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Subject: Re: My review of Online Chess Servers - Updated

Author: Peter Skinner

Date: 05:45:13 01/17/05

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On January 17, 2005 at 08:35:02, Steve B wrote:

>>As some of you know, about 1 yr ago I put out a review of all the most popular
>>chess servers one can use.
>>
>>Well I just updated it, and it can be found at:
>
>Hi Peter
>thanks for your concise,easily readable and well written review
>
>my only point of contention is that you seem to minimize or  "Gloss" over the
>cheating incidences on the servers

I hope it really didn't come across as "glossing" over the cheating. I just
didn't want it to become a focal point.
>
>from a reading of your review one would come away with the idea that only on
>Fics is Cheating out of control,while on the ICC the adms.are making a valient
>effort to curb it and on Playchess ,there is no mention of cheating

Not true. I specifically wrote there was an admin banned on Playchess for
cheating. That is at the highest level when the admins are the ones breaking the
rules.

And of the three servers, FICS is the worst. That is just the hard facts of it.

>
>the ugly truth of it is that cheating is rampant on all three servers
>so much so that it makes no sense for a normal player to even care about a
>rating,because the rating pool is staistically corrupted do to the high cheating
>incidence ratios

All three servers have cheating. No question. I just didn't want it to become a
focus point. My intention was to show where you're most likely have the better
time, and use that time to it's best advantage.
>
>of course for  computer matches  or to watch GM's and IM's play,or to play
>unrated casual games the servers are great but for a regular player to compete
>for a rating it just dosent make sense
>
>Dr Robert Pawlak (a well respected writer and member of the US CHESS community)
>wrote about this last year in an issue of CHESS LIFE(mag of the USCF) and he
>also posted several messages here where he gave his opinion as to the cheating
>incidence ratios on the various servers
>
>they ranged between 15-20% across all servers with the highest being over 40%
>(for Standard games) on one server
>
>again i thank you for your review and i look forward to your review of the
>various Gui's

No problem. My GUI review would be out already, but with recent changes in a few
GUI's, I had to take out... err.. update the problems I had with some and add
new ones :)

Peter



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