents, I think mostly they enter tournaments and play their usual game. I'm just another opponent. My focus is on the experiment I'm running, but I wouldn't assume everyone else is focused on it. But if anyone cares to prove that the 15 million node strategy is beatable, exploitive play is clearly the way to go about it. This most recent game shows that even a move that fails to give white an objective advantage could still merit consideration as a possible exploit against the fixed node strategy.
Garvin Gray (2024-12-07 04:02:25)
New Tie Break System
Currently Ficgs uses TER as its first tie break if two or more players are tied for first in a round robin group.
I have thought for a long time this is rather unfair and gives way too much advantage to the player with the highest rating in the group.
The practical effect of this rule can be thus:
7 players in a group:
The difference in ratings between the players can be less than 100 points and seeds 1 and 2 can be as little as 2 or 2 rating points.
But with using TER as the first tie break, the top seed only needs to have score the same as everyone else to advance, which with engines nowadays, can quite often mean that all games in a group are drawn.
What I propose is to change the tie break system to the following:
1) Number of wins
2) Sonneborn–Berger
3) Direct Encounter
4) TER
A second option is to stop using such small groups where possible. This would then at least increase the likelihood of a positive result in the groups as more games are played.
Thibault de Vassal (2023-12-15 01:51:10)
Referee Adjudication
Well, I thought that a one month limit for the game to finish could satisfy everyone...
IMO, that's quite strange to end a game when some players do NOT use 7-pieces tablebases and still could make mistakes in a winning or drawish position...
Thibault de Vassal (2023-11-25 23:15:04)
Referee Adjudication
The later is best :)
Do not forget that 50 moves rule does NOT apply at FICGS.
If there is a checkmate to come, according to the rules: after you ask, your opponent still gets 30 days to play a few moves more. Not everyone uses tablebases and some may want to see how it ends...
Juri Eintalu (2023-11-19 00:58:48)
A Public Appeal to Chess Organisations
ARGUMENTS CONCERNING THE RUSSIA/UKRAINE WAR
None of the commentators explained why it was necessary and reasonable to politicise sports and to impose sanctions on Russia and Belarus. No one answered my corresponding arguments from my Public Appeal. No one explained why the sanctions were imposed on Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, while no sanctions were imposed on the US for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
HERBERT KRUSE PRESENTED THE FOLLOWING "ARGUMENT":
"like Ukraine Israel had its "Butcha" at the music festival, so who attacked?
and there were constant rockets on Israel from Gaza, should they just allow it?
and the hostiges should just given up?
if my state can not defend me, maybe u can help?!"
This emotional and psychological manipulation completely ignored all my relevant arguments and explanations.
Now, let us take only the first phrase of this mumbo-jumbo:
"like Ukraine Israel had its 'Butcha' at the music festival, so who attacked?"
My Public Appeal was about chess sanctions. Now, the data are as follows:
2022, February 24:
Russia started its invasion of Ukraine
2022, February 27:
An extraordinary meeting of the FIDE Council was held on the current situation and the urgent measures to be taken after the military action launched by Russia in Ukraine.
https://fide.com/news/1603
Thus, it seems that they waited for the beginning of the Russian invasion and had a plan for how to react, as they responded only a few days later.
Israel had occupied Palestinian territories for 55 years, but the chess federation FIDE had never reacted.
2022, March 16:
Russia and Belarus teams suspended from FIDE competitions.
https://fide.com/news/1638
2022, March 30:
Russian troops leave Bucha (near Kyiv).
2022, April 01:
The corpses in Bucha were discovered.
Now, the first obvious problem with Herbert Kruse's "argument" is that the timeline proves that the chess sanctions on Russia were imposed BEFORE the corpses in Bucha were discovered.
The second problem is that he does not know or pretends not to know the definitions of such terms as "war crime".
The third problem is that, as a matter of fact, we do NOT know WHEN these people were executed, and we do NOT know WHO executed them.
It is so because there were actually TWO massacres in Bucha.
The shelling killed some people, "The Guardian" reported. These people were lying on the streets. The satellite images proved that they were killed before the Russian Army left the town.
However, some people were executed in the cellars. Unfortunately, the satellite images cannot prove the time of the executions in the cellars.
There is one additional problem. Ukraine has not made public the names and personal data of the victims. Therefore, we do not even know what percentage of the victims were Ukrainians and what percentage were Russians.
THIBAULT THE VASSAL PRESENTED THE FOLLOWING SEQUENCE OF ARGUMENTS:
"Ukraine is attacked mainly because Poutine (at least) argues it historically belongs to Russia with no consideration of its recent history & international treaties (and among other reasons because he obviously sees nazis in every people open on what a man/woman/family could look like, meaning many europeans & americans)."
Thibault has no evidence whatsoever for one's claim that Putin "obviously sees nazis in every people open on what a man/woman/family could look like, meaning many europeans & americans)." There is even no evidence to the claim that the Russian administration thinks that the majority of Ukrainians were Nazis. The evidence might be the public speeches of Russian leaders. But I have seen no such speech with such theses. Indeed, Putin has said something else.
I believe that Thibault presents one's prejudices as "obvious facts".
Besides, it has nothing to do with the arguments of my Public Appeal.
"There are few doubts that war crimes have been committed there."
In the Ukraine/Russia war, BOTH sides have committed a lot of war crimes, and it is well documented and proven.
However, the chess sanctions on Russia were not imposed because of the war crimes, as can be seen from the schedule above. The motivation to impose those sanctions was, initially, merely the fact that Russia started a war (not a war crime but a crime against peace).
Moreover, in the Ukraine/Donbas domestic war too, both sides committed war crimes. Ukraine committed crimes against humanity, and there were clear genocidal elements of the behaviour towards the Russian-speaking minority of Ukraine. It is also well-documented and proven. At the beginning of my Public Appeal, I mentioned that Karyakin argued from the premise that Ukrainian ultra-nationalists murdered a lot of Russians in Ukraine.
However, I see that the responses to my Public Appeal have altogether ignored all my arguments, and everyone has preferred to talk about something else.
Thibault de Vassal (2023-08-13 02:11:55)
Next Ficgs World Championship Tournament
The 25th round-robin final just started... 7, 9, 11 or at most 13 players should qualify (2 from stage 1 SM group, 1 from each stage 1 M groups, so 4 in total from stage 1, added to the winners of stage 2 groups, 3 in total).
According to the stage 2 results, I added one co-winner (best TER) from each stage 2 groups + the next best TER cowinner (3rd in his group).
Total : 11 players (good luck everyone!)
Juri Eintalu (2023-03-31 09:09:17)
RUSSIA AND BELARUS NOT SUSPENDED?
To Thibault de Vassal:
Thank you for taking a look at my open letter on Medium.
“... isn’t it a bit short to compare Russia’s war in Ukraine to what happened in Afghanistan, Iraq or Serbia? (that are quite different cases by the way, involving different groups of countries)”
If country A starts a war against country B, the relevant question is whether that war is justified or unjustified, whether it is a war of aggression or, instead, the attacker has the right to do so.
By now, it is a piece of common knowledge that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were wars of aggression.
Chess organisations FIDE and ICCF have punished Russian chess organisations for the Russian invasion of Ukraine while not punishing the US chess organisations for the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. FIDE and ICCF have not presented any comprehensive analyses about how justified or unjustified some of those wars are. You are turning the burden of proof around and accusing me of not delivering the arguments that FIDE and ICCF had to present.
“It seems that most russians in Russia still support this war (“special op”) while everyone ignored the truth about those weapons in Irak (in example). Any context should be analysed in depth IMHO.”
Excuse me, but I cannot follow what you are trying to say.
You argue that any context should be analysed in-depth, but you fail to hint at why Russia should be punished and the US should not. Your only fact mentioned, “everyone ignored the truth about those weapons in Irak”, remains mysterious. I do not understand in what context you are saying this.
We know already for ten years that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
Concerning your other remarks, I make only one reply. We know that there are saliently some Nazis in Ukraine.
Here, on the chess forum, I technically cannot answer in detail to your several remarks that, in my mind, are all somewhat inexact or vague.
Thibault de Vassal (2023-03-30 21:52:40)
RUSSIA AND BELARUS NOT SUSPENDED?
Extract from your open letter:
"Second, this decision was discriminatory and selective. For example, US correspondence chess players were not punished for the fact that the US had started wars in Afghanistan, Iraq or Serbia.
Well, many can agree that some US representatives should be judged for what looks like obvious lies but isn't it a bit short to compare Russia's war in Ukraine to what happened in Afghanistan, Iraq or Serbia? (that are quite different cases by the way, involving different groups of countries)
It seems that most russians in Russia still support this war ("special op") while everyone ignored the truth about those weapons in Irak (in example). Any context should be analyzed in depth IMHO. Would you accept to play chess with players from a country that just completely destroyed yours and who think at -randomly- 80% probability that it was a good thing (and incidentally that you are a nazi)?
Here, players from Russia & Belarus can still play chess under a neutral flag partly because I can't filter players geographically (I know russians who left their country because they are against this war) but this remain a complex question that depends on many things.
Scott Ligon (2022-11-25 16:20:13)
I did not win a game since 3 years
The problem with the two opening you suggested is that they're too good. Neither side made a mistake, so the engines will hold the draw every time (barring human error). The King's Gambit is a step in the right direction for a thematic tournament (with engines), and as long as everyone has an equal number of whites and blacks that's fair enough. I still think it's too easy for white to draw in the KGA with Nf3. The KGA with Bc4 is a bit more treacherous though I've explored it enough to be confident that white holds the draw. Anyway, I do think the openings need to be somewhat dubious or it's too easy for engines to draw.
Patrycja Zerowska (2022-10-06 09:54:59)
Threefold repetition
It seems that there is no way to claim a draw by threefold repetition on this site. In the game 136386, where I have Black, the position that occurred after my 50th move, is the same as that after my 58th move, and will be the same after my intended 60th move, namely 60... Bf7. I therefore claim a draw in this game.
Since apparently there is no "automatic arbiter" to process the claim, I called the "referee" on 1 October 2022 (5 days ago), explaining that I made a draw claim as described above (and mentioning my intended move), but I haven't received a reaction yet.
