FICS server down

[Canoike]

Dmitry Morozov is the author of InternetChessKiller. Target : automatic use computer chess program for playing on chess servers.
All servers are targeted, including paying ones. Is is based on screen capturing, board recognition and relaying the move to a chess engine. This kind of cheat can't be detected by anyone if one cleverly cheats.

[casaschi]

It's not viral like on FICS. I mean a out of 10 people 9 are cheating.

Could you (or anyone else with such an experience) please post a link from the http://ficsgames.org databases to a few games where you are sure one of the player cheated?

The http://ficsgames.org databases stores all games played on FICS and it's very easy to search through; if you really believe that 9 out of 10 people on FICS are cheating, it should not be difficult to point few games where cheating certainly happened.

Reason for asking, in my personal experience as a player on FICS I never had the impression my opponent cheated: either they did not, or they did and I just did not notice. Just wanted to avoid the latter case and understand what makes you sure a certain game is rigged. But please, I asked the same question elsewhere and the only answer I got was a lecture how to spot a cheater; I really don't need such a lecture; I only ask to see games where cheating happened.

Thanks in advance.

[pocopito]

+1

Kitteneitor, a fairly weak engine (its elo in the spanish chess engines list by Pedro Castro is around 1800) is playing on fics almost 24/7 1m +4s games, its elo in fics is around 1950, and the number of defeats is quite low; if something like 70% of people on fics were cheating Kitteneitor's elo would be much lower and the number of defeats much larger.

Best

E Diaz

[bnemias]

Dmitry Morozov is the author of InternetChessKiller. Target : automatic use computer chess program for playing on chess servers.
All servers are targeted, including paying ones. Is is based on screen capturing, board recognition and relaying the move to a chess engine. This kind of cheat can't be detected by anyone if one cleverly cheats.

What would be the motivation for running such software? I mean, someone curious like me might run it for 5 minutes to see how it works, and only if it is free. Some sick person might run it 24/7. Or more likely, pay servers might hire folks to try to kill off their competition. Beyond that I see little point.

In any event, this doesn't come remotely close to the asserted figures of 7/10 or 9/10.

[stevenaaus]

I can't talk about the higher ranked users, but i've played heaps of games anonymously and not - against weaker opponents - have heaps of fun and no issues with cheating. There's a few chumps there i just ignore/censor.

I have updated ScidvsPC a little to work with an arbitrary URL.
win32 update http://sourceforge.net/projects/scidvsp ... p/download
svn tarball https://sourceforge.net/p/scidvspc/code/HEAD/tarball

Just enter "fics2.freechess.org" as the URL and press Refresh to get the new IP Address.

[karger]

Does anybody know if FICS is ever going to come back on line ?

[gbtami]

Does anybody know if FICS is ever going to come back on line ?

The FICS Chess Server was compromised on July 18, 2013, and it had to be shut down. Until it can been repaired, this temporary copy of FICS will be available for use. Please keep in mind that no activity (games, ratings, messages, etc.) from this temporary server will be transferred back to the real FICS, once it has been brought back online. We don't have an expected date for the return of the real FICS, but most likely it won't be before Friday, July 26, 2013. Note also that the FICS email systems (support, abuse, etc.) will not be working until FICS resumes normal operation. Posted by mattuc.

The temp FICS is:
fics2.freechess.org

[jshriver]

As a long time FICS user this makes me very sad.

Side note, I'm curious how the myriad of free Android/iPhone chess clients will fair since I noticed a lot of the ones I tested actually used FICS as the backend via 5 1 time control and guest accounts.

[kinderchocolate]

As a long time FICS user this makes me very sad.

Side note, I'm curious how the myriad of free Android/iPhone chess clients will fair since I noticed a lot of the ones I tested actually used FICS as the backend via 5 1 time control and guest accounts.

Just connection errors, not the end of the world.

[Cubeman]

As a long time FICS user this makes me very sad.

Side note, I'm curious how the myriad of free Android/iPhone chess clients will fair since I noticed a lot of the ones I tested actually used FICS as the backend via 5 1 time control and guest accounts.

Just connection errors, not the end of the world.

I take it that they are set to only connect to the standard Fics server.So any reserve server will not be able to use these mobile apps?