Free Internet Chess Server
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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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[edit] History
The first Internet chess server, aptly named the Internet Chess Server (ICS), started in the 1980s. Volunteers coded and ran it free of charge. In 1995, administrators began charging players for membership and changed the name to ICC.
Unhappy with the commercialization of ICS, which they saw as exploiting their work, a handful of programmers, led by Chris Petroff (Sparky on FICS), formed FICS and gave users free, unrestricted access. The server debuted March 5, 1995, and remains operational today.
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", was released under the GNU General Public License, and has been extensively updated by many people and organizations. The version dubbed "Chrysallis," engineered by volunteers at the Universidade Federal do Paraná in Brazil, includes backend support for the PostgreSQL and MySQL databases. Chrysallis is freely available on SourceForge.
[edit] Usage
[edit] Connecting
Playing chess on FICS requires connecting to the server using a client 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 not popular. Users can log in as an anonymous guest, unless their site has a history of abusive behavior, or they can use the website to register for a free account, as long as they have a non-free email account. The server maintains game statistics and ratings for registered users. FICS uses the Glicko rating system.
[edit] Gameplay
Users may watch for seeks, game requests other users broadcast, or put out their own seeks and wait for someone else to respond. Seeks can be set to manual, if the person who makes the seek wants to screen potential opponents before deciding which one to play, which he might do if, for example, he doesn't wish to play an opponent with a significantly higher or lower rating.
Users can also challenge a specific player to a game using the match command. This is ideal for those who wish to play friendly games between friends.
Moves are made with the mouse on an image of the chess board. However, the user also has the option of typing in moves, ideal for laptop users with only the built in touchpad as their mouse.
[edit] Time Controls
People tend to play much faster games on the Internet, typically three or five minutes per player (blitz) or one minute per player (lightning).
On FICS, the time control is specified by two numbers, the minutes each player is allotted at the start of the game, and the seconds added to a player's clock after making a 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 a player's clock after they make a move.
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 annoy opponents if extreme lag occurs, and large delays occur in real time but not on the clock.
[edit] 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 the FICS website download area. Interfaces are developed independently of FICS. Accordingly, FICS does not have an official interface, nor does it endorse any particular interface. According to the current FICS statistics [1], some of the most popular interfaces for Windows include WinBoard, JavaBoard, BabasChess, CClient and Thief. JavaBoard, XBoard, eboard, and Jin [2] are popular on other operating systems. JavaBoard and JinApplet are web interfaces; they run in a web browser and have less features than other clients.
[edit] 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 up to thirty channels simultaneously.
[edit] Variants
Some chess variants available on FICS:
- Standard - regular chess with slow time controls
- Blindfold chess - only move notation is shown 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, in which two teams of two players face each other on two boards
- Crazyhouse - two player version of bughouse