This particular game has been a dead draw at least since move 35. I offered a draw after my 35th move and on my 59th move. Both offers were declined.
1. Why is there no automatic arbiter which processes draw claims? If I am not mistaken, this site exists more than 15 years already, and yet the Laws of Chess are not yet fully implemented.
2. Why can't I stop my clock when I make such a claim? See art. 9.5 of FIDE's Laws of Chess.
3. Why doesn't the arbiter or the referee stop my clock? Without this, a player making a claim can timeout, or, when she is short on time, may be reluctant to make a draw claim.
4. Why doesn't the referee take action? Is there a referee at all?
In the rules section of this site I read: "Also, there is no way to stop the clocks, players cannot claim that they stopped to play after they called the referee for any reason..." This is a violation of the rules of chess; it implies that on this site it is not chess that is being played, but a weird chess variant. Of course I disagree with this corruption of the playing rules, and so should everyone who call themselves chess players!
Your strange rules also state that the referee will "act as soon as possible", but so far, after five days, no referee has shown up. So you are not even acting in agreement to your own rules.
Finally, I find in your rules the following statement: "All games are played until a player resign, accept draw, or lose on time." This is the most ridiculous "rule" I have ever encountered. Not only renders this farcical rule a win by checkmate illegitimate, it is a blatant ignoring of the Laws of Chess, which allow games to be ended by accepted draw claims, or for any other reason at the discretion of an arbiter.
Thibault de Vassal (2022-09-26 14:24:10)
Magnus Carlsen vs. Hans Niemann
I guess that everyone here is aware about the Carlsen-Niemann drama... Of course, it is still difficult to make a clear idea, so what do you think about this video (in french but you can get subtitles)?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PqORG75Cr4
If you know a video in english that say about the same (in brief, Niemann would have a 100% correlation with Stockfish 15 in several recent games, even more than in the cheating case in Paris few years ago, which is very very unlikely), thanks for sharing some more links...
Thibault de Vassal (2022-05-15 16:39:20)
19th Go championship final match
Hello everyone,
The 19th Go championship final match just started... late, really late. It did not start before because the challenger obviously stopped to play at FICGS and lost games without making a move (cancelling his qualification), but when reading the rules again, I realized that nothing prevented to make a replacement by the 2nd best score.
Consequently Paul Dao (CAN) is the challenger in 19th & 20th Go championships. Of course he will not have to play the 20th final match if he wins the 19th...
(better late than never, sorry for the delay)
Juri Eintalu (2022-03-23 04:30:48)
FIDE BANS KARJAKIN
I am sure that not everyone can competently decide whether Ukrainian war is a justified war or not. My personal feeling is that this war is unjustified, however, I do not know all the facts and I have not read the Genova Convention and other such documents either. The case of the Iraq war is much easier to decide because know we do know there were no chemical weapons in Iraq. Also, Iraq posed no threat to the US whatsoever as the US is on the other side of the planet and Iraq did not have intercontinental missiles.
As for myself, I will never participate in any tournaments or events of FIDE after FIDE has chosen a side in the West/Russia controversy and has allowed to weaponized itself.
Thibault de Vassal (2022-03-22 22:49:38)
FIDE BANS KARJAKIN
As a philosopher, I'm not sure if "how the chess organization can decide whether some was is a justified war" is relevant when everyone can decide whether some war is NOT a justified war.
As for me I support FIDE decision particularly if such a case is written in FIDE rules... I do not feel that this case is so complex (in example compared to war in Iraq or Syria).
A. T. S. Broekhuizen (2022-02-28 12:32:22)
FICGS support to Ukraine
About the flag issue. A united flag would be too soft. Just change everyone's flag to the Ukraine one for one day/week to show our sympathies.
Vadrya Pokshtya (2022-02-19 06:11:11)
Grand Dice Chess
Thank you, Mr. Thibault!
This was facilitated by reducing the distance between the two armies to zero. Each move is a roll of 4 dice or a movement of four pieces. As soon as the pawn chain is opened, events develop at lightning speed. It is also interesting that the right of the first move is not an advantage here for the beginning side. The first games in the test tournament on one of the Russian gaming sites showed this. The balance of white and black victories is kept strictly around 50%. The game turned out to be one of the most strategic among all dice chess variants.
You can try playing against the AI here
https://glukkazan.github.io/checkmate/grand-dice-chess.htm?fbclid=IwAR1Tt6sFmrK8KYRxwPPZJnrGujGss7to2jzdV8GxSons7Pmjdk7udHoJ0PA
This is a direct link to the game with the bot. Registration is not required. The bot is very weak but perfect for understanding the game.
Mr. Thibault, I would be glad if you would consider the possibility of holding a test tournament on your site. It would be interesting to see how many people would take part and what would be their opinion about the game. In any case, everyone would get an unforgettable experience.
Since I am doing this for the game and not for the money, you are free to dispose of Grand Dice Chess as you see fit on your site.
Thank you!
Thibault de Vassal (2021-11-29 02:01:04)
Unvaccinated correspondence chessplayers
It seems to me that is pure political stuff... Someones want the others being vaccinated to protect everyone best, someones don't want to be vaccinated... Well, that is just an explosive melt. I don't think that there is a simple solution, but well... it is obvious that our governments impact/affect us in many ways, I'm not sure if "it <<shouldn't>> have some control on our body as well (to protect the others)" is a real argument.
Fortunately, the context of correspondence chess is not the same as paliaments ^^
Thibault de Vassal (2021-09-20 02:16:26)
Chess Cup final #4
The 4th FICGS chess cup just started with 28 players... that is much more than the previous ones, and too many players most probably, but it should not happen again as 5 players groups will be double round robin from now (decreasing chances to see 4 or 5 players obtaining the same score).
Good luck everyone!
Garvin Gray (2021-09-11 11:56:08)
VENEZUELA HAS BEEN DISMISSED FROM ICCF
Juri - Quite a few of your questions contain quite a lot of accusations, or at least a tone of accusations, or that those who took actions in dismissing Venezuela has some kind of hidden motives.
The decision to dismiss Venezuela was made by the National Delegates of each Federation of ICCF, after considering all the evidence before them.
This included unpaid prize money, where entry fees were charged, over at least two years, unpaid affiliated fees to the ICCF (same time period) and the National Delegate of Venezuela was offered many opportunities to pay back the money.
The National Delegate ran the tournaments, handled the money through paypal and in the end was in debt to the ICCF and the players of their tournament to the tune of roughly 7 to 10 thousand euros.
So, yes, ICCF has provided plenty of evidence that the 'organiser' took off with the entry fees of the players and did not pay out the advertised prize monies.
Multiple attempts were made by the ICCF Executive Board to reach a satisfactory compromise with the National Delegate, but in the end the National Delegate cut off all communications and went completely silent to everyone.
All Federations pay an affiliation fee to be part of ICCF. This amount is levied in part based on the number of members a Federation has, and also that countries economic position (GDP).
After reading all this, what other option was there for the other National Delegates to vote for?
In another proposal, which you have not referenced, the ICCF Executive board has promised that the prize money that was not paid out by the Venezuelan National Delegate would be covered by the ICCF, which will cost roughly 10,000 euro and will be paid out to the players.
So, to answer your questions after all this information:
1) No. This issue and your question are not related at all. It is not even certain if the Venezuelan National Delegate lived in Venezuela.
2) Yes, plenty of evidence was provided. Players had also reported that they had not received their prize money. I can report this as fact as I got burnt as a player in one of their events. So I know first hand that this occurred.
3) This has nothing to do with 'sports'.
This is a common misunderstanding about how ICCF works. ICCF is an association of Federations ie ICCF only recognises Federations. Therefore, officially ICCF can only take action formally against Federations and only works with the National Delegate from that Federation.
How the Federation conducts their business 'behind the scenes' is up to them and is none of the business of ICCF. It would be highly improper for ICCF to have a say in how any individual Federation ran their Federation.
What now occurs is that the remaining Venezuelan players are treated as isolated players. They can not represent Venezuela in team events, by they are free to play in any individual events.
Some of these players might be picked up by other Federations, if another Federation wants them.
4) Money transfers - As I already alluded to, it is not clear if the Venezuelan ND was even in Venezuela, but anyways, he had no trouble receive the entry fees, so money transfers by paypal were no issue.
If there was an issue, then they should not have run prize money tournaments
5) No political motives - This was a straight up case of whether the Venezuelan ND had taken off with the entry fees of the players and failed to pay out the prize money from many tournaments, as well as the Federation failing to pay their affiliation fees, as well as being in debt for other fees as well.
These are basic responsibilities for all Federations. Even if you want to lay all the blame of the Venezuelan ND, a case can be made as to ask what happened to any oversight from anyone else?
Or was the Venezuelan ND just a rogue operator?
This experience has left a sour taste in everyone's mouth and remedy steps have been taken to try and avoid this occurring again.
See other proposals.
Garvin Gray
Australia ICCF National Delegate
Garvin Gray (2021-05-04 12:14:16)
Wch 22 Stage 2 ended
I decided to leave this discussion for a while for two reasons. 1) I genuinely believed that whatever would be agreed to in this discussions would be unwound at a later date and
2) That my involvement in the discussions was not a helpful factor for others to become involved in the discussions
I will now explain what issues made me go public with my frustrations with this site and with the site owner in particular.
Over a long period of time, I had a to beg, plead and convince that the FICGS World Cup was an event that would be supported, despite Thibault's regular protests to the contrary.
Once the event and the format was finally decided to 'give it a go', the numbers was huge for this site and the general format had two primary goals:
1) No preferential treatment for high rated players. Everyone started from round one and the groups for round one would be divided up to make sure that each group would be of roughly equal strength
2) In previous discussions with the WCH, I had regularly protested that when there were groups of 5, that these groups should be double round robin, ensuring that all players got eight games and that colour allocation for the top two seeds would not play a role in the final results.
Then the latest groupings for the World Cup were released and everything that had been previously agreed had been violated:
1) Groups of 5 were used and all groups were only single round robin (breaking of a previous agreement)
2) The entire purpose of the World Cup was to have large first round groups and a small number of groups, ensuring that only about 9 or so players made it through to the final round. As it stands now, about 19 players will make it to the final round. The entire format has been advertised as a two round event. Therefore, there can not be a third stage. This is a clear condition of entry and it can not be violated. (breaking of another previous agreement).
