About SchemingMind.com Online Correspondence Chess Club

SchemingMind.com is a place on the Internet where friends and strangers from around the world can play chess and chat. The site is supposed to be relaxed and informal - think beer and banter, rather than score-cards and clocks.

Games are played as 'correspondence chess' and can take from a few days to a few months to complete.

'Standard' Membership of SchemingMind.com is free, however some restrictions are placed on standard accounts - for example the number of simultaneous games you can play is limited. For unrestricted use of the site, you should consider upgrading to a 'Full' account.

Tournaments

There are several formats of tournaments played on SchemingMind.com. Mini-tournaments are 'all-play-all', double round robins which can be started by any full member. Chess pyramids are perpetual tournaments in which you attempt to beat everyone else in the pyramid to reach the apex. It is also possible to join teams and play in team events.

Chess Variants

In addition to standard chess, SchemingMind.com allows you to play in several fun chess variants - these include Chess960 (Fischer Random Chess), CrazyHouse, Atomic and Suicide Chess. There are also a few games here that we've invented ourselves and can't be played anywhere else!

Time Controls

All games on SchemingMind.com are subject to time controls. There are four different levels of timed game, but for each one you are given a fixed amount of time to complete all your moves and additional time for each move you make (for example under 'standard' time controls, you are given one month to make your moves, plus an additional day for each move that you make). If you run out of time, your opponent has the option of abandoning the game, or, if five or more full moves have been made, claiming a win. In tournaments or team events games may be terminated by the system.

Each player is awarded four weeks of holiday (vacation) at the beginning of each calendar year. If you are likely to be unable to log on to the site for a significant period you may add some of this time to your current games. Additional holiday time can be awarded under special circumstances.

Ratings

You have the option of being 'rated' by SchemingMind.com - The ratings list is calculated on the first of each month and uploaded to the site on, or shortly after, that date (this is the only time you will see your rating change - it isn't recalculated after each game).

Ratings are calculated using the 'Glicko' system using the formulae described here. You will notice that after your rating there is a figure in brackets - this indicates what the Glicko system calls your 'rating deviation' and gives an indication of how reliable, or accurate, your rating is. You will notice that your RD gets smaller, the more games you play - this is because the system is more confident that it is getting close to your 'true' rating. If you don't play any games for a few months your rating won't change, but you'll notice your RD getting larger again.

There are a couple of things to stress about ratings...

Browser Support

Unfortunately I've arrived at the point where I need to make a 'recommended browser' list to preserve what's left of my sanity. I will try to make the site compatible with the latest version of the browsers listed below... if your browser isn't on this list, or if you don't have the latest version of your browser, then you should consider changing it if you want to get the full benefit of the site:

Windows: Internet Explorer, Opera and FireFox

Apple Mac: Safari and FireFox

Linux: FireFox

Whichever browser you use, you'll need to have JavaScript enabled before anything will work as it should, you'll also need to have cookies enabled.

New Piece Sets

New designs for piece sets are welcome, images are 32 by 32 pixels and there are four for each of the six pieces (white on white, white on black, black on white and black on black) and two for empty squares (black and white) - so the complete set consists of 26 images; more if you want your set to support move highlighting or drag and drop.

I thought some 'fantasy' sets might look good (maybe pictures of politicians or something).

Image format can be either jpeg or gif (could even be animated!). You should make sure you aren't violating anyone's copyright. There's a pint of best for any set I use (although you will have to come to my local pub' to claim it!).

Friends of SchemingMind

Literary Reference

The 'Scheming Mind' quote comes from the Sherlock Holmes short story 'The Adventure of the Retired Colourman' by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle. When I decided to register the site as a 'dotcom', it was quite difficult to come up with something meaningful/amusing/available, so when I stumbled across this quote I registered the domain. I do think it sounds a bit sinister, not really in keeping with the 'informal' nature of the site - anyway, I've paid for it now so it's got to stay!

The images are from John Tenniel's 1872 illustrations to Lewis Carroll's 'Through the Looking-glass and What Alice Found There'. I'm not sure that Sherlock and Alice go together that well, but I like these images and can't think of anything better.

Acknowledgements

Firstly, thanks to Philip for all the time and trouble he has spent helping me out with the site in many ways, not least using his Photoshop wizardry on many of the images here; providing hosting for static content on his web server, papercube.net; suggesting many of the variants used on the site and explaining how they work (and then beating me at them), as well as many technical suggestions, some of which I have implemented, and some of which I have discarded as being altogether too outrageous.

Thanks are also due to Andy Templeton, the author of Palview. Palview is an excellent system for creating web pages to display chess games. Although I don't use Palview on this site, I certainly learnt a lot about animating chess games with JavaScript by studying it.

The default piece set here is slightly modified from one designed by Andy for Palview. The little country 'flag' icons are also borrowed from Palview. All Andy's graphics are used with his permission.

The data used here to classify openings were extracted from a database called 'ECOMast'. ECOMast was maintained by Paul Onstad, who sadly passed away in 2002. I didn't have the privilege of knowing Paul, but I have been told that he was a great guy. I hope that Paul wouldn't have minded me using his database in this way. I downloaded ECOMast from http://pgn.freeservers.com/.

Finally, thanks to Professor Mark E. Glickman, author of the 'Glicko' rating system, for making his work publically available, and for taking the time to give some helpful responses to the emails I bothered him with.

Happy scheming,

Austin

Amberley excelled at chess - one mark, Watson, of a scheming mind.

Conan-Doyle