I've played at ICC for a couple of years and I think it's really
excellent value for money. Today I had a run in with a power crazed
admin. As a frequent visitor to chessbase.com where they advertise
playchess I was thinking of switching, or at least having a look. So
what does anyone here think of the relative virtues and vices of the
two.

cheers

dd

Just go there and try it out and have a peak at worldchessnetwork.com too
while your at it. Advantages and disadvantages will become clear pretty
soon.


"DDEckerslyke" schreef in bericht
om...
I've played at ICC for a couple of years and I think it's really
excellent value for money. Today I had a run in with a power crazed
admin. As a frequent visitor to chessbase.com where they advertise
playchess I was thinking of switching, or at least having a look. So
what does anyone here think of the relative virtues and vices of the
two.

cheers

dd


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.715 / Virus Database: 471 - Release Date: 4/07/2004

They are both EQUALLY FAB!!

"DDEckerslyke" wrote in message
om...
I've played at ICC for a couple of years and I think it's really
excellent value for money. Today I had a run in with a power crazed
admin. As a frequent visitor to chessbase.com where they advertise
playchess I was thinking of switching, or at least having a look. So
what does anyone here think of the relative virtues and vices of the
two.

cheers

dd

"DDEckerslyke" wrote in message
om...
I've played at ICC for a couple of years and I think it's really
excellent value for money. Today I had a run in with a power crazed
admin. As a frequent visitor to chessbase.com where they advertise
playchess I was thinking of switching, or at least having a look. So
what does anyone here think of the relative virtues and vices of the
two.

cheers

dd

The admin's at Playchess.com are idiots, they never even played Internet
chess before. Stick with ICC

"DDEckerslyke" wrote in message
om...
I've played at ICC for a couple of years and I think it's really
excellent value for money. Today I had a run in with a power crazed
admin. As a frequent visitor to chessbase.com where they advertise
playchess I was thinking of switching, or at least having a look. So
what does anyone here think of the relative virtues and vices of the
two.

cheers

dd

Let's see.....

$40.00 a year to play chess online or play for free with software you were
gonna buy anyway.

Hmmmmm....

Personally, I'll stick with the freebie, but this is America and people are
free to waste their money any way they see fit.

Regards,

Matt

DDEckerslyke wrote:
I've played at ICC for a couple of years and I think it's really
excellent value for money. Today I had a run in with a power crazed
admin. As a frequent visitor to chessbase.com where they advertise
playchess I was thinking of switching, or at least having a look. So
what does anyone here think of the relative virtues and vices of the
two.

cheers

dd

Playchess forces people to buy an operating system and is therefore
disqualified.

--
Roman M. Parparov - NASA EOSDIS project node at TAU technical manager.
Email: http://www.nasa.proj.ac.il/
Phone/Fax: +972-(0)3-6405205 (work), +972-(0)51-34-18-34 (home)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on
weather forecasters.
-- Jean-Paul Kauffmann

"DDEckerslyke" wrote in message
om...
I've played at ICC for a couple of years and I think it's really
excellent value for money. Today I had a run in with a power crazed
admin. As a frequent visitor to chessbase.com where they advertise
playchess I was thinking of switching, or at least having a look. So
what does anyone here think of the relative virtues and vices of the
two.

cheers

dd

Hi

I was an ICC member for 9 years. Last month I had a run in with
a power crazed admin. I was accused of sharing my account
(total rubbish). I was dealt with in an arrogant and very rude manner
(typical of an American). I decided to leave and joined Playchess.

Playchess seems to do most that ICC does. Suggest you give it
a try.

Regards

On Tue, 6 Jul 2004 06:06:34 +0000 (UTC), "Roman M. Parparov"
wrote:

DDEckerslyke wrote:
I've played at ICC for a couple of years and I think it's really
excellent value for money. Today I had a run in with a power crazed
admin. As a frequent visitor to chessbase.com where they advertise
playchess I was thinking of switching, or at least having a look. So
what does anyone here think of the relative virtues and vices of the
two.

cheers

dd

Playchess forces people to buy an operating system and is therefore
disqualified.

I always wondered why ICC had such a primitive user interface; now I
understand.

Jürgen

--
Roman M. Parparov - NASA EOSDIS project node at TAU technical manager.
Email: http://www.nasa.proj.ac.il/
Phone/Fax: +972-(0)3-6405205 (work), +972-(0)51-34-18-34 (home)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on
weather forecasters.
-- Jean-Paul Kauffmann

"Terry" wrote in message ...
snip
Hi

I was an ICC member for 9 years. Last month I had a run in with
a power crazed admin. I was accused of sharing my account
(total rubbish). I was dealt with in an arrogant and very rude manner
(typical of an American).

Very similar to my story. I'd never previously had any problem,
although I did hear occasionally on this NG and elsewhere that the
admins were a problem.

My side of the story is this...

Watching Adams v Radjabov someone mentioned Ray Keene. I kibitzed that
I thought Keene was an asshole. This appeared on my screen as *******.
I thought ICC had gone in for automatic censorship. The next day while
I was waiting for a game to start I typed in 'asshole test' expecting
either some wit to reply 'you passed' or the auto censoring I'd seen
the day before. Sure enough '******* test' appeared. The admins
smelled a victim and pounced. My shouting privileges were 'temporarily
revoked'. It turns out the mistake I made was my settings meant that I
couldn't see what I'd typed but others could.