I can go on and on, but I think this is sufficient as to highlight why I come to the conclusion that the site owner has no issue at all with breaking previous agreements.
I busted my ass for a number of years to convince everyone that the World Cup was a good event worth supporting. And when it was first run, it was well supported.
To now see it so corrupted makes me just think, why bother. Another deal broken. Time to move on from this site.
Thibault de Vassal (2021-04-07 01:18:50)
Poker Rating
No, it wasn't non-sportsmanlike for sure, good example... but should this game really be rated? (rated for the winner I mean, you lost some points in this case)
The other problem is that players trying to manipulate ratings could do the same and reality is that they do not (or very rarely) when there are 10 moves at least to play, so this rule is efficient to prevent this. And as we all know, no rule is perfect for everyone.
You are right, lasting a won game to move 10 would be strange but it is a choice and a price to pay... the main thing is that it should be rare.
Roberto Battaglia (2020-06-04 09:55:29)
chess archives in pgn
A few days ago, in the chat, I put some questions regarding the existence or not of archives of chess games and their organization. The chat doesn't allow many words so I take advantage of the forum for explaining the matter.
For example on the ICCF website I find for each player a file with all his chess games, I also find archives of all the games played year by year. This allows me to create excellent databases, using for example SCID.
I also would like to add the games played on FICS but, perhaps for my limit, I was able to find only one way to access the pgn. that is: I type the name of a player in the search box and press go. If, for example, I write Fric (Fric Lubos is a friend of mine who attends both ICCF and FICGS) I find all his PNGs but there are mixed games of poker and chess and this creates a problem because I have to separate them by looking at them one by one.
I hope I was clear. Obviously it is possible that I have not seen some functions of the site that allow to access to archives where could be stored games divided by year, by player and by type of game. I thank all those who want to answer me and wish everyone good and winning games.
Roberto
Thibault de Vassal (2020-03-02 20:44:28)
Chess WCH #22 (march 1st, 2020)
Dear chessfriends,
This time, the correspondence chess rating list was updated just after that the new correspondence chess WCH cycle started, this is not really usual (and the answer is yes, I forgot to update it) but it can happen and it happened before... Just to remind that there is no particular rule about this, so one can't expect a 100% deterministic situation when a championship starts.
Best of luck everyone :)
Thibault de Vassal (2019-06-28 00:27:36)
Android App not working
Thank you all for your help, now I just updated all FICGS apps at Google Play Store. It could solve the problem for everyone (at least it worked for one user already)...
Any feedback is welcome! As you can see, it really helps :)
Thibault de Vassal (2019-04-01 16:19:38)
April fool jokes at FICGS
I announce here that there won't be april fool jokes anymore at FICGS. Sorry about that for those who liked it (sometimes at least), but it it definitely too confusing on sensible points and it is quite hard to find good ones.
Anyway, have a nice spring everyone!
Thibault de Vassal (2018-11-19 22:25:20)
World Championship Tie-breaks
Please everyone let me finish this discussion with those who feel concerned. Private messages are welcome if necessary.
Paul, the "first" argument is not valid here, it just goes against the netiquette rules, if you read it again.
Paul Larwinski (2018-11-17 19:28:43)
Carlsen Caruana wch match
i meant the exciting chess games between Kasparov and Karpov in wch matches, they have both played other openings and mostly main famous lines.
everyone can see Kasparov-Karpov games in chess database
first game of Carlsen - Caruana wch match was exciting too , winning chances
Thibault de Vassal (2018-10-20 03:06:28)
No engine tournaments, no, no
I understand but in my opinion we have to accept this... This kind of tournament is a question of fun (to make mistakes as well) and honor (not to win but to play it by the rules!), no need to shame anyone publicly or to bring a climate of suspicion as everyone can make an opinion by watching/analyzing the games. But yes, it is possible/probable that a few players use engines even there... why, this is quite a mystery but it is always possible to cheat in this kind of tournaments.
As there's no prize or rating points to win, best is to ignore it IMO.
Gabriele D Agostino (2018-07-29 20:48:31)
On (almost) global forfeits in WCH
Thank you Thibault for trying to improve the rules. There are good reasons in either case, consider all the results or give 1 point to everyone. Any decision will not satisfy anyone.
Such a rule is in the FIDE tournament regulations. (8.2)
https://www.fide.com/FIDE/handbook/Competition_Rules.pdf
Obviously we can choose a different rule.
Thibault de Vassal (2018-07-29 18:27:22)
On (almost) global forfeits in WCH
Thanks Gabriele for sharing your point of view (we always need more :-))... that's a part of the problem IMO, even a balanced percentage may/will not satisfy everyone as soon as any percentage below can suddenly decide the winner of the tournament. And of course, there are many reasons to lose only one game on time (or to have to resign it for personal matters).
Peter W. Anderson (2018-05-15 11:29:42)
Leela Chess Zero
Hello everyone :)
I guess most people here will be aware of the Leela Chess Zero project.
I was interested in whether anyone here is already using Leela? I have run a few of my old FICGS games through it quickly and it gives very different evaluations to the standard engines in some positions - I am not sure if they are better or worse at a quick glance but they are different!
For those who aren't familiar with Leela it is an attempt to recreate something like Alpha Chess Zero for the PC. It is not yet as strong as Stockfish etc but is as strong as most grandmasters and some weaker engines and is gradually increasing in strength as it is trained. It comes in two versions: one to run on the CPU and one to run on a graphics card. A high end graphics card gives the best results, but it runs OK on CPUs.
Leela is nowhere near as tactically strong as the best engines (whether it ever will be on "normal" hardware is an open question). However, to my eyes, it generally exhibits pretty good positional judgement, and so I am figuring it could provide a useful alternative view for correspondence games.
You can contribute to this really interesting project by helping to train it by donating computer time. Helping with the training is pretty straightforward. A guide of how to help is at
https://github.com/glinscott/leela-chess/wiki/Getting-Started
A forum and progress chart is at
http://lczero.org/
I found getting it to run under GUI's as an analysis tool a little more fiddly as it not yet fully UCI compliant. However, I have got it to run OK under Chessbase, Shredder, and Arena OK for analysis. For running matches Arena or something like Cutechess may be best.
I would interested to know your thoughts on this.
Thibault de Vassal (2018-04-02 03:25:33)
Poll: renaming the Queen as Dragon
Okay, time to "reveal" that this topic was my tentative of an april's fool joke, of course... Everyone understood it at the first line, I guess :o)
Thibault de Vassal (2018-03-14 23:12:38)
A few questions to Nelson Bernal Varela
Nelson Bernal Varela is an early FICGS correspondence chess player, now rated 2277 but also rated 2359 at ICCF (Correspondence Chess Master - CCM).
Last but not least, and as all poker holdem players here probably noticed, he is also our ranked #1 for years, who just reached an outstanding poker rating of 2382, while number two is now rated "only" 2212. A good occasion to ask him a few questions, that he kindly accepted to answer.
-----------------------
- Hello Nelson! You are the 2nd most active player at FICGS for years now. Everyone here probably noticed your incredible results in poker tournaments. "Correspondence poker holdem" was probably a strange idea as it is very unusual and very different from "Internet poker". What's your opinion on this and on the presence of a card game (played without money) at FICGS?
NBV: There are more important things than money and one of those is HONOR; It is honorable to be a chess master, international master, grandmaster, world chess champion at ICCF and at FICGS and to be number one in the ranking. It is honorable to be a FICGS world champion at Go and to be first in the ranking, it is honorable to be poker world champion at FICGS poker and in my case, it is an honor to be number one at poker here at FICGS during the last years, understanding that our general level of play has improved remarkably. None of these activities produces money, but to achieve any of the mentioned titles, it is necessary to have extraordinary abilities.
When I was about 18 years old, I had the opportunity to meet a person with immense material wealth, we spent whole evenings playing chess and then I told him my perceptions about each movement of the game. He thanked me for my chess explanations and paid me with good money. That wealthy man in his turn told me about life and recommended that I should always be proud of the gifts I had, since he knew, with all the money he had and being able to hire the best grandmasters in the world, that it could hardly come at the level of chess master. That person told me that the intellect can be turned into money whenever you want.
Now, by playing poker without money at FICGS, I understood that it was my extraordinary and wonderful opportunity to study-learn-perfect and test my poker theories without costing me a single dollar. In FICGS there is no money, but thanks to the knowledge I gained playing poker in FICGS, today I can go after the money in online poker rooms and probably in OTB poker tournaments. I am studying the possibility of becoming a professional poker player.
- The understanding of your opponent's behaviour is usually quite important at Poker. Do you manage to establish some profiles while playing so many simultaneous hands & games? Did you build any method?
NBV: Today I am sure that the most important thing to raise, and keep raising my level in poker, has been to build a psychological profile of mine, to get to know Nelson Bernal Varela in depth and above all to understand me, accept me, love me and be work every day eliminating my technical errors, strategic, psychological that make me play badly. I am aware that in poker I can play perfectly and still lose, what I can not forgive me is playing badly, which is why I work hard correcting my wrong decisions.
Of course, there is a space in my brain where I have built a psychological profile of each contender, that profile I have been able to elaborate with all the information that is provided to me in each hand we play. The way each of us plays, gives reliable information about our personality.
About my method I can write the following: A few years ago, I created a table in excel, where I had all the games with each contender, I identified them with the FICGS numeration and each movement in each hand (preflop, flop, turn, river ) it I was writing and studying; I started to add technical-psychological variables that seemed important to me, resulting in 20 variables that I had to qualify in each movement. With the passage of time and my effort, I no longer needed the excel table and I did not use it again (it was exhausting and time consuming) because I was assimilating things faster and with greater depth. Today I can say that I evaluate these 20 variables in a natural way, as if I was breathing and that when I am at a poker table, online or real, after a few minutes I get the psychological profile of the table and each of my opponents. In the pocket of my shirt I keep a small paper with the list of variables, periodically reread it and I wonder if I should modify, remove or add something.
- You won 1007 poker games, and lost only 380, with a ratio usually going from 57% to 80% according to your best opponents. Undoubtly you know the mathematics hidden behind poker but that may not explain everything. How did you learn to play?
