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The Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) is a volunteer-run Internet chess server. It was organized as a free alternative to the Internet Chess Club (ICC), after that site began charging for membership. Chess (from Sanskrit Chaturanga[1]) is an abstract strategy board game and mental sport for two players. ...
In information technology, a server is a computer system that provides services to other computing systems—called clients—over a network. ...
The Internet Chess Club is a commercial Internet site devoted to the play and discussion of chess and chess variants. ...
History
The first Internet chess server, aptly named the Internet Chess Server (ICS), was started in the 1980s and was originally free of charge. It was coded and run largely by volunteers. In 1995 it began charging for membership, and changed its name to ICC. The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ...
1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
The Internet Chess Club is a commercial Internet site devoted to the play and discussion of chess and chess variants. ...
After the commercialization of ICS, a handful of programmers, led by Chris Petroff (Sparky on FICS), became unhappy with what they saw as exploitation of their project. In response, they formed FICS, and continued to allow everyone unrestricted access to all features for free. The server was brought online March 5, 1995, and remains operational today. March 5 is the 64th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (65th in leap years). ...
1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
FICS is a non-profit site, administered entirely by volunteers. There are over 295,000 registered accounts, and in the past 12 months the server has been accessed by over 65,000 users.
The original software package, called "chessd", has been released under the GNU General Public License, and as such it has been extensively updated by many people and organizations. Notable is the version dubbed "Chrysallis," engineered by volunteers at the Universidade Federal do Paraná in Brazil, which includes backend support of the PostgreSQL and MySQL databases. Chrysallis is freely available on SourceForge (see external links). The GNU logo For other uses of GPL, see GPL (disambiguation). ...
UFPR - Campus Santos Andrade The Universidade Federal do Paraná (Federal University of Paraná) was founded in 19 December of 1912, in Curitiba. ...
Sourceforge. ...
October 2006 downtime As of late October, 2006, the FICS site has suffered significant downtime. According to news item 1189, dated October 19: 1189 (Thu, Oct 19) IMPORTANT: FICS experiencing hardware problems! FICS is currently experiencing hardware problems, which have blocked our Web page, the registration system and our email system. This also means that we are unable to issue new passwords. However, if you have password problems connecting with Jin (the main Web interface), it is probably not due to a forgotten password, so please download, install and connect with another GUI (Graphical User Interface). Possible options are WinBoard, available as a self-installing .EXE from http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/winboard/winboard-4_2_7a.exe, BabasChess, available from http://www.babaschess.net/ and Thief, available from http://www.thief-interface.com/
Usage
Connecting In order to play chess on FICS, a user must connect to the server using an appropriate program, which could be as simple as a telnet client but is usually an interface designed specifically for playing Internet chess. Web based interfaces exist but are generally not as flexible or usable as dedicated interfaces. Users can register for a free account, which allows the server to maintain game statistics and ratings (FICS uses the Glicko rating system). Users can also log in as a guest without registering. However the abundance of features offered to registered users as well as the fact that registered accounts are free of charge render using the server as a guest rather meaningless for most users. TELNET is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area network LAN connections. ...
This article or section needs a complete rewrite for the reasons listed on the talk page. ...
Rating is a means of classifying things in different categories. ...
The Glicko rating system and the Glicko-2 rating system are similar to the Elo rating system: a method for assessing a players strength in games of skill such as chess. ...
Gameplay Once connected, users may either watch for seeks, which are open requests other users have broadcast, or put out their own seeks and wait for someone else to respond. Any player on the server can respond to a seek. If users wish to challenge a particular player to a game, they can do so using the match command. When one user accepts another's seek or challenge, the game begins. Users can type in their moves, or more typically, move the pieces with a mouse on a graphical representation of the chess board. The game ends when either user is mated, resigns, runs out of time and is flagged, or a draw occurs (through stalemate, 3-fold repetition, insufficient material to mate, the 50-move rule, or mutual agreement). Some of these results require some action from the user; for example, a draw by repetition must be claimed by entering the draw command. Two wireless computer mice, with scroll wheels A mouse is a handheld pointing device for computers, involving a small object fitted with one or more buttons and shaped to sit naturally under the hand. ...
