Kibitz for Improvement

by Tuirgin on May.08, 2009, under Chess

I may start making some time to play real-time games a couple times per week. Ideally what I’d like to find is something like what I experienced last night at KGS—I played an unrated 13×13 board with someone in the Beginner’s Room, and when the game was complete we were able to see the comments the various kibitzers left, and were able to review the game and continue commenting on it with each other and with the kibitzers. Which real-time chess servers are most geared towards this type of community interaction? Any of them? ICS, FICS, Chess.com’s live chess beta? I prefer to stay away from servers that don’t have a Mac or Linux client, but if, for example, Playchess.com wins hands down I might give in (after some sulking and swearing).

Thanks in advance.

:chess sites

13 Comments for this entry

Jonas Martinsson
May 8th, 2009 on 10:48 am
I am getting a similar experience on FICS using the BabasChess client. The FICS WatchBot also give you the ability to have the comments e-mailed to you after a game (you are prompted at the end of the game if there are available comments). The comments are also archived at http://mekk.waw.pl/mk/watchbot/index.

If you are interested in playing weekly chess games with a longer time control, you could check out the Online Chess Match Championships at http://sites.google.com/site/chessmatcheshq/championships that will start in June.

Jonas.

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- Tuirgin
  May 8th, 2009 on 1:23 pm
  I’ve only played on FICS a few times. I’m not adverse to the IRC type commands, etc., but I had a hard time discovering what features were available there. How did you find out about WatchBot? Since I’m usually on Mac & Linux I haven’t spent more than 30-45 minutes with BabasChess—does it make feature discovery a lot easier than does Jin?
  
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  - Israel Chauca
    May 27th, 2009 on 11:42 pm
    When I play standard games (15+ min) in FICS, I turn the “examine” var on (set examine 1); that way, when the game finishes it’s automatically loaded in an “examine” board and I invite my opponent to go through it, most of the time my opponents agree and we have a nice time examining the game.
    
    I found out about many FICS’ features just by asking in the help channel about how to do things, there is usually someone that will have an answer, but you might found more than one way to do things. Also, the help command is a good source of information and you can use mailhelp to get the help file in your inbox. Going through my vars (type “var” to get the list) with “help v_varname” made my life a lot nicer too.
    
    Israel
    
    Reply
    - Tuirgin
      May 27th, 2009 on 11:45 pm
      Great! That’s very helpful. Thank you.
      
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Farbror the Guru
May 8th, 2009 on 12:04 pm
I guess SchemingMind has some feature that allows for public comments and comments from the public?

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- Tuirgin
  May 8th, 2009 on 1:01 pm
  You can set games public and I think that people can leave comments on those games. I’m a member of the Chess Improvement group on SM. I’m just wondering if there’s more and/or more immediate feedback on a real-time chess site.
  
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tommyg
May 8th, 2009 on 5:47 pm
Better then kibitzing might be to analyze your own games and then find a coach and have she or he go over them with you in a lesson format. I have found that to be VERY instructive and helpful (and yes sometimes painful…)

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- Tuirgin
  May 8th, 2009 on 5:56 pm
  My only problem with coaches is that I can’t afford to pay them! Getting a coach would be ideal—I’d love to have someone with that kind of proficiency guide me into a better understanding of the game and of my own playing. But most need to be paid in something more than praise and appreciation.
  
  You use Chess.com for your live games, don’t you? Do you use any other live chess servers?
  
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  - botchvinik
    May 10th, 2009 on 11:31 pm
    There is a “Teaching ladder” on FICS where you can have other players, usually of higher strength than yourself, help analyze your game(s). You can find a “free” coach that way, I am sure.
    
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    - Tuirgin
      May 11th, 2009 on 12:08 am
      Thanks for the tip! I’ll definitely take a look.
      
      Reply
tommyg
May 8th, 2009 on 10:15 pm
No the only live chess I play on the internet is at Chess.com. I was on ICC but hated it. No one wants to play long enough games on most live servers. One thing to think about with regards to having a coach is you could only go once in awhile when you have some games stored up and ready for she or he to look through. I only have a lesson with my chess coach about 4 times a year. He only wants to see me when I have some games analyzed and ready for him and I to work through together.

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- Tuirgin
  May 8th, 2009 on 10:41 pm
  4x/yr… That’s still enough to be a benefit? Hrm… Xmas & bdays might help here.
  
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Todd
June 22nd, 2010 on 7:57 pm
Hi, great blog! I had no idea about the “examine” variable on FICS someone mentioned in the comments, I’m definitely going to make use of that! Anyway, I second FICS for kibitzing. On a game I played last weekend I was notified after the game that spectators had whispered comments, so I was able to read them all afterward and get some interesting variations and analysis. Would be useful if you had a group of players and people take turns playing, spectating. If you play in the teamleague you would get regular spectators because of teammates I believe: http://teamleague.org/

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