NBV: Mathematics is an ingredient in poker, in the same way that my psychological aspects and of my opponents (I recommend reading-studying about four times the book “The Poker mindset” of Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger), it is vital to understand the Law of Large Numbers. Next I make a list of topics that I consider important to raise the level of poker; compete with EV+ cards, you have to know the small ball theory of Negreanu (but not apply it, hahaha) you have to always look at the texture of the board, you have to evaluate your reality and your future, also that of your opponents (act and power), the position to talk is important, the stack, the personality of the table, know who has the panic button on. All these and other variables must be evaluated in the few seconds they have to make a move and the only important thing is to make the right decision according to the circumstances. There is a good list of poker books to read... it is mandatory to have read about 15 poker books.
- As for me, I may be wrong but I can't imagine that you reached such a rating without special techniques & maybe by optimizing it in some ways... Of course, "rating management" is not a problem, and it is only one thing with a limited impact, but maybe you have some other secrets? What about this "+1" technique that I noticed in many of our games, if this is not a secret? :)
NBV: In these years I have used different techniques that I had to read, study, learn, repeat, modify, invent and sometimes eliminate. Poker is a sport that seems easy, with time one manages to understand that it has an amazing complexity, today I consider poker to be as complex as chess and I study them in a "similar" way. As an example, I have tried to create "openings in poker"; based only on probabilities I invented something that I called mirror theory and another "opening" that I called opposite outs. I am fascinated by mathematics and from the mathematical perspective they are perfect "theories-openings", but I have lost tournaments and a lot of money for applying such theories in mistaken emotional moments. In poker it is important to never lose sight of the Law of Large Numbers and be aware that this LAW likes to make fun of each one of us... I am working on giving an emotional nuance to my theories "mirror" and "opposite outs". There are moments when perfect mathematics becomes an unforgivable psychological error...
For the last few months I have modified my way of playing and my results have improved; Today it must be much more difficult to win a game me, thanks to small and imperceptible adjustments that of course only I know, because I have followed my mistakes-successes-evolution in the game over several years.
- Isn't it too frustrating for you to play heads up only (here at least) ? Of course it is a way to improve this important technical case but we know that many complexities come with 3 to 8 players on the table, which is the most common case in professional poker tournaments.
NBV: Currently I spend little time every day playing heads-up in FICGS, thanks to the fact that I have the profile of each contender. The 4-5 hours that I study poker daily, include practice in micro limits in cash tables of 6 players and tournaments in tables of 8-9 players. I think I'm covering the whole range of possibilities, experiencing game situations between 1 and 8 contenders.
- What do you think about computer analysis in poker? Do you think it could make a difference here just like the way we play advanced chess?
NBV: I think the algorithms are ready to be written in machine language and the question is where are those algorithms? Well, in the brains of the best players in the world and in their games compiled in huge databases. But programming language can be accelerated with artificial intelligence brains, making A.I. studying databases of the best professionals, playing with itself millions of games and building an invincible TACTIC-STRATEGIC SYSTEM, similar to chess software and GO... I think preflop and flop play would be very similar between humans and artificial intelligence, but on the turn and on the river artificial intelligence would take considerable advantage, but in the short time the level of human poker would rise because artificial intelligence would teach us to play poker, this event that would diminish the profits of the professionals. It will always be said in favor of poker that because it is an incomplete game of information, to make computer algorithms are quite complicated, but despite that, I am sure that artificial intelligence will far surpass the best human poker player. It is possible that an artificial intelligence that plays a perfect poker already exists, but unlike GO and chess, poker does produce a lot of money. Due to the money factor, in today's world, it is very difficult that there is a Prometheus willing to steal fire from the gods and give it to mankind...
- How would you describe your relation to games in general?
NBV: I can summarize it in one of the first chess books I had the fortune to read, by the great Danish master Bent Larsen, "I play to win"
- When did you start to play chess & poker? Do you play other games?
NBV: My first contact with chess was at the age of nine, it was love at first sight and until death separates us; I must confess that for some years we have been separated, due to my stupidity and my erroneous decisions. I have always been self-taught in any subject, my method is to buy about 10 to 15 books of the subject that interests me and I read them thoroughly, sometimes 3 or 4 times; already with that information in my head and thanks to the constant practice, I build MY SYSTEM (Nimzowitch) according to my personality, my dreams, my desires, my anguish, my fears... I was youth champion of Bogotá, for 4 years , my OTB level was strong, but I had to abandon chess because I had to work and survive; Being an athlete in Colombia is an absolutely difficult thing, but being a chess player is extremely complicated since there is no support or respect from society and you can not live by chess, because it does not produce money.
I met poker in 2009 in FICGS, at that time I was in a terrible emotional situation, trying to get away from a relationship with a woman that I should never approach and where I wasted valuable time and energy. In that context, looking for my thoughts to be occupied, I ended up playing the FICGS C-24 poker tournament and tied the first place with three more players; I kept playing, without understanding what was happening with the cards and obviously, losing, until in 2010 I won the FICGS D-21 tournament with perfect score, 6 out of 6. I had already bought-read my first beginner book: Poker for Dummies of Harroch and Krieger, but my poker was coarse, wild, street, intuitive, amateur, without dedication or study. In the background of this paragraph, the affection and gratitude that I have for FICGS is condensed, a place where I have been able to build-practice-study-test MY SYSTEM in poker.
I play Backgammon, I do not care that it may sound pretentious-petulant, but I have a very strong level and I have not read my first book yet. Hahaha. Any year I register as a participant in the world championship and I will cause disgust to more than one professional. Hahaha. Unlike chess and poker, backgammon does not cause me stress, on the contrary, I feel a lot of joy and pleasure when I play backgammon. I feel something similar with math, reading and music. It's true and I'm proud, I've always been a NERD.
- We all know how difficult it is to reach a number 1 rank but it is even more difficult to keep it during a long time. What is your motivation? Do you have more goals to achieve (chess & other games included) ?
NBV: My motivation in any activity I undertake in my life is to do it with absolute passion (passion is everything you would do to get a breath of air, in the second before dying by drowning or suffocation).
I have several goals to accomplish before December 2021; In the ICCF correspondence chess I must reach the 2400 elo and get the titles of International Master, SIM and Grand Master, also perform outstanding performances in world championships. In FICGS Chess I must complete my Master and International Master titles and overcome the 2450 elo, also snatch the title from our eternal champion Eros Riccio. You're warned Eros, hahaha. On the LSS site where I also play, www.chess-server.net I want to be a world champion.
In POKER I find myself playing micro limits bets in several online sites; in June 2018 I hope I have built some bankroll. In July of 2018 I must be evaluating my poker to know if my immediate goal is to become a professional poker player, that would completely change my chess goals and I would have to dedicate myself to OTB poker. At the moment I study and practice poker every day, about 4-5 hours a day. At this moment my poker is full of errors that I am eliminating one by one. MY SYSTEM needs to win and raise money in the micro limits, so that it can succeed in professional poker.
In chess OTB I should become a great master, but that topic should be left as a goal for after 2021. I could achieve the record of being the oldest human in getting the title of Grand Master OTB. Hahaha.
In backgammon I would like to play some important tournaments in USA and Europe and maybe to be OTB world champion, but at the moment I do not have clarity on how to do it. I must mature that idea.
I hope they invent immortality before I die and that I have enough money to buy it, because time is what I need to realize all these and other dreams...
- Finally, playing so many games on several websites (obviously with serious ambitions in each game & place) may look quite inhuman and exhausting, does your body or brain say "stop" sometimes? Do you train by melting sports and brain games just like Kasparov did in the past?
NBV: It's true, it takes willpower and a lot of resistance to sustain the pace that I carry. To take care of my body, I am doing daily exercise for 60 to 90 minutes, including routines of strength, elasticity, speed and endurance. I also practice table tennis to preserve the agility of my body. I'm also divorced and I do not have a girlfriend... Hahaha
- By curiosity, do you consider playing Go in the future, even after... 2021? (which would surely be an enormous charge more, but the game is really interesting)
I have a kind of commitment with the best Colombian GO player, exchange of classes, he makes me a competitive player of GO and I turn him into a competitive player of backgammon. But the truth is that I do not have time... it could be after 2021...
- Do you confirm that you are not (entirely or partly) AlphaZero or any kind of A.I. (yet) ? :-)
NBV: Hahaha, of course I would like to be a real centaur, human with machine power, I do not care what physical form I should adopt. I offer myself publicly as a guinea pig in projects of technological singularity. Hahaha
- Many thanks for your detailed and instructive (impressive as well) answers! My best wishes of luck in all your games and future tournaments.
Thibault de Vassal (2018-02-16 17:34:51)
FICGS Android APP beta version
Well, unfortunately I was not able to follow Zack's suggestion. Let's hope everyone will find the menu at the bottom.
Clodomiro Ortiz (2018-01-18 10:55:56)
FICGS chess cup : proposal
Dear chessfriends,as someone nicely said,I am now at the clubhouse.i like that..On that account,i think legitimate to extend my congratulations,in advance,to the winner or winners of this first CHESS CUP,no matter who might be,because they are not responsible that anything can happen..what a lesson..Thanks for letting me be part of this event..Yesterday i was only ringing the bells before DEATH KNOCKS AT THE DOOR..WAKE UP my family,WAKEUP LEGITIMACY,that is my wife name,GET VACATION if necessary those who may feel tired at the final stage,,,SPECIAL THANKS FROM MY HEART TO THIBAULT,for keeping on,although not everyone is always satisfied,chess is beautiful but men not so much..What a wonderful world anyway..finally,i want to point out that nobody gave me one single point.What is not too bad...GOOD LUCK..Now i go silent until the end...
Clodomiro Ortiz (2018-01-17 11:59:10)
Spice up chess? More members
I like the idea of a SUPER RAPID TOUR..of course, it is lead to the segment of population with enough available time...remember that sometimes losing on time is a decision some people prefer as a tactic to delay defeat.Anyway, everyone should be responsible for the tour selected...
