Welcome to the World of Chess!

The FICS SR team is glad to present:

September 1999

     Java Board is an interface; mainly for new players used to play chess on the server right off your internet browser.  It will be available soon for beta testing.  Currently this project has been in the works for over a year, and FICS is pleased that it has come so far.  We are still waiting for some proxy fixes, as soon as this is done Java Board will go on air for a user beta test.  Keep up on the FICS news items for it's release.  If you're unfamiliar with how to find news items on the server, see the Server Tips section conveniently posted on this newsletter.

Java Board has been developed by TheDane and Hawk.
 
 
 

FICS will be presenting it's First Quarterly Computer Chess Tournament on Saturday, October 23, 1999 @ 11:00 Server time (15:00 GMT).  The Tournament will be a 5 Round Swiss and the time controls will be 5  8.  This tournament will be opened to all FICS registered computer accounts.  Contact afw or jperry by email, or message them while online if you would like more information

Computer Accounts:
Please contact  jperry@freechess.org  for information on setting up a computer account.
Unregistered computers will be banned from playing rated games.
 
 

    The FIDE World Chess Championships ran July 30th- August 29th 1999 in Las Vegas USA. Alexander Khalifman won the FIDE Chess Championships by drawing game six of his match against Vladimir Akopian. He won by 3.5-2.5.

    He didn't go as far as saying he was going to Disneyland (just a few hours from Las Vegas), but GM Alexander Khalifman of Russia said it all when after clinching the FIDE World Championship with a draw against Vladimir Akopian he declared, "Dreams come true."

    Despite being pushed to the brink of elimination several times he played what was consistently the best chess in Las Vegas. His score with the white piece, including rapids, was a devastating ten wins and five draws! He finished things off with a typically see-saw performance in game six. Needing only a draw with white for the title Khalifman charged into battle against Akopian's Modern Benoni. He played confidently and quickly and stayed in control until the Armenian slipped up (26...Rf8? instead of 26...Nf6) and allowed full-scale liquidation. Not missing his chance, Khalifman went into full Hoover mode, trading everything there was to trade until Akopian had no choice but to agree to the draw.

    After the match ended FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov provided a little comedy relief by declaring Khalifman to be the 14th FIDE World Champion.  A hearty congratulations to GM Khalifman, and to Akopian as well.
 

More information about this event can be found at:
http://www.worldfide.com/chess/index.html (Official FIDE web site).
http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/twic.html(The Week in Chess).
http://www.clubkasparov.ru/index0e.htm (Club Kasparov).

Fantasy Chess held a tournament based on the FIDE World Championships! With Fantasy chess, you get to select chess players at big international tournaments, and the more chess players you select correctly that score points in categories such as "Wins with White", etc. then the better you do!  Do yourself a favor and bookmark this page, and check in on the major events you hear about.
For more information visit:  http://www.angelfire.com/hi/hdcachess/fantasy.html
 
 

By the time you read this newsletter, the standings will have changed.  We are able to report the results for the First round of the semi-finals.  Each match will last four games.  The pairings are Gulko - Seirawan  and  Serper - Yermolinsky.  The top scorer from each match will advance to the Finals.

Standings:

    SemiFinals A
                                     1    2    3    4    Ttl       Playoff

        Gulko                   1    0    =    =    2.0
        Seirawan              0    1    =    =    2.0
 

    SemiFinals B
                                     1    2    3    4    Ttl       Playoff

        Serper                 =    =    =    =    2.0
        Yermolinsky       =    =    =    =    2.0

Playoffs will be on Monday. First two games will be G/25
with 10 second increment. If the match is still tied, they
will go to pairs of G/15 with 10 second increment.

Games are at 3pm Pacific Time (5 pm Eastern)(GMT-6).
 

The original 16 players were divided into two groups, and played a preliminary round robin. The two top scoring players from each group qualified for the SemiFinals. The eventual winner earns the title of 1999 US Champion.

