Playing on FICS
I usually play with increments. This Fischer invention is great. I mean, there is nothing more annoying then having two queens and a rook against the opponent's bare king and not having the time to actually mate him. Not that this happens to me too often... But anyway, I tend to avoid no-increment games. However, a couple of days ago, I accidentally discovered the "gm" command on FICS. I think I was looking for GM's....and suddenly, lots of challenges started to flow in. Turned out, "gm" is the "getgame manual" command...it's better than "getgame", because you can hand-pick a challenge and not let the system get one for you automatically. I was having some fun yesterday with that command...playing but non-increment games. The result: a whole hour of pure fun, and the loss of about 30 rating points. Normally, I'd be really upset for this...but it doesn't really matter. I can get them back, no big deal.

There is one interesting thing, though: I tend to lose 10-12 points at a time,when I lose, and only win 5-6 points when I win. I guess I 'm not too confident and only play below my rating. It would be nice to see some statistics. I really liked on Playchess.com that they provide very interesting charts, broken down to rating categories. What I learned from there: I tend to play better against better opposition.

Babaschess has a plugin SDK. Maybe somebody will develop some plugins for us to have some nice statistics on FICS, too. That's one thing I miss on the server.
- posted by Időbeosztás-guru @ 10:12 AM