Thibault de Vassal (2018-01-17 05:01:38)
Spice up chess? More members
Another interesting & old topic, very tough actually to make everyone happy when trying to reduce chances of losses on time... still unsolved :)
Garvin Gray (2018-01-14 02:43:50)
FICGS chess cup : proposal
Projections for the winning score are now being made. I thought I would bring these discussions to the thread.
Be careful about not actually discussing the games as so not to influence those games.
It seems like 9.5 or 10 out of 16 will be the winning score.
For any player to get a FEM norm, they had to score 12/16.
Now looking at this field and how the scores have panned out, does 75% seems rather unrealistic?
9.5/16 has already been recorded by Ortiz, so use a golfing analogy. Ortiz is in the clubhouse with 9.5 and everyone else is still on course playing out their last holes.
Anything less than 9.5 is no good.
Quite a few players still have so many games still going that making predictions is a rather forlorn exercise at this stage.
Thibault de Vassal (2017-12-16 02:15:04)
DeepZen reached 9 dan (Go)
Everyone is talking about AlphaGo / AlphaZero but I just realized that another Go program reached 9 dan in 2017 : Zen or Deep Zen
It won a computer tournament and beat number 1 japanese player Iyama Yuta 9d, that seems quite significant.
http://senseis.xmp.net/?ZenGoProgram
A way to compare the success of the program by Google Deepmind.
Thibault de Vassal (2017-04-21 22:54:00)
WCh and other ramblings
Thanks for these words & analysis Peter! Yes, I don't know yet if Eros will fight one more time to retain the title but obviously he did it very well during these last years... the strongest engine alone would certainly not have been able to achieve this. Anyway, Herbert (& others) looks like to be ready for the challenge and this could be very interesting to see such a match! Well, let's see how this tough candidates final with Pablo finishes before :)
Well, the cup format was a first step towards a championship with more chances for everyone... the future "King's supertournament" will be another one with a thematic bigger round-robin that should definitely avoid the drawish problem & a new attempt to give sense to correspondence chess. To be continued...
Peter W. Anderson (2017-04-19 08:46:20)
Thematic with lowest chances of draw
One possibility would be to take a selection of openings from the last TCEC final. These were deliberately unbalanced to reduce the drawing chances. They were a superb set of openings. To make it fair people would have to play both sides of an opening.
I could also provide you with some hard to hold positions from the modern defence (I won't be playing, so there will no unfair advantage).
Re the previous suggestions:
- benoni with early Bf4 is a good choice
- czech benoni is definitely overscored by engines but will be a tough hold nonethless; I would watch these games with interest
- Hennig Schara is great fun and I have never lost with it on FICGS, but it really is awful if white plays the best line (but I am not going to say what that is!).
- KID would depend on which line was chosen; some lines have been analysed almost to death, others have plenty of scope left.
One other possibility - a Breyer Lopez. Quite a tough hold IMO and therefore a good choice if everyone plays both sides.
Garvin Gray (2017-01-26 11:37:58)
FICGS chess cup : proposal
1) Being a new event, an email should be sent to all members explaining this event and that it is a main championship event. And that entries will open Wednesday 8th February.
2) Entries open Wednesday 8th February and close Wednesday 1st March. That gives everyone three weeks to enter.
3) Entries close Wednesday 1st March. The event needs to start straight after this date.
I am aware that you need to update ratings, work out the groups, load everything into the server to get the event started, so there is a lag time after March 1st.
Garvin Gray (2017-01-25 09:18:35)
FICGS chess cup : proposal
I have read the formatted rules. The only difference between what is in this thread and what is in the entry conditions is how ties for first will be broken.
If you read back through this thread, I said:
Garvin- For the second stage (finals)= I know this might be a bit controversial, but I think the TER rule should be dropped and those who tie for first should progress. Since we have seven groups (this was based on this discussion at the time- Garvin insert 25/1/17), that should mean at the most eleven players in the final.
This will have the by-product in the round robin games of everyone knowing that if they can finish outright first, they knockout everyone from their group immediately.
--------------------
And we continued discussing the rules and it was agreed to remove the TER and other 'tie' rules have those who finish equal first all progress.
So that rule needs to be changed.
As quite a few of the entrants will not have seen this thread, or any of the other discussions, perhaps a slight explanation for round one of how this event is different to the FICGS world champs would be helpful to 'sell' the event.
As in. For the FICGS World Chess Cup, The Highest Rated Player will be seed 1 and placed in Group A, Second Highest Rated Player will be seed 2 and placed in Group B and so forth for seed 3, seed 4 etc till all players have been allocated to their respective groups.
All players start from the first round and there is no knockout stage.
Garvin Gray (2016-11-30 14:04:30)
Future penalties for games lost on time
Ilmars, did you actually bother to read the ICCF sections I quoted? Or did you just say, I am against any penalties as a blanket statement and stuff the rest?
If you had read the ICCF rules, in all cases of disciplinary action, an individual has a basic right to express his/her case, with reasoning, before a decision is taken by an official/tournament director or tournament office, etc.
So any player in 'question' would be given the opportunity to answer why they lost their games on time and it would be up to the Tournament Committee, or Thibault alone to decide on what action to take.
And I do not believe it is appropriate to discuss individual players when discussing this rule. If we start mentioning individual players, then the potential for a lot of hurt feelings, defamation and arguments can ensue.
People will just start going through everyone's records who might be a 'suspect'. That serves no purpose except to upset everyone.
The topic is a simple one. At least it is to me.
Peter Anderson defined the issue well.
Scott Nichols (2016-11-11 21:07:34)
Do the cards matter?
The way I came up with the cards don't matter theory was watching a World Series of Poker heads up match between two of the players who came up the hard way and fought their way to the highest echelon of poker pro's.
They got dealt a hand, I don't remember the cards except they were shit cards that anybody would just throw in.
The host commenting on the match was a multi-time world champion. <br
To everyone's surprise, the first player bet big on his lousy cards. Of course, I and I am sure, everybody else thought player 2 would just throw in his lousy hand and go on to the next one. But noooo, he took his time, a long time, and re-raised. This went on and I can't even remember who actually won the hand, but the host said, "when you get to this level, the cards don't matter." That enlightened me in a profound way i had never thought of before.
Scott Nichols (2016-11-07 21:57:16)
Poker Poll
My idea was just a heads up match between 2 players who both feel they are the best:) No ratings, no money, everything just stays the same. The reason I offer this is because I'm 99% mathematically sure with this rating system, reaching 2400 would be next to impossible with everyone so much lower rated.
On the other hand, all I have to do is win a dozen or so games quickly and there it is. I feel it is an unfair advantage to me.
Thibault de Vassal (2016-05-28 00:16:29)
Bugs after the server crash
No, everyone got 7 extra days and players expected to move got 4 more days... so this is possible if you played your move yesterday.
Thibault de Vassal (2016-05-25 21:37:17)
FICGS restarts (2016 May 25)
Hi everyone, nice to see you again, I missed our games :)
First of all, my apologies for this too long delay... I went through hell to try to fix these first major issues (emails & database compatibility) that were the consequence of the forced system update that followed the server crash of last month.
Unfortunately, internet protocols & languages are constantly evolving and FICGS is late on these changes. Added to the fact that databases, databases tables, database interface, database calls, PHP language, PHP files, content display, browsers (and I probably forgot ones) communicate with variable charsets, the result is that it is impossible to make FICGS (which uses both UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1 according to the content) compatible with this system change in one shot...
Consequently, it will take a long time to make it right... Feel free to report any bug in the "Bugs after the server crash" discussion in this forum.
Thanks in advance! Have good games ;)
Thibault de Vassal (2016-05-11 21:46:55)
Bugs after the server crash
Yes, that is normal: I added 7 more days to everyone, this way if someone left or has no internet access during a while at the time FICGS reappeared, he shoud not lose any game on time.
I do this after any server crash.
Thibault de Vassal (2016-05-11 19:53:28)
Server crash (april 2016)
Hi all, welcome back :)
First of all, my apologies for this new server crash, about 4 years after the previous one...
The Raid 1 technology has its advantages, the 2 hard drives are almost-exact copies from each other, but it also has its difficulties [e.g. the "almost" part] and I just had to learn much about it to try to restore the server as I encountered not 1, not 2 but 3 hardware failures at the same time, added to a 4th hardware failure at home on the FICGS development PC, and of course added my "famous" incredibly bad internet connection. Murphy's law ^^ ... So, both hard drives and a SATA cable have been replaced on the server. Finally, the system had to be reinstalled and I had to upgrade it, which caused many difficulties these last few days. At the end, it was not possible to restore the very last FICGS database, so we lost a few minutes or hours of moves (fortunately it happened early in the morning). But nothing essential was lost at the end.
I'm still not 100% sure (if it's ever possible) that everything will work fine with this upgraded version of PHP & MySQL, obviously there are some problems with accents for players names (will be fixed soon) but let's go for a try. I probably made mistakes during the whole process that finally took 20 days but the good thing is that I should be able to better prevent such failures in the future. Thanks again for your patience!
As I said in the login/messages page, an email has been sent to warn everyone. If you tried to register or to change your password during the last two weeks, it was not taken in account so you'll have to do it again. 20 days (it was not possible to move during this time) have been added to all players expected to move, and 7 more days have been added to all clocks (including players not expected to move, to avoid any surprise in case of real vacation or something).
One more thing: It may be not possible to connect through SSL with https:// anymore in the future, I still don't know how to configure it on this system.
Let's play! :)
Best wishes,
Thibault
Paul Campanella (2016-04-18 18:59:14)
FICGS app for iPhone, android, etc.
How about creating an app for FICGS? What does everyone think?
Garvin Gray (2016-01-27 03:38:32)
FICGS chess cup : proposal
I think I have a different view on a couple of points, based in part in relation to the feedback I read to comments about TER.
Also, it comes from how I view the structure of the first stage, which is only a few groups and large numbers in each group ie 6 groups of 11 players, rather than 11 groups of 6 players.
========================================
FICGS world cup championship is a two stages tournament. All players who entered the waiting list are involved in single round-robin tournaments.
All games during the whole cycle are played in 30 days + 1 day / move. As a reminder, the use of chess engines (Stockfish, Houdini, Rybka...) is allowed and encouraged in cup tournaments.
Norms are possible according to FICGS general rules.