 Group: 1                                                      Group: 2

    1  GM Boris Gulko-NJ-2710                     2  GM Yasser Seirawan-WA-2705
    4  GM Alex Yermolinsky-OH-2690           3  GM Nick deFirmian---2703
    5  GM Alexander Shabalov-PA-2690        6  GM Gregory Kaidanov-KY-2689
    8  GM John Fedorowicz-NY-2648             7  GM Joel Benjamin-NY-2659
    9  GM Larry Christiansen-MA-2647        10 GM Roman Dzindzichashivili-CA-2635
   12 GM Sergey Kudrin-MA-2628               11 IM Benjamin Finegold-MI-2606
   13 GM Dimitry Gurevich-IL-2618             14 GM Gregory Serper-OH-2616
   16 IM Igor Shliperman-MA-2560              15 GM Alexander Ivanov-MA-2608

  (Ratings shown are from the July 1999 FIDE list)
 
 

• WEEK ENDING 9/4/99:  cavebird wins wins the over-all Nightly Champion this week, with 23.5 tourney points, Bremen is best U1800 with 22 tourney points, and rafferty is the Upset Champion with 1618 upset points.
• WEEK ENDING 8/28/99:  Antonov wins the over-all Nightly Champion this week, with 37 tourney points, cavebird is best U1800 with 26.5 tourney points, and Skids is the Upset    Champion with 2398 upset points.
• WEEK ENDING 8/21/99:  StarryKn wins the over-all Nightly Champion this week, with 26 tourney points, mrcdog is best U1800 with 24 tourney points, and timp is the Upset Champion with 1287 upset points.
• WEEK ENDING 8/14/99:  Dfgordon is over-all Nightly Champion for the week with 36 tourney points, Slypot wins U1800 title with 19 tourney points, and WhoWantsSome is Upset Champ with 2202 upset points.
• WEEK ENDING 8/7/99:  AlaricMorgan wins the over-all Nightly Title this week with 24 tourney points, beyonder is U1800 champ with 18.5 tourney points, and timp is the Upset Champ with 1977 upset points. Congrats all!
• WEEK ENDING 8/2/99:  1st Bi-Monthly 5 0 Nightly Championships ...and here it is, the match result you've all been waiting for for the past month...*pulls out a piece of paper out of an envelope*...and the winner of the , The World Nightly Champion is... *drumroll please*  .......toddmf !!!  Beating MrMnM by score of 4-1 in the best-of-seven final matchup, toddmf was one of the lowest ranked players coming into the tournament.  However, players were ranked by participation and performance in the 5 0 Nightly Tournaments, not by rating, so even though he was the highest rated, he was ranked towards the bottom going into the thing  ...anyways, Congratulations toddmf!

"Nightly 5 0" tournamentsare tournaments held every day at 10 PM server time. As the name implies they are played in a 5 round Swiss with a 5 0 time control. At the end of the week an overall Champion for the week is crowned, and a news item is posted with the winners name.  An Under 1800 title and an Upset title are awarded each week, and are included on the weekly news items. You do not have to participate everyday to win the title. The tournaments typically draw between 16-30 people, and last a little over 1 hr.
Plan ahead! See you there!

Check out the Nightly web page: http://play.at/nightly
 

Do you have a question on how to participate?  To receive instruction or otherwise participate in the Chess Academy you should follow these steps:

• See the schedule for Academy Hours by typing 'help motd'.
• Use the 'date' command to check the time of day.
• Add one or more of the following channels:

                    Channel 65 "/Events"
                    Channel 66 "Examine"
                    Channel 67 "Lectures"

     Would you like to find out the latest FICS information?  While on-line, all you have to do is type in:  news  -and you will see the 10 most recent news items.  The command displays news items from the chess server bulletin board.  There are four versions of the command:

•   (1)  news        -- display the titles of the last 10 news items
•   (2)  news all   -- display the titles of all news items [long]
•   (3)  news #     -- display detailed information about news item #  (such as "news 482")
•   (4)  news #-#  -- display the titles of a range of news items (such as "news 329-350")

        Here's a neat command:  statistics;  system alias "stats", Usage: statistics <handle>.  Displays some statistics on players.  If no name is specified it gives detailed stats on yourself, plus general info on all active players.  Apart from the specified player's ratings (as in finger),  you will see your ranking compared to all, humans only, computers only; and also when your rating becomes inactive (RD < 80).  Also listed are the server stats:  mean (average), standard deviation (sd) for all, humans and computers, and computed overall active players in the specified category.
 
 

FICS is currently looking for users who want to help us promoting FICS.  Among things we are working on is to get the FICS Banner on your local chess club and personal web pages.  If you have time and want to help us then send email to:  binford@freechess.org .
 

The Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) Monthly Newsletter

Please send comments and feedback on what you would like to see on this page.
Edited by: afw(SR)(TM)
Comments to afw or TheOnlyOne.