Checkmate (frequently shortened to mate) is a situation in chess (and in other boardgames of the chaturanga family) in which one players king is under attack and there is no way to meet that threat; it is a check from which there is no escape. ...
In chess, a draw is one of the possible outcomes of a game, the others being a win for white and a win for black. ...
Stalemate is a situation in chess where the player whose turn it is to move has no legal moves but is not in check. ...
In chess, the threefold repetition rule states that a player can claim a draw if the same position occurs three times, or will occur after their next move, with the same player to move, and with each player having the same set of legal moves each time, including the right...
The fifty move rule in chess states that a player can claim a draw if no capture has been made and no pawn has been moved in the last fifty consecutive moves. ...
There are many other commands and features available on FICS; the help command can be used to find information on most of them. Some of the most useful commands include finger, seek, sought, tell, say, match and observe, along with the important game-related commands resign, draw, flag, abort, and adjourn.
Time Controls Time controls, though important in over-the-board play, are even more vital to Internet chess. People tend to play much faster games, and with interface features like premove, good time awareness and management becomes a cornerstone of effective play. A time control is imposed on the tournament play of almost all two-player board games to ensure that neither player delays the game or gains an unfair advantage by thinking for an unduly long time. ...
On FICS, the time control is specified by two integers, the first indicating in minutes the amount of time each player is allotted at the beginning of the game, and the second indicating in seconds the amount of time each player is added per move (the increment). For example, in 2 12 time controls, each player receives 2 minutes at the beginning of the game, and 12 seconds is added to the clock each time they make a move. The integers consist of the positive natural numbers (1, 2, 3, …), their negatives (−1, −2, −3, ...) and the number zero. ...
Timeseal is a utility which allows the server to account for the effects of lag. Each move entered by the user is timestamped locally, and the time spent for the move information to travel to the server is not deducted from the clock. This program can be helpful for people with poor connections, but it can also be annoying for the opponents if extreme lag occurs, and large delays occur in real time but not on the clock. Timeseal is usually included as part of the interface. The program is controversial because it secretly gathers username, hostname and ostype from the users computer to detect duplicate accounts. Lag often refers to delays experienced in computing communications, however it may also apply to written or other forms of communication. ...
Interfaces A chess interface is an application specifically designed to connect to and interact with Internet chess servers. FICS does not require a particular interface; many are available for download at FICS website download area. The available interfaces have been developed by enthusiastic FICS users, not by FICS itself. Accordingly, FICS does not have an official interface, nor does it endorse any particular interface, and encourages users instead to try as many interfaces as possible and decide for themselves which one best suits their needs. According to the current FICS statistics [1], some of the most popular interfaces for Windows include WinBoard, JavaBoard, BabasChess, CClient and Thief, with JavaBoard, XBoard and Jin [2] being the most popular for Linux, Unix and Mac OS X, but there are dozens of other interfaces available. It should be noted that JavaBoard and now JinApplet available at the FICS website are web interfaces, meaning that they have been designed to run from within a web browser and therefore lack many of the features of the "real" interfaces. As a web interface could not be regarded as being on par with standalone interfaces, the popularity of the web interfaces could be explained by the great number of FICS users not acquainted with the standalone interfaces or not possessing elementary computer literacy, as well as many occasional FICS users who have no need for a real interface. Application software is a defined subclass of computer software that employs the capabilities of a computer directly to a task that the user wishes to perform. ...
Microsoft Windows is a family of operating systems by Microsoft. ...
Windows port of Xboard XBoard, also known as WinBoard on Microsoft operating systems, is a free graphical user interface client compatible with various chess server programs such as GNU Chess or Internet Chess Servers. ...
BabasChess is a freeware Windows interface for Internet Chess Servers. ...
Thief is a popular interface for Internet Chess Servers at the Free Internet Chess Server and the Internet Chess Club. ...
