Product Review: Internet Chess Club

The tl;dr version is: Skip this product.

Longer:

Issues that had been seemingly resolved 20 years ago are making this site unplayable now. Lag is a big problem for online gaming, and has always been so. Chess sites, back in the early days, developed time seal or time stamp programs to solve this issue. The idea is that moves are stamped with the time of sending, so that if one player is lagging, his clock shouldn't run unless he has received his opponents move, and a corresponding signal would be sent back to the server. Thus the problem was solved for ICC back in the day, or at least ameliorated.

That no longer appears to be the case. I am watching my clock either suddenly lose time when my opponent's move finally gets "delivered", or I am watching my clock run for a LONG time. This even occurs after premoves. I once saw my clock run for 45 seconds on a pre-move. One a #$%ing pre-move!

Needless to say, this is making the site unplayable. There are many other good features on the site, including instructional videos and training programs, but such things are ubiquitous these days. I just don't think it is worth the money to get such things when the actual main feature of the site is [redacted] worthless. I've contacted support, and gotten no actual help on this issue. Perhaps other sites also have this problem, but I haven't PAID other sites, either. Save your money, and don't buy it.

...

It's a real shame to watch the early chess playing sites go completely down the toilet. But they haven't kept up, and their actual coding has gotten worse with experience.

Chess is funny

Taking a break from housekeeping today, I reached the following position as Black, with the move. My question is, how would you evaluate the position?

The position arose from a French Exchange variation. I felt pretty good about my prospects here, as I was threatening to win the pawn on d4 in a few moves, and White's play felt too slow on the kingside.

After the game, I backed it up and looked at it to see where my opponent went off the rails. It turns out, it was the move 19 g4. He is now down about the equivalent of a rook! Here's the thing, and the reason I'm posting this: Black doesn't have a big knockout blow here. It's just that his play is very, very easy, and even with the sub-optimal 19...Nf4, I won when my opponent resigned on move 31 with a mate in one on the board. Black looks better, but who would think it was a crushing advantage?

Tactics Time at the Sinquefield Cup

In round one of the Sinquefield Cup, Sergey Karjakin smashed Peter Svidler. In his recap for the Internet Chess Club, GM Ronen Har-Zvi spotted an incredible tactic that COULD have occurred. Here's the position, with White to move:
Take a look at see if you can work it out. I was able to spot the relevant ideas, but couldn't put them all together. I really enjoyed this combination, and hope you do as well. You can follow along with the video from the correct time here.

You can't be serious, man....

I'm giving ICC's one month trial membership a try. I've become infatuated with the TrainingBot and TacticalBot features, but I'm downright addicted to ProblemBot. It's pretty much what it sounds like: one challenges a bot to a game, and a problem is supplied. TrainingBot (and perhaps TacticalBot) will give even rate one's performance. (Each individual problem has a rating, too, which also changes based on how competitors fare against it. Nice!)

Not so with ProblemBot, but that's okay as then one doesn't obsess about ratings. There are flaws with the program, however. The big one is that the problems will sometimes be declared over even if I'm not sure what to do. For example, a problem is often declared done if it reaches the stage of queen vs. rook. Okay, fine, I'm supposed to know how to do that, or at least have books and such that can show me how.

But sometimes the problem just stops, declares me the winner, and moves on leaving me completely mystified. Sometimes I have no idea what the heck I'm supposed to do even AFTER plugging it into Stockfish. Here's an example from yesterday.

A. Troitzky, 1921

(correction by S. Hornecker)

After 4 d8(N)

3N4/2N4k/6p1/4n1K1/8/6P1/8/8 b - - 0 4

Here, with Black to move, I'm declared the winner. HERE. You CANNOT be serious!

Seriously, could you win this as White, with Black to move?