On-line Chess - Part 1.10 - Game archive and statistics

A good player takes note of the move list of his/her games in order to analyze later and improve from mistakes. No piece of paper is required when you play on-line chess because the system takes note of the game moves and save the game in the Portable Game Notation format in a database. That’s really useful. Database access makes it easy to query for a match against an opponent or for a game played years ago. You can then review the game using your client program or download the PGN file and open it using your favorite computer chess program in order to let it analyze deeply the game and find the mistakes and good moves. Game archive has a cost for providers of the gaming service (disk space is not for free), for this reason usually if you want to store all your games you have to pay while free subscription have limited storage size.

Figure 10 – www.geekswithchess.com game archive

Another possibility is to upload games in PGN format on the database. Even if they are not played using the provider service, this is a way to collect the games you want on the net so they become available everywhere an internet connection is available.
Statistics are another interesting feature. In the basic form statistics report the number of games played, won, drawn and lost. Advanced forms could report your rating evolution over time or the statistics on openings used in your games and several ways to present the data graphically. Any means to show you how strong you are is appreciated.

On-line Chess - Part 1.9 - Games watching

If you ever entered a chess club, for sure you have stop by a table watching a game in progress. Observing a game in progress just like a real spectator is possible also on-line. Typically there is a list of ongoing games and you can join to watch one of them. Some time you are allowed to write down messages into the local chat.

Figure 9 – www.chess.com game view panel

Welcome Mind The Check!

Mind The Check is the new web site for playing online chess for free. it offers the chance to play correspondence chess (turn based chess) and live chess(time based chess), rated and unrated games, gives the players the opportunity to check their progress in term of strength and look at their own games whenever they want.

The site is online for some time but it unveils itself only recently to the web community, thanks to its latest stable version that makes use of cutting-edge software technologies as JSF2.0 and Atmosphere Framework.

The project was created by combining the need to renew competence and the curiosity for some emerging technologies, finding in an old interest in the Game of Chess, a breeding ground for this activity. By the time the project has grown, maintaining the same spirit and gaining expertise everytime an obstacle got passed,  opening the door to new ideas and new challenges.

Mind The Check is constantly evolving, so many ideas still have to be realized, but it is now ready to be known and it is open to any advice or suggestions that can make the chess player life on the virtual chess board easier or just more interesting.

Good game!

On-line Chess - Part 1.8 - Other play possibilities

Usually you are not allowed to play more than one game at a time mainly for security as we will see later. That’s not true for all the gaming sites.

But let’s go back to the rating concept. You can play against anyone and increase your rating, very easy. Too easy maybe: in the real world to increase your rating you should participate to official tournaments. For this reason it is very common to find tournaments on-line. Tournaments start when a certain number of people join the tournament which is scheduled at a fixed time and publicized on the site.

Tournaments could be of various types:

• In round-robin tournaments each player plays against every other player in two games (once as white, once as black). The winner is determined by the score but when two players have the same score a tie-break method can be used. The tie-break method widely used for this kind of tournament is the Neustadtl score. A player's Neustadtl score is calculated by adding the sum of the conventional scores of the players they have defeated to half the sum of the conventional scores of those they have drawn against. Round-robin tournaments are simple but they are effective only when the number of players is limited to few users.
• Knock-out tournaments are used when there are a lot of players in order to reduce the time taken by the competition. Players are put into smaller groups and then the winner(s) of that group are combined with winners of other groups to form a new group. The winner(s) of the final group are the winner(s) of the entire tournament. One or more players could advance from each group. If one only has to advance, a tie-break method is used.
• A Swiss tournament goes for a predetermined number of rounds, with all of the players taking part in each round. In each round two players compete head-to-head. All players participate in the entire tournament – none are eliminated. The winner (and top places) of the tournament is based on the final scores of the players. The final score is based on the number of points they accumulated for each round. The tournament lasts for a number of rounds announced before the tournament. After the last round, players are ranked by their score. If this is tied then a tie break score, such as the sum of all their opponents' scores (Buchholz chess rating), can be used. The Buchholz System is in fact the sum of the score of each of the opponents of a player. 

 

When the users of a web site are quite a number, it is common to find teams of players playing against. Not a one-to-one challenge but a many-to-many challenge. The team wins if the score of its members is higher than other teams after the fight. Team members become friends, they exchange information trough dedicated chat.

Also teams can compete in tournaments. In this case the rating is different.

Some game providers allow users to play different chess variants and gain rating also for those games. The most popular chess variants you can find are

• Chess 960
• Reverse (suicide chess)
• Checkers
• Bughouse