Showing posts with label GameKnot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GameKnot. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Look, There in the Sky, It's BLUNDERMAN!

Blunderman Everything was going fine. Mild mannered Steve was playing a decent game, when lo and behold... Blunderman is here!

I showed the game to Rummy, now that he has retired. Rummy Aw, c'mon. Like you never made a mistake!

It all happened on GameKnot because an idiot a valued correspondent stated that I gave the place short shrift in my recent hit piece review. I signed up for a few more games. I was distracted. That couldn't have been the move I meant to make.

D'Oh.

[Event "Let's play chess"]
[Site "http://gameknot.com/"]
[Date "2007.08.03"]
[White "rmanby"]
[Black "sdo1"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteElo "1448"]
[BlackElo "1200"]
[TimeControl "1/259200"]
[Mode "ICS"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Bf4 d6 4. d5 e5 5. dxe6 Bxe6 6. e3 Bg7 7. Nf3 Nc6 8. Qa4 Ne4 9. Qb3 O-O 10. Na3 Nc5 11. Qc2 Bxb2?? 12. Qxb2 1-0

Calm Before the Blunder With 11. Qc2 I like my position (understatement alert) as Black. The b pawn is about to fall. His position stinks. White is spectacularly undeveloped with the King in the center. The Knights are about to devastate his Queen-side. 11...Nb4 or 11...Bf5 just ruin his day.

Oh, well... Live and learn.


Friday, July 27, 2007

GameKnot

Earlier this year I started trying out some "free" webservers that offer correspondence chess. The first one I tried was GameKnot.

After registering I put out a "seek" for three games. Within a day or so the seeks were answered and the games all started. Unfortunately, only one game finished.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

GameKnot has several convenient features. One feature allows a player to be immediately notified with a browser pop-up when a move is made by an opponent. *The above games are courtesy of GameKnot scripts if a player wishes to publish their games. The interface is nice and smooth once one is used to it.

*[EDIT] It seems the JavaScript from GameKnot is not compatible with BlogSpot or simply does not work... Here is the one game that did finish courtesy of Chess Publisher.




There are problems. My rating was never adjusted. I was assigned a 1200 rating, beat a higher rated player, and still reside at 1200. Only one of three games finished. One game timed out after two moves, another after eleven moves. As a comparison, on ICCF's "serious" chess server, only one game eighteen I have played has been abandoned by the opponent. In my games on ICC zero games have been abandoned of the six I have played recently. When I played ICC correspondence back in 2004, none of the games I started were abandoned by opponents.

I was not fond of the time control options. I prefer the ICCF and ICC method of moves in a period of days, not days per move. The accumulated time does not roll over under days per move as does the former time control.

My overall experience at GameKnot was pleasant. A determined player could probably find more opponents to stay the course of a game than I did.

On a scale of one to ten, GameKnot would get a SIX from me, above average, but not up there with the "serious" correspondence servers.