Originally posted by wakchessdragonit's better, but the clients are not as good as babaschess. I think I've played one game on fics after joining icc, but the difference isn't that big. is it worth the money? well, that depends on how much you have to spare.
Is it ICC much better? Because it is not free? Does it have some extra features? (except lessons from masters, 50 euros per hour )😕
there's a lot more people, especially titled players. it's great fun to watch them play.
"Currently online: 1427 players, including 21 Grandmasters and 35 International Masters. "
you can also try icc for a week for free.
i've never liked the interfeace icc uses.... also the fact that they keep on spamming my email with all this stupid mail although i keep on setting it as spam... anyways playchess.com is way better cuz it uses chessbase, and also theres many GMs IMs and FMs at all times.
ICC deals effectively with lag; FICS does not. For example, most of those I've played at FICS could never enter the 5-minute pool at ICC because they never cease to lag.
I doubt that many grandmasters, if any, play on FICS. ICC has better features and is better run.
Both have their share of rude jerks lacking manners.
ICC is far better, but I'm not certain it is worth $60 per year.
I have account on ICC, Playchess and FICS. In my opinion ICC beats it's competition hands down. There are great simuls every day, regular tournaments with prizes and great teamleague. They also provide good tools for taking lessons from official vendors. If you only want to play blitz and don't fancy anything else, FICS is clearly your choice. They don't have titled players, but I think most of us take beating from lower rated players anyway.
Playchess is also good server, only thing I must complain is amount of laggers who play there. Playchess client works only in windows which is a big minus, they don't support any other client than their own.
HTH
I have a Playchess account through Fritz. I just tried the ICC for 7 days last month. They are both good, and you can find great players on both. I just tried FICS two weeks ago w/Babas Chess and find that interface better than both PC and ICC. Also I ran in to nicer players on FICS. This may just be coincidence but sometimes people post trash talk during games to me. Probably because Im a weak player. FICS dosent have the elite GM and IM like the others, but I dont need that anyway. I havent been back to PC since I found FICS.
I haven't used ICC, but I absolutely love FICS, which I play using the eboard client on linux. I'm not a strong player, so I don't really need to have GMs or even IMs as opponents. And if I want to look over the games of a GM, I could always open up any of the dozens of chess books I have, browse through my database, or look at any of the hundreds of websites dedicated to chess.
As for lag on FICS, it hasn't been much of a problem for me. But if it becomes a problem for you, you can always run a program called timeseal (which is built in to some chess clients), which only counts your thinking time against you, and not the lag. And you can set an option to only play people who also run timeseal. That doesn't eliminate the lag, but it makes lagging games more fair.
FICS has a ton of features, and is really way more than enough for me, and it beats any web-based chess site I've tried yet. Here's an interesting page that lists some of the features FICS has:
http://www.edcollins.com/chess/yahoo-vs-servers.htm
It's ostensibly a comparison of Yahoo's site to both FICS and ICC, but in fact you can see how many features FICS and ICC have in common.
Best of all, FICS is absolutely free. Personally, I'd rather spend the $60 ICC costs per year on chess books, equipment, tournaments, or even a private lesson or two from a strong player.
For me FICS is enough. I just play (not only blitz) and could not care less that 25 GM and 247 IM and whoever else is playing at the same time. Good for them :-) If I want to watch a match between GM, I do not need to pay $60. Plus Babaschess is brilliant.
I also use FICS on my PDA through a wifi connection. Works perfect.
Originally posted by RegicidalI don't know what's wrong with the website. But, fortunately you don't have to connect to the website to play on FICS. Here's a list of some of their servers:
I haven't been able to connect to fics for days: http://www.freechess.org/
Why?
http://www.gtryfon.demon.co.uk/bcc/playing/Internet_chess/playingservers/fics/fics.htm
If you have a chess client that can connect to FICS it will probably automatically connect to one of those servers for you. The website is only really useful for learning about what FICS is and getting some links to FICS clients.
Originally posted by Regicidal"
I haven't been able to connect to fics for days: http://www.freechess.org/
Why?
news 1257
1257 (Wed, Jul 25) The FICS website www.freechess.org is down right now
The FICS website is temporarily down. So you cannot with the webinterface.
Posted by beuki."
the server seems to work normally though.