Showing posts with label Reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reviews. Show all posts
Saturday, July 15, 2017
Chess Puzzle Sites Reviewed ...
...by Johan Salomon, a young Norwegian Grand Master, on his blog. If you're looking for websites to work on puzzles, his review is an excellent place to start.
Friday, October 14, 2016
One crappy feature of Chess.com
I started playing internet chess over 20 years ago. At that time, FICS and ICC were the big places for serious players, with places like YAHOO's game site merely places for creating ridiculous ratings because of the ill-thought out features.
These days we have many more options, notably ChessBase's PlayChess server, Chess24.com's site, and Chess.com's site. Recently I have found myself playing mostly at Chess.com for a couple of reasons. First, I'm poor, so I can't afford the premium sites like I used to. (Thank you George W. Bush and Barack Obama for creating the worst economy in almost a century.) Secondly, the other free sites have problems of their own. For some reason I just don't do well, visually, with the interface at Chess24 when playing, and these days FICS is a rather depressingly empty place to play. So the look of the interface and the number of players means, as well as the cost, leave me at Chess.com.
There is one HUGE drawback, however. In the early days of internet chess, the big problem was LAG. Lag was what happened when there was a slowdown between your location, the chess server's location, and your opponent's location. It could me you were making insta-moves and still see three minutes disappear off your clock. (The time control of 2 minutes with a 12 second increment wasn't the early favorite on the internet without reason!) This problem was solved with the creation of time stamp/time seal programs, that took note of when one received a move, and let the server know how much time one actually used making the move, thus removing lag as a cause of losing on time. Lag was still annoying to deal with, but at least one didn't lose on time on move two any more.
Well, the problems that were solved on USENET in the way back, are still problems for the web-based servers. Today I've lost two games on time when I made a move, and then watched helplessly as dozens of seconds ticked by before the server told be to commit anatomically impossible acts upon myself - and oh-by-the-way-you-lost-on-time, sucker.
It's bad enough being in slump without having to deal with this nonsense. I guess it's back to FICS and the other two dozen people that haven't left yet. Yay!
These days we have many more options, notably ChessBase's PlayChess server, Chess24.com's site, and Chess.com's site. Recently I have found myself playing mostly at Chess.com for a couple of reasons. First, I'm poor, so I can't afford the premium sites like I used to. (Thank you George W. Bush and Barack Obama for creating the worst economy in almost a century.) Secondly, the other free sites have problems of their own. For some reason I just don't do well, visually, with the interface at Chess24 when playing, and these days FICS is a rather depressingly empty place to play. So the look of the interface and the number of players means, as well as the cost, leave me at Chess.com.
There is one HUGE drawback, however. In the early days of internet chess, the big problem was LAG. Lag was what happened when there was a slowdown between your location, the chess server's location, and your opponent's location. It could me you were making insta-moves and still see three minutes disappear off your clock. (The time control of 2 minutes with a 12 second increment wasn't the early favorite on the internet without reason!) This problem was solved with the creation of time stamp/time seal programs, that took note of when one received a move, and let the server know how much time one actually used making the move, thus removing lag as a cause of losing on time. Lag was still annoying to deal with, but at least one didn't lose on time on move two any more.
Well, the problems that were solved on USENET in the way back, are still problems for the web-based servers. Today I've lost two games on time when I made a move, and then watched helplessly as dozens of seconds ticked by before the server told be to commit anatomically impossible acts upon myself - and oh-by-the-way-you-lost-on-time, sucker.
It's bad enough being in slump without having to deal with this nonsense. I guess it's back to FICS and the other two dozen people that haven't left yet. Yay!
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Dennis Monokroussos reviews Informant's "Paramount" database so we don't have to!
Here's the link.
From his review:
Monokroussos writes excellent product reviews, so if you're looking for stuff to buy his blog provides an excellent guide for quality material.
A promotional link to the product can be found here.
From his review:
The price is $199; a fair chunk of change, but very reasonable for what you're getting. (Think of how many books you'd need to buy to get your paws on 114,000 [annotated games & fragments].) To my mind it's a very good deal for serious players, fans of chess history and for correspondence players, so if you're in those categories you have my recommendation.Read the whole thing to see how he arrives at his recommendation.
Monokroussos writes excellent product reviews, so if you're looking for stuff to buy his blog provides an excellent guide for quality material.
A promotional link to the product can be found here.
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