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...
- Ratings are relative, not absolute - there is no reason to suppose that your rating
on SchemingMind.com should be the same as your rating anywhere else. An 1800 rating
here does not mean the same thing as an 1800 FIDE, FICS or USCF rating.
-
Any rating system makes the assumption that there is a random element in player
pairings - this obviously isn't the case here, people like to play their friends,
so some pairings will be far more frequent than others.
- Above all, please
don't take the ratings too seriously - it's really all just a bit of fun.
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