Opening study
I've just downloaded the ChessliB database (again, as I had it before, and lost it). For those not in the know, this is a free Scid / Pgn database, containing 2 million games (!). Now, who cares if the games are not very new, names are not normalized and so on, things that you only get with a paid-for database? I guess this database is excellent for opening study. Scid has a nice feature, for each position on the board, showing the most common continuations, with percentage played, score etc. I think I'll complement my tactics training with going over a few openings I suck at (that is, every possible opening)
- posted by Időbeosztás-guru @ 11:30 AM 7 comments

 
Mate in one
After doing lots of tactical exercises, including those mate-in-N types, I would expect to recognize a mate in one when I have one...or when my opponent does, and it's his/her move. :) However, in this 3-minute game, I let 2 mate-in-one-s slip by (it would have been better to oversee a single mate in 2, yes, I know) and a few other tactical opportunities, too. Lucky me, my opponent also missed some shots, and I was the one to make the next-to-last mistake. I guess I need to go back to my PNG-s and PGN-s for a little more training...
- posted by Időbeosztás-guru @ 5:58 PM 1 comments

 
ICC trial expires
My ICC 7-day trial is expiring today. I've played more than 100 games, mostly 3 0 -s, and mostly with white...I was just curious at the beginning to see how fast will people accept my seek if I want to play white. Well, I had to wait a few seconds at most, so I stuck with white.
I really like ICC, but for the average person - it must seem a little bit awkward to type all those commands, to have no statistics at all. Blitzin doesn't even have premove. Playchess.com seems much more advanced in comparison. No commands to type, it's all click-and-play.
So I guess it's goodby for ICC now. It just isn't worth the money they ask for. I guess I'll order Fritz and enjoy Playchess.com, after my trial there also expires. Oh, and after the Romanian Post finishes with their strike - which will last at least 10 more days.

My final ICC statistics are here. The tables are sortable - just click the green dot.
- posted by Időbeosztás-guru @ 6:10 PM 1 comments

 
Playchess vs. ICC
I finally managed to connect to Playchess. I ran IUpdater.exe, which after a moment of thought, came to a screeching halt with an error message complaining about not finding a certain file. Which was, by no means my fault. All I did was download the free client and install it. Afterwards however, strangely enough, the client started to run just fine...no error messages this time. Talk about Artificial Intelligence...

Well, I've grown to become accustomed not to ask questions when something works, so I just went on an played a couple of games on Playchess. Hands down, that's the best chess server in existence today. Too bad it doesn't have an option to log my games in PGN format, it will only save them in Chessbase's own format. I've downloaded a converter, though, have to try it to see whether it works.
I was also busy yesterday trying to get the most out of my free 7-day trial of ICC, playing as many games as possible. At first, it seemed to me that it's much easier to get a high rating there, than it was on FICS, since in a few games, I was already approaching 1500. Never got there, though...before I knew it, it was 2 AM, and I was slowly falling asleep at the wheel, the effect being a long string of losses bringing my rating to just below 1400.

After looking around a bit, it seems that the best option is to buy Fritz. Then I'll have one year of Playchess for 50 euros, and after the year is over, I can still keep the CD :) Whereas, on ICC, I'd have to pay 49 dollars, and stay with nothing after a year...well, ok, I can still keep my statistics if I'm diligent enough to keep the logs.


Seems that I'm not alone with this opinion. Look what I've found in GM Nigel Short's finger notes on ICC:

7: Try the chessbase.com server. It is better than this nannying club.
8: There is audio as well!
- posted by Időbeosztás-guru @ 1:32 PM 0 comments

 
[dont]playchess.com
It seems I can't play on playchess.com either. Every time I tried to connect, their client exited with some strange error message. "Access violation". Might be some conflict with SP2.
And no, I'm not writing them to tell them about the problem. They'll probably immediately discover that I have 2 (trial) accounts registered*, ban me from their server forever, confiscate all my assets and start a legal action asking for a life sentence without a chessboard in the cell. And maybe they'll also demand I wear a note attached to my finger, apologizing for having 2 accounts. Thanks, but no, thanks.





* I registered an account years ago, I don't remember the password or the email I used to register with, so yesterday I tried - and seems to have succeded - to register another trial. But I couldn't actually log in and play.

(In fact, the folks at Chessbase are nice, they won't do such things. I had a real pleasant experience with my first trial of playchess, however, I decided not to pay for it, and I chose FICS. A really bad move.)
- posted by Időbeosztás-guru @ 8:59 AM 4 comments

 
No more FICS - ever
I'm not going to play on FICS anymore. Never ever again. If you're curios what caused such abrupt change of mind, here is my story.

I have to say first of all that I had my share of guilt, but still...I really feel I was treated unfairly.