Round-robin tournaments are groups of 5 to 33 players (most probably 7 to 13). The winner of each group is qualified for the next stage. If there is a tie for first place in a group, each player advances to the second stage.
Groups are built grading all players by rating and distributing them to obtain similar elo averages. There will be no replacements in these tournaments.
=======================================
Effects- with only a small number of groups, and ties for first progressing, it is possible the second stage final could have 7,8,9 or 13 players. That will be determined.
But what I see is the main factor is that with large groups and ties going through, is all the players know they have to make a decent score to advance from the start. A good TER will not get the job done.
Also, if the scores at the top of a group are close, there is more incentive for players to attempt to get a score from their games as being the only one to advance knocks out everyone else, without any complaints about TER rules.
An entry limit will need to be put on when the final stage is double round robin. If there are six qualifiers to the final stage, then it should be DRR. 7 players in the final would make 12 games. Is that too much?
Garvin Gray (2016-01-18 09:53:00)
FICGS chess cup : proposal
I take you mean if in Ficgs World Cup 1 (FWC1) we got 73 players, then in Ficgs World Cup 2 we got 103 players?
Is that correct?
If that is correct, then in FWC1, using a number of 73 players, it would be 4 groups of 10, 3 groups of 11.
For the second stage (finals)= I know this might be a bit controversial, but I think the TER rule should be dropped and those who tie for first should progress. Since we have seven groups, that should mean at the most eleven players in the final.
This will have the by-product in the round robin games of everyone knowing that if they can finish outright first, they knockout everyone from their group immediately.
In FWC2- With 103 players, same format, just more groups.
Dann Corbit (2016-01-07 22:20:18)
Thematic tournaments?
May as well advance one full move to get variety. Everyone will respond:
3. .. Nf6
followed by:
4. Bb2
That is quite an interesting opening and much more rarely played than the standard
1. b4 e5 Bb2 Bxb4 Bxe5 Nf6 e3 d5
Sergey Zemlyanov (2015-11-16 22:09:27)
FICGS chess cup : proposal
Hi all. I try to express my opinion.
The main idea of mass round-robin tournament is good but
I think that the strong players might reject it.
As it seems, I see 2 different ways here:
1st. To have a strong tournament with top players.
2nd. To have a mass tournament just for fun.
In order to organize the 1st tournament you should do the next things:
1. To set up money prizes for winners (more prizes -> more top players might be interested in).
2. To send out invitations for players by email and etc.
3. The time control should not be too fast here if you want a qualitative games
and good tournament.
4. About splitting into the groups.
4.1 Semifinal stage.
I offer to play several qualifying semifinal rounds with 2-3 chessplayers coming into the Final stage.
For example, we have 50 players. So we can create 5 Semifinal groups with 10 players in each with 3 coming out places for the Final.
The time control here I offer 10+2/21 with vacation.
4.2 The Final stage.
I offer 15 players for the Final stage and 14 games for everyone,
or, another variant is 7-8 finalists and 14-16 games with color change for everyone.
About the 2nd tournament my opinion is:
1. To set up money prizes depending on entry fees, for each player.
2. To play mass round robin tournament with 1 game against each player
with faster time control, 10+1/21 for example.
In 1st variant you need to find a contributor to organize the tournament.
But it should be interesting. The 2nd variant with entry fees is interesting too, I think.
AMICI SUMUS,
Sergey Zemlyanov.
Scott Nichols (2015-11-10 14:37:41)
FICGS chess cup : proposal
This is all just re-hashing the Wch event. All that needs to be done is 1. Have a tie-break playoff. Each round of (2) games having a shorter time control until a win is reached. 2. There should be no returning champion privileges. Everyone will have to start from the beginning with the final 8 players qualified for a double RR to determine champion.
Garvin Gray (2015-10-23 13:11:56)
FICGS chess cup : proposal
I think this whole discussion has missed the original point of why I made the original proposal for the ficgs world cup.
It was to give players who were in the 2100 to 2200 and below more opportunities against players rated 2300 and above, whilst still also giving the top players something to play for ie the tournament win.
So the original concept was that there was no knockout groups, or starting final match, but instead that all players started from round one, and then everyone had to qualify for round two from there, with only the winners to advance at each stage.
The format above could have even taken over from the waiting lists we currently have, which struggle to be filled, as they give more purpose.
Instead, what is being proposed now, is just one big round robin. As someone who has just organised a round robin event, I can assure you, soon after the games have started, the players will soon forget which games are for the world cup, and which are their World championship games, and which are their Rapid SM, or Rapid M games.
Next, the strength of the field. For this event to work with the monster round robin, it really does need most of the top players competing. How can this be ensured to make it a worthwhile event?
Related to this- the time control. Very few serious correspondence chess players are going to sign up to a time control of 10 days initial time when they potentially have 31 games.
Remember, this is meant to be one of FICGS main events on the calendar. That is at least how I view it.
The time control should be 30 days plus 3 days per move if the format is single round robin with 32 or so players.
I still believe the original proposal of mine is the one that should be adopted, not the single round robin that is being discussed now.
I will not be playing in the single round robin.
Thibault de Vassal (2015-10-16 01:12:10)
FICGS chess cup : proposal
Hi all,
The recent discussions on FICGS chess wch tie break rules just gave me an idea...
Obviously, there are no satisfying solution (for everyone I mean) for a change in the wch rules. In my opinion, wch rules are great already, even if there are too many draws in matches.
The idea of a cup tournament is here for years but I didn't see any way to include it, in a several rounds version at least, in our calendar because of the wch cycle, the slowly decreasing number of active players, and so on...
But what do you think about this cup format:
An enormous round robin tournament with the 33 (1 player for each piece on the board, it's a symbol but the number is to be discussed) highest rated players who entered the waiting list. It is 32 games per player for 1 round only, duration of games could be the standard one (because there is one round only), longer but maybe fits more the number of games and additional games in other tournaments.
Looks like a great challenge and a real alternative, with very few risks of draw odds, cheating or whatever... It may be the biggest correspondence chess round robin tournament on the internet.
Any opinion? Would you play such tournament?
Thibault de Vassal (2015-09-30 23:46:19)
Wch Match Tie Break Rules
And I'll say it once more :) FIDE made a choice that may have given more chances to everyone, I agree with that, but it seems to me that the chess world championship lost its aura & legend, just like world champions (IMHO). Also, results are a direct consequence of rules, it does not mean that Eros does not deserve his place (IMO), he certainly would have played differently in a round robin. Finally, FIDE WCH is round robin, ICCF WCH is round robin, why everything should be round robin?
Alvin Alcala (2015-07-10 14:46:26)
Wch Match Tie Break Rules
Hi everyone. GM Arno wants to post in this thread as he has trouble logging in.
Introducing a 3/4-1/4 score for stalemate does not mean changing the whole game. Lasker and Rti, the fathers of this idea, knew quite well what they did, when they said, it's only a minor change (btw following the ancient chess, when mates were rare and a stalemated player had to pay half of his stake).
Some people on ChessBase argued and feared that the game might become bloodless as players would fear to sacrify material. But that's a wrong assessment.
Here is a "normal" classical GM game with a Morra Gambit, that could have happened the same way under the new rule:
E.Berg - S. Rocha (POR 2013)
1.e4 c5 2.d4 cxd4 3.c3 dxc3 4.Nxc3 Nc6 5.Nf3 d6 6.Bc4 a6 7.00 Nf6 8.Bf4 Bg4 9.h3 Bxf3 10.Qxf3 e6 11.Rfd1 Qc7 12.Rac1 Be7 13.Bb3 Rc8 14.Nd5 exd5 15.exd5 Ne5 16.Qe3 Qd7 17.Rxc8+ Qxc8 18.Bxe5 00 19.Bf4 Qd7 20.Rc1 Bd8 21.Qd4 Re8 22.Qb4 Be7 23.Ba4 b5 24.Bb3 Rc8 25.Rxc8+ Qxc8 26.a4 Qc5 27.Qe1 Kf8 28.Be3 Qc7 29.axb5 axb5 30.Qb4 Qb7 31.g4 h6 32.Qd4 Nd7 33.Qe4 Bf6 34.Qb4 Qa6 35.Bc2 Ne5 36.Kg2 Nc4 37.Bc1 g5 38.Bd3 Qa1 39.Bxc4 bxc4 40.Qxc4 Bxb2 41.Be3 Bf6 42.Qc8+ Kg7 43.Qf5 Qc3 44.Qe4 Qb2 45.Qf5 Qc3 46.Qe4 Qb2 47.h4 gxh4 48.Qf4 Qe5 49.Qxh6+ Kg8 50.Kg1 h3 51.Qxh3
Follow the comments in the MegaBase.
White sacrifies a pawn at move 3. He regains it at move 18 by a typical piece sacrifice. Later White, who is pressing a lot, while Black defends quite well, could have won a pawn by 38.b3 (instead of 38.Bd3?): e.g. 38...Qa1 39.Bxg5 hxg5 40.bxc4 bxc4 41.Qxc4.
Berg argues he might have had practical winning chances. Either 1-0 or 1/2. So what is the big difference, if we would say: either 1-0, 3/4 or 1/2? It's just making the game more exciting, more fair and a bit less drawish, what is badly needed for correspondence chess. The basic wrong assessment is that it might be significantly easier to achieve a stalemate advantage. But it isn't (and that's why only a small percentage of games will end like that). Last but not least, players who achieve a clear endgame advantage deserve a 3/4 point instead of 1/2. K+P, K+B, K+N vs. K should be a difference to K vs. K." Thanks again, Arno
Garvin Gray (2014-08-28 12:50:46)
Standard time control abusers
Alexis Alban: I dont you have read the whole thread and the comments from other posters who have talked about the habits of other players.
There is even a term for this behaviour. It is called DMD- dead mans defense.
And it is described very well.
They sit on their games for 35 days, make no moves, then suddenly are able to make 9 moves in 5 days, then make no more moves for 35 days and then make another 9 moves in 35 days and then it is rinse and repeat, time control and time control.
Meanwhile this is being done in positions where they are in dead lost positions ie mate in 30. They idea is solely to just piss off their opponents, nothing more.
So please do not just try and make this about one player. Standard time control abusers are a cancer on this and other corro chess sites and they should be gotten rid of as fast as possible.
