English Chess Forum

Hello,

Came across an interesting news item on ChessBase, http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8023 inter-school chess matches of this kind of thing, would be a piece of cake to set up on a chess server like FICS, because FICS is platform independent and the pupils could have individual guest accounts for the match.

Each school having a team of say five players, and those players being the top five players in the school. the exciting thing being, the schools playing each other could be anywhere on Earth once the idea took hold, the benefit would be, the esprit de corps of the whole school being raised.

A Java program could sort out the details either end.

If the matches were set up in the same geographical area, then the teacher of one school, could be at the other school, transferring moves from screen to board, thus ensuring there was no cheating and spectators could ensure that the teacher from the other school, was not cheating also.

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Regards,

Peter.

http://dollyknot.com/nonlinear/Abstract.html

Given that FICS and ICS before it, have been around for nearly twenty years, the lack of take up of this idea must say something, perhaps setting it up in such a way as to prevent cheating is just too much work. At a low tech level, you could just get the players to exchange phone numbers and text the moves backwards and forwards. You'd have to reinstate the old telephone chess rules for clock times.

That said, I've never really understood why formal junior training programmes don't seem to include introductions to chess servers. The ECF's Chess Sets for schools project never seemed to mention on line chess as an alternative to physical play.

The problem with texting is, it is not free, I've used FICS for years and it's a very good server. If human being's cheating, was a reason not to do something, we would not do anything and why we play football beats me.

_________________
Regards,

Peter.

http://dollyknot.com/nonlinear/Abstract.html

Thanks for pointing this out. It is certainly something we could encourage schools who want to play more chess to consider doing. I like the fact it was rapidplay - though I think it might be even more popular with secondary school players if it was an even shorter time limit!

Some years ago, kasparovchess ran a "World Schools Championships" over the internet. I had teams in both the Primary and Secondary school tournaments, and (apart from lots of technical problems, and some difficulties with time zone differences) we had some very enjoyable matches against schools from Holland, Norway and Israel, as well as the UK. Yes, the temptation to cheat is there (some of my weaker players were constantly asking, "What do I play here, Mr Dale?") but you just have to play fair yourself, and trust others to do the same - unless you have the resources to have independent referees at each school. I am not involved in schools chess now, but I can thoroughly recommend it.