I tried to explain this to the admin but he didn't seem to be able to
put this complex picture together. For example in the middle of the
conversation I was disconnected due to a hardware problem at my end. I
told him I'd been disconnected but he seemed to want to claim some
kind of victory saying I hadn't been disconnected but that I'd been,
in his words, 'nuked'.

I then asked how long my priviliges had been revoked for, he said
'Indefinitely'.

After more along the same lines I asked to speak to someone further up
the chain of command, he said something sarcastic like, 'That's a
laugh. Try autobot.'

His attitude wasn't 'OK let's try and sort this out' it was 'OK let's
show this guy how much power I've got.' After an hour or so I gave up
trying to get through. I tried Zek but he just said I should speak to
the guy I was already speaking to or Email one of the owners. At the
time I'd already spent an hour or so, so I was disinclined to do this
but I might cut and paste parts of this post.

Like I said every now and then I'd heard reports about poor admins at
ICC but never had any experience of it. I'd been a member for nearly
two years, generally trying to help others. My rating went from 1500
to 1725 while I was there and I passed on any advice that had helped
me. (Don't hang pieces is good avice for a 1500.) I was never
previously censored and they reacted like this. I can see I shouldn't
have said 'asshole test' - it actually says you shouldn't do this in
the help atmosphere file which I read later (ooops) - but the reaction
was totally disproportionate. The moral of the story from my POV is
beware.

And no I'm not whining about it. Just passing on my side of the story
as a cautionary tale. Take it or leave it.

Playchess seems to do most that ICC does. Suggest you give it
a try.

I did. There seemed to be far fewer people there and only a handful of
titled players games to watch and a lot less English spoken. I'll give
it another go over a few nights to see what I can find. It is cheaper
than ICC though.

"DDEckerslyke" wrote in message
om...
"Terry" wrote in message
...
snip
Hi

I was an ICC member for 9 years. Last month I had a run in with
a power crazed admin. I was accused of sharing my account
(total rubbish). I was dealt with in an arrogant and very rude manner
(typical of an American).

Very similar to my story. I'd never previously had any problem,
although I did hear occasionally on this NG and elsewhere that the
admins were a problem.

My side of the story is this...

Watching Adams v Radjabov someone mentioned Ray Keene. I kibitzed that
I thought Keene was an asshole. This appeared on my screen as *******.
I thought ICC had gone in for automatic censorship. The next day while
I was waiting for a game to start I typed in 'asshole test' expecting
either some wit to reply 'you passed' or the auto censoring I'd seen
the day before. Sure enough '******* test' appeared. The admins
smelled a victim and pounced. My shouting privileges were 'temporarily
revoked'. It turns out the mistake I made was my settings meant that I
couldn't see what I'd typed but others could.

I tried to explain this to the admin but he didn't seem to be able to
put this complex picture together. For example in the middle of the
conversation I was disconnected due to a hardware problem at my end. I
told him I'd been disconnected but he seemed to want to claim some
kind of victory saying I hadn't been disconnected but that I'd been,
in his words, 'nuked'.

I then asked how long my priviliges had been revoked for, he said
'Indefinitely'.

After more along the same lines I asked to speak to someone further up
the chain of command, he said something sarcastic like, 'That's a
laugh. Try autobot.'

His attitude wasn't 'OK let's try and sort this out' it was 'OK let's
show this guy how much power I've got.' After an hour or so I gave up
trying to get through. I tried Zek but he just said I should speak to
the guy I was already speaking to or Email one of the owners. At the
time I'd already spent an hour or so, so I was disinclined to do this
but I might cut and paste parts of this post.

Like I said every now and then I'd heard reports about poor admins at
ICC but never had any experience of it. I'd been a member for nearly
two years, generally trying to help others. My rating went from 1500
to 1725 while I was there and I passed on any advice that had helped
me. (Don't hang pieces is good avice for a 1500.) I was never
previously censored and they reacted like this. I can see I shouldn't
have said 'asshole test' - it actually says you shouldn't do this in
the help atmosphere file which I read later (ooops) - but the reaction
was totally disproportionate. The moral of the story from my POV is
beware.

And no I'm not whining about it. Just passing on my side of the story
as a cautionary tale. Take it or leave it.

Playchess seems to do most that ICC does. Suggest you give it
a try.

I did. There seemed to be far fewer people there and only a handful of
titled players games to watch and a lot less English spoken. I'll give
it another go over a few nights to see what I can find. It is cheaper
than ICC though.

Your offence was very minor and your kibitzing priviliges would have
been removed for 10 mins. If this had been explained to you in a reasonable
manner there would have been no problem.

The admins seem to try and "wind" people up. I found it very sad that after
9 years and 32000 games of chess that I finally told them to **** off
because
of a very rude admin. They have lost a lot of customers in this way.
I will never go back.

I have found Playchess to be fine. Most people speak English.
There are usually 500 - 2000 people on line of all strengths and I
dont have problems findind a game ( strength 2100 ). Give it
another try. I can reccomend it and so far I have not found any
demon admins .

Regards

Terry