They spread misery and suffering everywhere they go and the only person that really suffers is the opponent, who has to wait and wait for the games to finish, whilst the site admin sits back, does nothing and is just as guilty and the person doing the action.
At the end of the day, the person in charge who sits back and does nothing when they know of poor conduct under their watch is taking place is just as guilty, if not more so, than the original offender. This is because they create the culture that says it is permissable and says to everyone else that this behaviour is tolerated and the site is not to be taken seriously.
Garvin Gray (2014-06-10 15:35:46)
100 point rating bands
Just to nicely illustrate my point, rapid m is forming with everyone between 2100 and 2200, even though the group is 2100 to 2299.
Thibault de Vassal (2014-04-23 00:19:10)
Standard time control abusers
A problem with starting with only 10 days is players who may start a new tournament late.
Garvin, I must say I sometimes play this way myself when I have few time during a few weeks... I play easiest moves while delaying hard ones, then I concentrate on these difficult games during a short period and play several moves... Everyone may have his reasons.
Michael Sayers (2014-04-21 18:47:59)
Standard time control abusers
p.s. - not everyone uses an engine, some of us still do chess the old fashioned way rather than seeking a quick Rybka/Fritz/Houdini or whatever fix, and doing things the old fashioned way sometimes might need a few days ;-)
Michael Sayers (2014-04-20 16:30:34)
remove from non-started tournaments
I found the email and sent the missive.
Wishing everyone here a happy holiday weekend!
Michael S.
Thibault de Vassal (2014-03-12 13:44:36)
Standard time control abusers
Even a 10 days limit per move would not solve the DMD problem... And we had debates on the number of tournaments each player can enter, such a (big) change would not satisfy everyone (for the least, I think).
Thibault de Vassal (2014-02-15 23:44:49)
Standard time control abusers
Garvin, I know why Mariusz can play this way in general (like a few other ones) and this 'may have' nothing to do with any kind of abuse. Anyway this game seems really close to finish and everyone has the right to play games until the end. One could have chosen rules that say "every game with Rybka +/-5.0 is won" or even more complex rules involving evaluation and clocks, but this is not the case here (fortunately, anyway any rule can be abused). One can't know everyone's personal life.
Garvin Gray (2013-12-22 09:17:43)
Withdrawal from all standard time events
I thought I would bring this topic up to let everyone know.
After a few years here, I have decided that it is almost certain that I will no longer be entering standard time control events on this site until the time control changes.
I find that most players in that time control just waste the time provided and are able to play faster, but choose to run their time down, and then make 8 moves in 10 days, then wait another 30 days before making another 8 moves in 10 days, or similar behaviour.
Sorry Thibault, but I have better things to do in my life than have my life wasted like this.
If you want me to return to standard time control events, change the time control.
This means I will only be playing in rapid time control events, which is a much better time control.
Thibault de Vassal (2013-08-06 00:42:13)
Next WCH Stage start
Yes, there will be a replacement for Kamesh very soon!
How do you organize swiss tournaments at correspondence time controls?
Well, the original idea was to give a chance to everyone (including to climb the elo scale)...
Don Groves (2013-06-11 06:09:20)
Playing activity top 20 players
To whom is may concern:
There is no one set of rules that will be acceptable to everyone. There are many game sites on the Internet, so pick one that comes closest to your desired set of rules and be satisfied. That is as close as you will ever get.
Either that or form your own site and discover what Thibault knows far too well - that you will get more complaints than compliments.
Thibault de Vassal (2013-06-10 00:16:11)
Playing activity top 20 players
I do understand that you choose the stronger opponents (like most strong players), that's why you could have chosen the class M tournament with the ticket opportunity... That's the point I still don't get.
Thanks for your words and your proposal... I'm always looking for ideas to spread the word about FICGS in the chess world. The more players, the more fun for everyone!
Garvin Gray (2013-06-08 04:30:30)
Vacation: change for 3 days minimum?
I think Robert Knighton has explained one of the issues regarding this issue very well. In that a player can use the vacation time to gain a time advantage, and another player who had to take vacation legitimately ie this would normally involve taking a few days to 14 days with no game analysis.
The legit vacationer gains no advantage from having taken vacation time, except they avoided timing out, which is of benefit to everyone in the long run.
The second reason why the current situation is undesirable is that it encourages players to not get on with their games. They can run their clocks down to almost zero, knowing they can use an unlimited amount of 1 day vacations to save their games. Playing inside the allocated time controls is part of the game.
Vacation time is for a reason and is not there to be abused to allow players to avoid timing out.
Eros Riccio (2013-05-15 15:29:16)
Eros Riccio on his win in 8th chess WCH
Hi Daniel,
in the past I have been playing something like 100 games at the same time. That was my maximum, and I really felt some pressure with that quantity of games, and I also felt that my overall play was reduced quite a lot. Anyway that happened when I still had a low ICCF rating, so playing many games back then was a good idea in order to raise my elo quickly. Playing so many games now that I am over 2600 wouldn't be such a good idea anymore, as with almost every draw I would lose points (not to count the losses!) because I would likely have a higher rating than most of my opponents.
Everyone has his own limit of games, but a thing seems logical for everyone: the more you play the more your quality of play is reduced. I think I can handle up to 50 games at the same time without a big loss of quality of play, and without feeling much pressure. Above that number, things would become difficult for me. Anyway it's very possible that, as at the moment I am only playing 16 games, (all for iccf) even playing (only) 30 games would give me some pressure. I am getting old :-)
Eros Riccio (2013-05-10 16:09:30)
Eros Riccio on his win in 8th chess WCH
you know, Thib, I have always wondered why corr. chess is so easy for me. As I said, human chess is a completely different story, I feel like a beginner there, blundering at almost every move. But at corr. chess, with the help of the computer, things become extremely easy. I don't know why not everyone using a computter too is not nearly unbeatable as I am. maybe they use weak engines? Slow processors? Maybe they let their engine analyze the position only for a few minutes? I came to the conclusion that it must be something like that, otherwise everyone would play at GM Level by just analyzing for a decent amount of time with houdini on a fast processor. My conclusion is that I have more success than most other players because they don't take corr. chess too seriously, they probably have some better interests and only take corr. chess as a fun hobby.
Garvin Gray (2013-04-06 05:58:17)
FICGS__CHESS__FREESTYLE_CUP__000005
For everyone, so they can work out what time 1pm server time is for them:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20130406T13&p1=195
Garvin Gray (2013-03-30 09:44:52)
FICGS__CHESS__FREESTYLE_CUP__000005
Also, everyone who enters should be careful.
Daylight saving time starts tomorrow morning, so the time difference between you and local server time will be different between now and the start of the freestyle cup.
Garvin Gray (2013-03-16 11:09:33)
Vacation: change for 3 days minimum?
I am wondering if everyone has read each of the replies before posting.
I am sure some have, but I do suspect that some have just replied without considering the consequences of their replies if they were enacted, or not.
Instead of changing the minimum days for vacation to 3, how about there is a maximum cap for the number of times a person can take vacation in any one single game?
This would prevent a player from repeatedly using vacation just to avoid timing out, which is not what vacation is designed for.
Thibault de Vassal (2013-01-16 18:18:25)
FICGS admin scam me
About cheating on these websites, quite easy... just use a chess engine, copy its moves from one window/computer to another and do not play the best moves all times... playing the 2nd or 3rd best move should be enough to beat most human players...... and do not win in less than 50 moves. No program can detect it. And almost everyone would be able to do that.
Thibault de Vassal (2013-01-16 17:14:06)
FICGS admin scam me
Well, obviously you do not have any idea about what computer chess is... there are thousands of fans all over the world, full forums only about that, even the very best chess players in the world like to play it (Kasparov, Anand, Polgar, Ivanchuk...)
You still do not understand that this has nothing to do with avarice. Noone here wants to see such a system to be implemented.... first of all because it cannot be 100% sure (it would be very easy to cheat anyway), then everyone would suspect everyone to cheat... FICGS is a peaceful place (without counting 2 or 3 players out of hundreds/thousands) so this is fine like it is. For information we also offer NO_ENGINES_TOURNAMENTS for those who want to play with their brain only, but it is not rated... for the same reasons.
We have no problem that a few players cannot understand it at the end, but we do not need to hear again and again that computer chess is "lazy" or "dishonest", that is just untrue and insulting.
About your 7 euros, all has been said, I've nothing to add. This is not a bank, if you want a money prize, you know what to do (starting to read the terms & conditions).
Thibault de Vassal (2013-01-16 13:42:09)
FICGS admin scam me
30 emails from february 2009 until now. I send it to you to your email.
As you can see, I have no reason to be afraid of anything :) You can defend your views, I do not ban you for that. But anyway you are of bad faith, why would you have kept only one email from 2010 and not the others? Anyway, the fact is that I mentioned those terms and conditions while I did not even have to do it because you were registered already.
I'm not angry about anyone, I'm just sorry for you that you do not even know how to use a website (reading & understanding terms is the first thing to do). Then I do not accept insults just like everyone, nothing more.
Finally, this site is perfectly legit and you are free to verify it.
Horatiu Adrian Petrescu (2013-01-16 02:16:44)
FICGS admin scam me
petrescu horatiuadrian :
I didn't understand you???? is not even one word about your
(2013-01-16 02:14:41)
devassal thibault :
..everyone cannot be a bank
(2013-01-16 02:10:12)
devassal thibault :
... already answered too... because it explains that...
(2013-01-16 02:08:54)
devassal thibault :
Please do not delete chat messages everyone.. not now
(2013-01-16 02:08:12)
devassal thibault :
You clearly misunderstood me and did not read rules
Thibault de Vassal (2013-01-16 02:14:49)
FICGS admin scam me
Continuation......
devassal thibault :
[Remove this comment] ..everyone cannot be a bank
(2013-01-16 02:10:12)
devassal thibault :
[Remove this comment] ... already answered too... because it explains that...
(2013-01-16 02:08:54)
devassal thibault :
[Remove this comment] Please do not delete chat messages everyone.. not now
(2013-01-16 02:08:12)
devassal thibault :
[Remove this comment] You clearly misunderstood me and did not read rules
(2013-01-16 02:07:00)
devassal thibault :
[Remove this comment] I answered that already in the forum...
