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gnome-games package

How do I activate the NETWORK portion of Chess?

Asked by Newbie Dragon

I click 'game' in the control panel of GNU chess and then 'network' it asks for a profilr I type one in and it times out and doesnt work
What do I need to do to play chess on the network against real people?

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Tom
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Best Tom (tom6) said : 		#1

Hi :)

It seems that no-one plays on there. Online chess is largely dominated by the "Internet Chess Club" who have just a few days ago put their fees up for the first time in many years (ring any bells?). It is very expensive but when compared to other chess sites people usually seem to feel the money was worth it. Unfortunately they don't like even informal tourneys to be run outside of times suitable for americans
http://www.chessclub.com/

The only alternatives i have tried were Yahoo Chess, PlayChess.com but you will probably soon find the skill level is tooo low (icc is often tooo high for me) although they usually seem like quite a friendly bunch. I did once get accused of cheating because i used the en-passant rule. I'd spent too much time considering what trap i was being led into and he could easily have won on time from the position despite losing their rook fairly soon and giving me a new queen.

The Free Internet Chess Club is also supposed to be quite superb, almost but not quite on a par with ICC. Sadly, that "not quite" hides a huge range of fairly large issues. I would recommend starting with this one if you are any good, say over 600 rating or just tend to beat most people you bump into if you manage to avoid obvious blunders ('IF' being the crucial word there)
http://www.freechess.org/

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#2

Err, if you do join any of these then make sure you choose the options that say "wont be using a machine to do your moves" - obivuosly you will be using your computer to connect to the internet but what scares them is that you might try to use some chess engine, such as Big Blue to calculate your moves for you. They tend to have fairly sophisticated equipment to detect the use of chess engines on your machine so it's best to close those for the entire time you are connected to their website. Obviously you can then use an engine such as Dasher or something to help you analyse your moves but if you are playing 5min/side games then it probably isn't worth it - just play fast and try not to let your mistakes hurt too much - just play on & hopefully catch their next (or last) blunder. In 1min/side games you have to try to catch the blunder they made 3 or 4 moves ago. Mostly you can get longer games but not so often and they are not quite so much fun ;)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

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Newbie Dragon (spam-enterprisepacs) said : 		#3

Thanks Tom, that solved my question.