Free Internet Chess Server
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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.
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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. By 1995 it had become so popular that it began charging for membership, and changed its name to ICC.
After the commercialization of ICS, a handful of programmers, led by Chris Petroff, 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.
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. Users can also log in as a guest without registering, though abundance of features offered to registered users, in addition to registered accounts being free of charge, renders using the server as a guest rather meaningless for most users.
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.
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.
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.
Timeseal is a popular 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.
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.
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.
Channels
Channel 1 is for general help. Any question asked in channel 1 is usually answered by FICS admins or Service Representatives (SR). Channel 50 is for general chat. As there are 100 topic channels, the conversation on channel 50 often falls into categories intended for other channels.
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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