ICC Woes

Not having played at ICC for a while I downloaded the dashboard component. It let me sign up for a 7 day trial but would not let me click the accept the TOS button.

Next I got the blitzin and the thing looked strange. There were menus all over the place. I couldn't figure out how to play a game and afterwards (still online) kibitz it to see here I went wrong. Even before I have found my way they are still bamboozling me with sign up for a full account etc

Having won a couple of games my rating was in the 2500s Hmm are the ratings inflated at ICC or what? There was a guy in the Chess Forum who posted his win over someone in the Dragon and they were both 2300-2400 but here the guy is 1600.

For the old timers who know how to use ICC, how do I

- watch the games of top players
- which interface is best the java applet logs me in and then disappears.
- how do you add a kibitzer to games you are watching?

How can ICC expect people to shell out $60 when the ball is not rolling?

Originally posted by jsmith
Not having played at ICC for a while I downloaded the dashboard component. It let me sign up for a 7 day trial but would not let me click the accept the TOS button.

Next I got the blitzin and the thing looked strange. There were menus all over the place. I couldn't figure out how to play a game and afterwards (still online) kibitz it to see here I went wro ...[text shortened]... s you are watching?

How can ICC expect people to shell out $60 when the ball is not rolling?

I've been there only a week or two, but here's what I've gathered so far:

-dasher is better than blitzin, but still doesn't hold a candle to babaschess on fics. lots of work to be done there.

-although the standard ratings are slightly higher than say fide otb, 2500 would mean you were very strong or vastly overrated. the top blitzers have huge ratings (3500) because they don't really have any serious competition. nakamura beats GMs ten in a row, whatching tv and chatting while he plays. (I had my doubts about that, but after watching him play in the dos hermanas tournament, where he says he seriously makes an effort, he is simply amazing.) on the amateur level even the blitz ratings seem to be quite normal. maybe 100-200 pts higher than fide at most.

-see 'help examine' for how to examine your games afterwards. your opponent can join in by 'observe jsmith' after you've begun to examine the game.

-at least dasher has titled players listed in the 'activities window', you can observe or follow them from there. can't remember how it was in blitzin, but probably something similar.

-$60 is quite a lot, and frankly fics just has better functionality with babaschess. there's more jerks on icc, people chatting on kibitz etc. but the thing that rises icc ahead of fics is the number of players. it's just easier to get games, and far easier to get to see masters play.

Originally posted by jsmith
Not having played at ICC for a while I downloaded the dashboard component. It let me sign up for a 7 day trial but would not let me click the accept the TOS button.

Next I got the blitzin and the thing looked strange. There were menus all over the place. I couldn't figure out how to play a game and afterwards (still online) kibitz it to see here I went wro ...[text shortened]... s you are watching?

How can ICC expect people to shell out $60 when the ball is not rolling?

Why not just submit a question to the support people? They get back to you usually within about 30 seconds. If you want a game, I'm rbmorris on ICC too.

Originally posted by wormwood
-$60 is quite a lot, and frankly fics just has better functionality with babaschess.

I use Babas on FICS, but the only thing I haven't missed since I stopped playing at ICC is my $60, which I've spent on Fritz, which has far more functionality than any other user interface I've employed.

FICS does not track user lag, and thus offers no meaningful way to screen out perputaul laggers. In the ICC 5 0 playing pool, lag was rare.

Playchess does not save games on the server, making certain types of (almost senseless) lurking and research impossible.

ICC has more users and more features, but costs more and does not offer the best user interface selection.

Every server has its strengths and weaknesses.

ICC with its commands is a bit funny. I did "who" and saw a list of people online. I would be surprised if the 500 or so people were all members or just 7 day trialists. I also logged on to the newbie channel.

ICC looks like some telnety thingy from the swingin sixties with a modified winboard as the GUI. The reason it attracts rude teens is because they can pay half price. As soon as my trial I don't think I'll touch ICC again to be honest.

I played at ICC under the handle "ariostel" for years--and then under "ismgr". The cheating and other rude behaviors got worse and worse. I finally started posting the handles of people who would taunt, swear during the game, get into losing positions and then let the game time out. I was "warned" for this. When a player taunted me through a whole game, I was told to add him to the noplay list. No penalty to the taunter.

ICC does what it can, they say, to control the behavior--but by the time I left, about a year ago, the only players at my level (1500 blitz) were computers. Most of the human players appeared to be grandmasters looking to make money recruiting students.

A friend and I collaborated on an experiment, by the way, that shows that the computers there play harder when their rating at the low end of their scale and easier when the rating is at the high end of the scale--something that means that the lower rated players are "feeding" rating points to the higher.

Final note. I felt bad leaving because I'd been with them for so many years, but it was just intolerable.