Get FIDE ratings through online chess...

Sparks

http://www.arena.myfide.net/

Basicly, think chess.com but instead of a chess.com rating, you get a FIDE rating. And once one online chess site starts this, the rest will eventually follow, the market being what it is.

Anyone want to take a guess at what that's going to do to over-the-board chess (outside of the relatively captive audience of the schools programme and those who started in it or because of it?).

cdeb

I wonder how they're going to catch cheats?

I can't see this having a huge effect on the OTB game. It might boost it by getting people linked into FIDE, but E25 per year won't attract too many new players I'd have thought. So you're likely to have mainly existing players signing up for it, which would limit any new player effect.

Sparks

They say they have some new technology to catch cheats, but it's not like that's not a problem in OTB chess either - we just don't see it so much at club level because there's not that much motivation to cheat there (and even then we see enough cases of... shall we call it "unsportsmanlike play"?)

E25 per year won't attract too many new players I'd have thought.

It's E75 per year for diamond membership of chess.com and they have quite a few of those every year.

Also, you're thinking of it as an additional expense, but compare it as a standalone expense versus the cost of a FIDE rating in OTB play (which includes all the travel and accomodation costs as well as club fees, NGB fees, entry fees and so on).

Honestly, if you look at the traditional "here's why you should play chess OTB instead of online" lists, the things on those lists are being slowly chipped away at, and this is a rather larger chip than normal because it signifies FIDE looking to recapture a large chunk of the market that otherwise they'd never be able to cash in on

Maybe we need to start highlighting the less-obvious things that are good about OTB play? I mean, if you pointed out how a Bodley game is basically anything up to three hours of sitting in a quiet room without making very much noise, well, that's a heck of a lot of new parents whose ears just perked up

cdeb

The OTB game isn't perfect, but in online chess, what's to stop me using Fritz for the craic so I can get to be a GM? It just seems more open to abuse.

Online chess can't really match the social side of OTB chess. Meeting people, being involved in a club, weekender pints, talking about the game and improving, talking about other stuff - all that goes by the wayside in online chess, by and large.

How you promote this, and who you promote this to, is another question!

Sparks

cdeb wrote: »

The OTB game isn't perfect, but in online chess, what's to stop me using Fritz for the craic so I can get to be a GM? It just seems more open to abuse.

From what I can tell, you're running local software for this so it's not quite *that* easy, but yeah, I can think of ways to get round that, even if they're a bit tough to implement (nature of the job I suppose - don't ask an engineer a hypothetical question if you're not ready to see an almost-working prototype )

So you'd be left with statistical analysis - how many of your moves and Fritz's are exactly the same, for example....
...doesn't that sound familiar?

I think this is one of those cases where OTB and online have a common problem and neither has the solution yet...

Online chess can't really match the social side of OTB chess. Meeting people, being involved in a club, weekender pints, talking about the game and improving, talking about other stuff - all that goes by the wayside in online chess, by and large.

Well, yes (hell, the three quiet hours of a bodley game sells it for me on its own, I don't need the rest). But you and I both know that for every 99 genuinely nice people you meet OTB, there's one who has you filing reports with the Gardai. So the social side of OTB isn't exactly the great selling point that it should be. In fact, if you go over the posts from this forum when the LCU blog shut down, or the facebook group, or certain people's blogs, you'll find that the really nasty side seems to be far more vocal than the really nice side, and if you're some random person on the outside looking in and wondering if you'd like to play (or let your kids play), well, all you can see are the vocal people.

checknraise

I do not believe other sites will be able rate online games as fide rated as Arena have an agreement in place with FIDE to be the only website to be able rate games for FIDE.

I am not sure how successful it will be as there is no way to 100% stop cheating no matter what system or software they are using. The idea is good and I imagine there will be some big tournaments in the near future.

It is hard tell what the impact online chess has had on OTB play but I would guess that the internet has had a slightly positive impact to OTB play for every guy who now wants to get their fix online you will find a guy who has never really played chess before the internet picks up an interest in it and eventually joins a club.

The ICU should have an official website for playing chess online i.e Arena is the official website for the ICU and organise various tournaments(Irish Blitz/Bullet Championships) might get more people playing and if nothing else would be a bit of fun

Sparks

checknraise wrote: »

I do not believe other sites will be able rate online games as fide rated as Arena have an agreement in place with FIDE to be the only website to be able rate games for FIDE.

Maybe initially, but sooner or later, if the FIDE rating proves to be a commercial success, someone's going to strike a deal to add it to the ICC or chess.com or one of the other sites. Or force one through the courts and monopoly laws or something similar. That's just the market for you.

I am not sure how successful it will be as there is no way to 100% stop cheating no matter what system or software they are using.

Including over-the-board play...

...but the question does boil down in this case to "is this good enough" not "is this perfect" because with the exception of the top few percent, noone's really going to consider it world-ending. And while the top few percent will probably have a valid argument, the accounting department will just see that the fees from 5% or less of the user base is less than the development cost of the perfect solution. I mean, all the online chess sites have imperfect anti-cheating solutions right now, but they're all making a profit and so long as those two facts can coexist, there's not much motive to pay a developer to improve the system, let alone invent a perfect one...

The ICU should have an official website for playing chess online i.e Arena is the official website for the ICU and organise various tournaments(Irish Blitz/Bullet Championships) might get more people playing and if nothing else would be a bit of fun

To be blunt, it's not their area of expertise (not chess obviously, I mean the whole "running an online business" part). Companies like chess.com and the others are not exactly amateurs doing things in their spare volunteered time...

checknraise

I am not talking about the ICU setting up their own website more along the lines that chess.com or whatever website becomes the official online partner for the ICU.

Sparks

You mean like establishing a presence on the site, getting involved with it, that sort of thing?