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