"I like to go to chessclub.com. You can get a game within seconds, playing someone in Kuala Lumpur at 3 a.m. You never know if your opponent is a 7-year-old or a grandmaster." — Sting
We have developed a system that eliminates the effects that lag has on
your clock in ICC games. A "timestamp" program measures the amount of
time you spend thinking about each move. The ICC server uses this
information to update the clocks. You can ONLY be flagged if you have
actually used more than your allotted time. You will NEVER be lag-flagged
again!
Timestamp is built into the interfaces Blitzin, Fixation, IC for Mac,
Jin, and Chess Advantage. And it will run automatically with WinBoard
and some other interfaces. So normally, you don't need to do anything
special to use timestamp.
For some other interfaces, you run timestamp in addition to your usual ICC
interface program. It has been tested with xboard, xics, ziics, and
giics, slics, MacICS, and other interfaces. There are two main versions
of timestamp: Unix timestamp and MS Windows timestamp.
Unix timestamp works with any client if you connect to ICC through a
Unix machine. Of course it works if your own machine runs Unix. It
also works if your own machine does not run Unix, but you connect to
ICC through a shell account on a Unix machine. In the latter case,
though, timestamp cannot compensate for any lag that might exist
between your own machine and the Unix machine where you run timestamp.
Such lag can occur (for example) if the Unix machine is heavily
loaded, so that you are not getting enough CPU time, or if you are
calling over a noisy phone line with an error-correcting modem.
You can use MS Windows timestamp if you have a PC running Microsoft
Windows that is on the Internet, and your Internet software package
supports the 32-bit Winsock API (which it should). Only very old
Windows 3.1 machines or versions of AOL from about 1995 are likely
to have a problem.
All data sent in both directions between the timestamp program and the
ICC server is encrypted.
To find out how to get and use timestamp, type help unix-timestamp
if you need the Unix version, or type help win-timestamp if you need
the MS Windows version.
HELP Top
ICC Help: timestamp