Site features
SchemingMind is predominantly a correspondence chess club; however, a number of members also enjoy playing chess variants Chess960, Crazyhouse, Atomic chess, Shatranj, Thai Chess and almost 40 other chess variants (see complete list), and the site along with its members actively discuss, design and implement many chess variants.
The Fischer clock is used for time control. The following clocks are available:
- 5d+12h (5 days of initial time, 12 hours increment, 10 days limit)
- 10d+1d (10 days of initial time, 1 day increment, 30 days limit)
- 30d+1d (30 days of initial time, 1 day increment, 45 days limit)
- 30d+3d (30 days of initial time, 3 days increment, 60 days limit)
Holiday is available in case of longer absences - up to four weeks a year. Players are able to extend repeated lifelines to opponents rather than force flag.
Games are rated using the Glicko rating system.
Competition formats includes free challenges, pyramids, team matches and leagues, as well as private or public mini-tournaments of either knockout, dropout or double round robin tournaments.
Dropout is a SchemingMind specific tournament scheme, invented as an intermediate step between knockout and Swiss. Swiss-like pairing is being used. Games are scored, with every loss being worth 3 points and every draw being worth 1 point. Players who get more than a specified limit (six or eight points, depending on tournament) are eliminated. The tournament is won by the sole remaining player, or the player with fewest points, if a few remain.
The rules of chess govern the play of the game of chess. Chess is a two-player abstract strategy board game. Each player controls sixteen pieces of six types on a chessboard. Each type of piece moves in a distinct way. The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent's king. A game can end in various ways besides checkmate: a player can resign, and there are several ways a game can end in a draw.
The Internet Chess Club (ICC) is a commercial Internet chess server devoted to the play and discussion of chess and chess variants. ICC had over 30,000 subscribing members in 2005. It was the first Internet chess server and was the largest pay to play chess server in 2005.
Correspondence chess is chess played by various forms of long-distance correspondence, traditionally through the postal system. Today it is usually played through a correspondence chess server, a public internet chess forum, or email. Less common methods that have been employed include fax, homing pigeon and phone. It is in contrast to over-the-board (OTB) chess, where the players sit at a chessboard at the same time, or play each other in real time via the internet.
The United States Chess Federation is the governing body for chess competition in the United States and represents the U.S. in FIDE, the World Chess Federation. US Chess administers the official national rating system, awards national titles, sanctions over twenty national championships annually, and publishes two magazines: Chess Life and Chess Life for Kids. The USCF was founded and incorporated in Illinois in 1939, from the merger of two older chess organizations. It is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Its membership as of 2020 as COVID hit was 97,000; as of July 2022 it is 85,000.
The Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) is a volunteer-run Internet chess server. It was organised as a free alternative to the Internet Chess Club (ICC), after that site began charging for membership.
In computer chess, a chess engine is a computer program that analyzes chess or chess variant positions, and generates a move or list of moves that it regards as strongest.
Fast chess, also known as Speed chess, is a type of chess in which each player is given less time to consider their moves than normal tournament time controls allow. Fast chess is subdivided, by decreasing time controls, into rapid chess, blitz chess, and bullet chess. Armageddon chess is a particular variation of fast chess in which different rules apply for each of the two players.
Hans Jack Berliner was an American chess player, and was the World Correspondence Chess Champion, from 1965–1968. He was a Grandmaster of Correspondence Chess. Berliner was a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He directed the construction of the chess computer HiTech, and was also a published chess writer.
Advanced chess is a form of chess in which each human player uses a computer chess program to explore the possible results of candidate moves. Despite this computer assistance, it is the human player who controls and decides the game.
An Internet chess server (ICS) is an external server that provides the facility to play, discuss, and view the board game of chess over the Internet. The term specifically refers to facilities for connecting players through a variety of graphical chess clients located on each user's computer.
International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF) was founded on 26 March 1951 as a new appearance of the International Correspondence Chess Association (ICCA), which was founded in 1945, as successor of the Internationaler Fernschachbund (IFSB), founded on 2 December 1928.
Mikhail Markovich Umansky was a Russian chess grandmaster of correspondence chess, who was the 13th ICCF World Champion in correspondence chess between 1989 and 1998. He was also USSR Correspondence Champion in 1978.
ICCF U.S.A. is the member of the International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF) for the territory of the United States of America. The organization was formed in 1909 as Correspondence Chess League of New York but quickly expanded to become the Correspondence Chess League of America (CCLA). It has published The Chess Correspondent regularly since 1930.
Computer shogi is a field of artificial intelligence concerned with the creation of computer programs which can play shogi. The research and development of shogi software has been carried out mainly by freelance programmers, university research groups and private companies. By 2017, the strongest programs were outperforming the strongest human players.
A chess rating system is a system used in chess to estimate the strength of a player, based on their performance versus other players. They are used by organizations such as FIDE, the US Chess Federation, International Correspondence Chess Federation, and the English Chess Federation. Most of the systems are used to recalculate ratings after a tournament or match but some are used to recalculate ratings after individual games. Popular online chess sites such as chess.com, Lichess, and Internet Chess Club also implement rating systems. In almost all systems, a higher number indicates a stronger player. In general, players' ratings go up if they perform better than expected and down if they perform worse than expected. The magnitude of the change depends on the rating of their opponents. The Elo rating system is currently the most widely used.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to chess:
Olita Rause is a Latvian chess player who holds the FIDE titles of Woman Grandmaster and International Master. She also holds the ICCF title of Correspondence Grandmaster.
Lichess is a free and open-source Internet chess server run by a non-profit organization of the same name. Users of the site can play online chess anonymously and optionally register an account to play rated games. Lichess is ad-free and all the features are available for free, as the site is funded by donations from patrons. Features include chess puzzles, computer analysis, tournaments and chess variants.
Roman Chytilek is a Czech correspondence chess grandmaster, currently No.1 of International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF) rating list and winner of the 16th Olympiad.
The FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship 2019 (WFRCC) was the first world championship in Fischer random chess officially recognized by the international chess federation FIDE. Previous unofficial championships had been held, with the most recent winner being Magnus Carlsen in 2018. The competition started on April 28, 2019, with the first qualifying tournaments, which took place online and were open to all interested participants; and continued with further rounds up to the quarter-finals, which were also online. The semi-finals and final were played over the board between October 27 to November 2, 2019, in the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Bærum in Norway. The winner of the final was Wesley So, defeating Magnus Carlsen 13.5–2.5, to become the first FIDE world champion in Fischer random chess. Over the course of the competition, various time controls were applied, with longer games being weighted more heavily.