(2013-01-16 02:06:47)
devassal thibault :
[Remove this comment] There's no "if" there anymore... just ask
(2013-01-16 02:05:50)
petrescu horatiuadrian :
[Remove this comment] why you lied to me in 2010?
(2013-01-16 02:05:18)
Thibault de Vassal (2013-01-16 01:07:41)
FICGS admin scam me
Hello again Horatiu,
Sorry to see that you do not accept to realize that FICGS rules have always been clear on that point (it is specified that it is required for you to read and understand it before using this site), also that this site is not a bank, which is true for all similar websites - at least in France but most probably everywhere.
So here is the continuation of our conversation in the chat room (you have to read it from bottom to top). We can continue it here if you wish, this way we'll not bother everyone with this. By the way, maybe other players who experienced the epoints thing will be able to confirm all this.
Do not worry, I will not delete this discussion, at least this will be informative for everyone (I hope).
______________________
petrescu horatiuadrian :
[Remove this comment] of course ,I just open a topic to see everybody who are you
(2013-01-16 01:00:12)
devassal thibault :
[Remove this comment] I have no problem with this.
(2013-01-16 00:58:59)
devassal thibault :
[Remove this comment] anyway, we can continue this discussion in the forum...
(2013-01-16 00:58:49)
devassal thibault :
[Remove this comment] insults are unnecessary...
(2013-01-16 00:58:28)
petrescu horatiuadrian :
[Remove this comment] and fraud
(2013-01-16 00:58:23)
petrescu horatiuadrian :
[Remove this comment] yes i lost 4 ,is not mistake ?you are a mistake
(2013-01-16 00:53:06)
devassal thibault :
[Remove this comment] ... a bank just by saying it
(2013-01-16 00:51:34)
devassal thibault :
[Remove this comment] because it explains that it's not possible to be...
(2013-01-16 00:51:20)
petrescu horatiuadrian :
[Remove this comment] no gipsy,but then why you told me about L511 code?
(2013-01-16 00:49:44)
devassal thibault :
[Remove this comment] There's no mistake, obviously...
(2013-01-16 00:49:14)
devassal thibault :
[Remove this comment] Then you won 1 & lost 4 silver games...
(2013-01-16 00:49:09)
devassal thibault :
[Remove this comment] I know exactly how many epoints you bought/ when and how...
(2013-01-16 00:47:47)
devassal thibault :
[Remove this comment] What do you expect? finding FICGS rules in french laws?
(2013-01-16 00:44:05)
petrescu horatiuadrian :
[Remove this comment] you are a charlatan
(2013-01-15 23:46:58)
Garvin Gray (2012-12-13 16:52:12)
WBCCC 2013
This information is in regards to the World Blitz Correspondence Chess Championship for the year 2013.
It is held on Rybka Forum www.rybkaforum.net.
There is a full sub forum located on that forum that explains a lot of the rules, current list of players and specifics of information.
For a general run down, read on:
My name is Garvin Gray and I am the organiser and arbiter for this event. This event attempts to bring as many strong correspondence and freestyle players together from all the different playing sites, such as iccf, ficgs, playchess, lss and many other sites.
As the title says, this is a blitz event, meaning the time controls are short compared to normal correspondence play. This requires players to devote a greater share of their focus to these games than would normal correspondence play.
This event has been held for two years now, with the 2012 version still in progress. Feel free to browse the 2012 sub forum to see the games and how the structure works.
In the two years of this event, I feel that many new discoveries have been made and advanced freestyle chess knowledge has certainly been increased, to the benefit of all. Those who have participated in both events have gained a lot from their participation and I want to see this continue.
To allow this event to start and finish in one calendar year, we start in mid January and for 2013, it will finish in mid December. The format requires that you will play one game as white and one game as black in each round. There are 10 games in total.
Each round is paired as an individual swiss using the dutch pairing rules, but accommodations are made because each person must have one white and one black game per round.
Kibitizing is allowed and encouraged, but discussions about future positions, game analysis or anything else that could affect the result of the game is not allowed. Feel free to read the thread on game commentary.
There will also be a thread for each round that allows discussion of events during the round, general discussion about games or other general chit chat.
We do seek to provide a friendly, but competitive environment for those who want to advance their freestyle skills, or test themselves against other players from the different sites. This event will take up quite a bit of your time as the time control is fast, the play is difficult and the enjoyment factor high.
This is not meant to be a deterrent, but I feel I should make it clear that you need to be dedicated and willing to play each and every game/round.
Withdrawing or timing out mid game is not acceptable and will see you removed from the event. If you think you can not complete a particular round, it is better to contact me and have you withdrawn from that round. You are free to rejoin the event in these circumstances, but will receive zero points for those two missed games.
I hope to see more entries and good freestyling to everyone.
Cheers,
Garvin Gray
WBCCC 2013 Organiser
Robert Knighton (2012-12-05 21:37:10)
Server change on dec. 9, 2012
can you send out e-mails to everyone with the new ip address thereby bypassing the Domain Name Server entirely?
Robert Knighton (2012-12-03 17:57:26)
Problem with new groups for the chess WC
any decision on this yet?
imo Do the best you can. Get as many people in as possible. include as many as you can and the ones you cant include just have to wait for the next opportunity.
I certainly don't want to hold anyone else back just because it might not be "fair" for them to get in but not me.
"Right now I could create only one group with a similar rating average, nothing more but I would have to choose a few players only, which is not a great solution"
not great but still better than nothing at all.
I would like to hear what your thoughts are on this after hearing everyone's opinions.
Thibault de Vassal (2012-08-20 12:02:20)
What happened to Boris Spassky?
This was quite a joke of course, it all depends on what we hear by "brainwashed", this is very complex. In practice money and dictatorship probably look like each other quite often (I prefer the first one though, probably just because I'm in, but I understand the other choice - none is ideal), everyone just tries to find his interest whatever the context.
Alvin Alcala (2012-08-11 21:56:24)
Premium site?
Thib I suggest you do regular server maintenance check. You can have a schedule so everyone is informed. This will prevent annoyance from members.
Garvin Gray (2012-07-29 05:04:52)
Second match v Rybka Forum
Everyone is needed :)
Read the conditions at the top of the page to see if you are comfortable with them.
Garvin Gray (2012-06-08 11:07:00)
Second match v Rybka Forum
Following on from my post above, we will now be going with the format originally posted, which is:
1) Time control 30 moves initial plus 1 day increment
2) All individual matches are two games
3) Players are to play in rating order. - RF now does have some kind of rating system, at least for WBCCC participants. I think more of their players have also come over to here, so have ratings here.
4) Xfccplay will be used for the games played at RF
5) Conditional move system will be used for the games played at RF. Games played here will be using the standard interface.
Both sides are going to have to make compromises. Ficgs players who are not already familiar with xfccplay are going to need to learn how to use it and will also need to join RF.
RF players, who are not members of here already, will need to sign up to here and learn how to use this interface.
I can not give a definite sign up by this date yet as some of the nuts and bolts are still being worked out.
Can everyone start saying if they are going to play? I hope this will be more than just the players who already play in WBCCC as I do hope it is the best players from both sites participating as well.
Garvin Gray (2012-06-01 20:20:07)
Second match v Rybka Forum
I have been informed that the conditional move system of xfccplay can not be removed just for one tournament, so if we use xfccplay for at least half the games, conditionals will be in operation.
I still think we can go ahead with using xfccplay, just that the half of the games that are played using xfccplay will have conditionals, and the ones played here will not.
While it is an issue, it is not a big issue, or a showstopper.
Everyone will still be playing two games against the same opponent. One here and one with xfccplay at RF. I will give a couple of days for feedback. If there is no discussion, I will formalise details and then we will move on to official collection of entries, getting players familiar with xfccplay and then on to the games proper.
Paul Campanella (2012-05-15 14:07:37)
Faster Refresh Time
Here is an example of why I consider the 30 second refresh time to be bad...
Example: Pretend someone is playing 10 poker games on FICGS simultaneously.
Having the refresh time take so long is quite annoying due to the fact that nothing appears during the 30 second time interval, but after the 30 seconds are over... the page gets refreshed... then all 10 moves appear at once and it is difficult to manage.
Perhaps if we shorten the time to 15 seconds, it would end up being easier for everyone who is playing multiple games at once due to the fact that they can see their opponents moves as soon as they are made. 10 seconds is obviously too short of an amount of time to consider but I can't understand why the 15 second rule would be a problem for anyone trying to chat because it does not take 15 seconds to type a few words and hit the enter key.
If people still think that 15 seconds is too fast, then how about we make it 20 seconds? That could be an ideal amount of time to consider because it is faster than 15 but slower than 30 seconds.
What does everyone think?
Paul Campanella (2012-05-14 17:01:35)
Faster Refresh Time
Is it possible to change the time that it takes to refresh everything to 15 seconds instead of 30 seconds?
It would certainly make playing fast games easier!
What does everyone else think?
Garvin Gray (2012-05-12 17:26:45)
Playing poker for e-points
Paul,
In general parlance, poker is regarded as a gambling game and so the idea that poker is also played in classic tournament fashion, just like every other sport, has never really caught on in legal terms.
The general version is more of the casino style with players joining in whenever they want and leaving whenever they want (or have lost their cash), rather than tournaments where everyone pays an entry fee and there is a winner at the end.
Combined with that is that chess has never been associated as a 'gambling' game or sport.
Remember also that in quite a lot of countries chess is a full recognised sport, or at least mindsport. So in those countries if playing for money in chess was illegal, then so would playing for money in all sports.
Thib- I wonder if playing for epoints in classic tournament fashion is legal, just like in irl poker tournaments?
That could be one option.
There are 83 results for Ryo in wikichess.
Andrey Kushnaryov (2261)
e4 c5 Nf3 Nc6 Bb5 g6 O-O Bg7 Re1 Nf6 h3 O-O c3
Transpose to wikichess #33511#
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Contributors : Andrey Kushnaryov
Andrey Kushnaryov (2293)
d4 d5 c4 c6 Nf3 a6 Nc3 Nf6
Transpose to wikichess #9740#
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Contributors : Andrey Kushnaryov
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