FICS - Free Internet Chess Server
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FICS
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Mn 55427

standard

  There are four types of regular (not wild or bughouse) chess played on this
chess server: Untimed, Lightning, Blitz and Standard. Details on how the clock
works are given under "help clocks".

  A game is "Standard" if the expected duration of the game is 15 minutes or
more.  "Expected duration" (etime) determined by a formula that takes into
account both the Start time and the Increment (Inc) value assuming 40 moves
are played.  Here is the formula:

     Expected duration = (Start + Inc*2/3)

  The following table shows the slowest Blitz and fastest Standard time
controls, the dividing line if you will between those two types of matches.  
[Thanks to schwartzeer for the calculations.  :)  ]

     Slowest Blitz     Fastest Standard
    ------------------------------------
       Mins  Incr         Mins  Incr
    ------------------------------------
         0    22            0    23
         1    20            1    21
         2    19            2    20
         3    17            3    18
         4    16            4    17
         5    14            5    15
         6    13            6    14
         7    11            7    12
         8    10            8    11
         9     8            9     9
        10     7           10     8
        11     5           11     6
        12     4           12     5
        13     2           13     3
        14     1           14     2
        --------           15     0

  As you can see, not every game with more minutes to start is Standard and
not every game with few minutes to start is Blitz.  To match someone for
standard, just use appropriate values for Start and Inc.  For example: match
Solid 5 15.

  You can list logged on users according to their Standard ratings by typing
"who s".  "Standard" is also a variable that can be used in formulas in order
to screen match requests.

SPECIAL NOTES:

(a) Bughouse, Crazyhouse, Wild and Suicide Chess games can be played at
different time controls, but there are no distinctions made in rating
these games.  Only 'regular' chess games have lightning, blitz and
standard designations.

(b) If Start is zero (0), the player will start with 10 seconds to begin the
match.


See Also:  blitz  bughouse  clocks  crazyhouse  formula  lightning  match
           suicide_chess  who  wild

[Last modified: March 19, 1999 -- DAV]

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Last modified: Sun Feb 11 14:27:58 GMT Standard Time 2007