I had an account on FICS since 1999. However, a while ago I found out my handle actually meant "mole cricket" in Spanish, and some kind of monkey in another (african?) language - after a few players made fun of me. And I also had this statistics idea in my mind, so I said to myself it's time for a fresh start. I asked the admins whether I could change my handle - they of course said no. Then, I was curios whether I could just give up on this handle, delete the account altogether and start a new one. FICS doesn't allow this! They also forbid having duplicate accounts, but I thought this one won't really be enforced, after all, I had no intention to cheat by playing myself of stuff like that (and I never did, just in case you wonder) So I went ahead and created another account, giving up on the old one.

Yesterday I had a completely winning position against one opponent (knight and 5 pawns against king and 2 isolated pawns) when this guy disconnected. I thought ok, maybe he was on dialup like myself, and lost connection, no problem, he'll come back and resign. Well, he did come back after 10 seconds or so, but had no intention to resume or resign. He completely ignored me, and went on playing others. I checked, and he had 15 stored games, so he had some history on this. After waiting to finish his game, hoping that maybe, just maybe he'll resign our game, he continued trying to shake me off, by disconnecting and coming back every time I typed "resume"...or he simply started another game. Eventually I become bored and signed out.

However, today I decided it's time to do something about it. My statistics go nuts if I play a few games, and then an adjourned game is decided, so I didn't want to play any games before this thing was settled. So I complained, and asked an admin what to do.

What do you think the admin did? (Solution in the next paragraph)

He immediately discovered I had another account, banned me from the server, and forfeited my stored game, therefore crediting the disconnector with the win and the rating points. I think my disconnector friend is rolling on the floor laughing right now. In fact, had it not been my statistics project, I'd find this extremely funny myself.

The admin guy wouldn't even listen to me. I explained him the situation and practically begged him to ban the older account, if he really feels like banning today (well, I omitted the second part, to be honest) No way - he was following THE RULES, who am I to comment here?

So the funny part with FICS is that once you have a handle, you're stuck with it. Handles never expire. You can never ever have another handle - the rules forbid it. There is just no way. Unless, you're more clever than I am, and register the second handle so that they never find out. I didn't care too much about that, since I wasn't planning to do anything wrong - just change my handle.

These being said, I part with FICS.I think they have serious problems - computer cheating, disconnectors etc. Unlike Ed Collins, I consider the alternative of paying for playing. I was a member of ICC for a year in the past, and their service was ok, and I also like Chessbase's playchess.com - they have all the statistics I need, so I don't have to generate them myself :) Their fee is also lower then ICC's, and they're in the European timezone. In fact, so far my only caveat with Playchess is that the server is not the ICC - FICS - like telnet server. But their client is the best I've seen. Maybe after trying these too out in the same time, I'll post my opinion.

But anyway, from now on, FICS is out of the question.
- posted by Időbeosztás-guru @ 8:29 PM 21 comments

 
Two more Wilson books
New sets of png's. Wilson's 303 Tactical Chess Puzzles and 303 Tricky Chess Tactics are up and diagrammed. Enjoy!
- posted by Időbeosztás-guru @ 1:47 PM 2 comments

 
New set of PNG-s
I've uploaded the diagrams for Fred Reinfeld's 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate. It really helps to have the book too, though :) The positions presented in the book are nice, but I have two comments to make here :

1. You know you have to search for a checkmate, which makes solving these a lot more easier than the Alburt positions.

2. For Reinfeld, "brilliant" seems to be a synomim to "queen sacrifice".
- posted by Időbeosztás-guru @ 11:53 AM 5 comments

 
Tactics training: PNG instead of PGN
If you are a chess addict living in the digital era, or even worse, a Knight (á la de la Maza)you probably know full well what a Pgn file is. Maybe you even take a healthy dose of it, every day, just to stay sharp tactically, or to review that opening trap in the King's Gambit. However, you can take your training to a new level, just by switching two letters: use png instead of pgn.

Ok, now seriously: I had an idea a few days ago: what if I had all those positions I used to review in Scid, also as images? Load up a few hundred positions into my favourite viewer (IrfanView), and browse through, one position at a time.

So, I wrote a script that extracted the FEN's from the PGN file of Lev Alburt's 300 most important positions, and converted them into PNG images - using the excellent converter of Jean-François, available here. (BTW, have a look at the rest of the site, it is certainly worth your while)

Thus, I now have a set of 300 PNG images ready to review.

What are the advantages? I don't have to use a PGN reader, or Chessbase Reader, I can switch very fast from one position to another, and I'm not tempted to just look up the solution, because the solution isn't there :) Just the initial position, telling me (in the image title) whose move it is. Since I've already gone through these positions using Scid and Crafty, for most of the time, the solution just pops in, filling me with a nice, warm, rewarding feeling :)

If any of you wants to try this at home, here are the files.

Sorry about having to download two different files, it seems I'm not allowed to upload files larger than 1 MB :(
- posted by Időbeosztás-guru @ 1:59 PM 6 comments