Windows port of Xboard XBoard, also known as WinBoard on Microsoft operating systems, is a free graphical user interface client compatible with various chess server programs such as GNU Chess or Internet Chess Servers, developed by Tim Mann. ...
Linux (also known as GNU/Linux) is a Unix-like computer operating system. ...
Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ...
Mac OS X (officially pronounced Mac Oh-Ess Ten) is a line of open source graphical operating systems, with proprietary higher level API layers, developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Computer, the latest of which is pre-loaded on all currently shipping Macintosh computers. ...
For information on the Silicon Valley retailer, see Computer Literacy Bookstore. ...
On FICS, there could be seen passionate supporters of each of the most popular interfaces, who fanatically promote those interfaces - which at times can be perceived as interface wars (also known as channel 6 wars). Regardless, the popular consensus is that BabasChess is the most feature-rich interface (this does not imply it is the best though), WinBoard/XBoard is the most mature (stable, bug-free) one, Thief is best suited for bughouse, and Jin is almost completely platform independent. Nevertheless, getting used to a certain interface counts a lot; this explains why old interfaces like Slics are still used. Windows port of Xboard XBoard, also known as WinBoard on Microsoft operating systems, is a free graphical user interface client compatible with various chess server programs such as GNU Chess or Internet Chess Servers, developed by Tim Mann. ...
Thief is a popular interface for Internet Chess Servers at the Free Internet Chess Server and the Internet Chess Club. ...
Bughouse Chess (also called sometimes Exchange Chess, Tag Team Chess, Double Chess, Siamese Chess, Double Bug, Tandem Chess, Transfer Chess, or simply Bughouse) is a chess variant played with two teams of two people with two chess boards playing in collaboration against each other. ...
A cross-platform (or platform independent) programming language, software application or hardware device works on more than one system platform (e. ...
Channels There are a number of chat channels on FICS, similar to IRC, however there are a limited number of channels (255) and many are reserved for particular uses. For example, channel 1 is for general help; questions asked in channel 1 are usually answered by FICS admins or Service Representatives (SRs). Channel 4 is for guests, and channel 50 is for general chat. A user can listen and send tells to any number of channels simultaneously. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a form of instant communication over the Internet. ...
Variants Many variants of chess are available on the server. Some of them are: - Standard - regular chess with slow time controls
- Blindfold chess - only move notation is showed to the user
- Blitz - regular chess with fast time controls (total time between 3 and 15 minutes)
- Lightning - regular chess with extremely fast time controls - less than 3 minutes (elsewhere, usually called bullet chess)
- Suicide - a player wins by losing all his pieces; the king has no special significance
- Loser's chess - like suicide, but with additional rules pertaining to the king and check
- Atomic - pieces "explode" when captured, removing all adjacent pieces
- Fischer random - similar to regular chess, except that the initial position of pieces is randomized
- Bughouse - fast paced, four player game
- Crazyhouse - two player version of bughouse
Blindfold Chess is a way to play chess, whereby play is conducted without the players having sight of the positions of the pieces, or any physical contact with them. ...
Blitz chess (also known as speed chess or blitzkrieg chess) is a game of chess where each side is given very little time to make all of their moves. ...
Bullet chess is a very fast game of chess where each side only has less than 3 minutes to complete all of their moves. ...
Bullet chess is a very fast game of chess where each side only has less than 3 minutes to complete all of their moves. ...
Antichess, also called losing chess, losers chess, zero chess, giveaway chess, and suicide chess, is a chess variant in which the objective is to lose all of your pieces. ...
Atomic chess is a chess variant, which differs from standard chess only by the capture rule. ...
One of 960 possible starting positions (#177). ...
Bughouse Chess (also called sometimes Exchange Chess, Tag Team Chess, Double Chess, Siamese Chess, Double Bug, Tandem Chess, Transfer Chess, or simply Bughouse) is a chess variant played with two teams of two people with two chess boards playing in collaboration against each other. ...
Crazyhouse is a chess variant similar to bughouse chess, but with only two players. ...
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