25/10 pool attendance
Posted: 25 February 2017 01:27 AM  
Member
Rank
Total Posts:  1
Joined  2015-06-18

As I am considering if should play here and I am only interested slightly longer time controls. IS 25/10 pool vivid? Are there players of above total beginner playing . In chess.com despite being total sucker at chess I already start run out opponents occasionally. I know internert chess is about 3 minute game but I way too old for it

Petri

Profile
Posted: 25 February 2017 04:09 AM   [ # 1 ]  
Administrator
RankRankRankRankRank
Total Posts:  395
Joined  2011-11-18

Hi Petrip.

In ICC you can find groups of people that organize long time controls games. There is a 54 54 “league”, with regular encounters between its members. Impromptu games with long time controls are a bit more hard to find, but for example the 15-minute pool is quite active.
We hope to see you in ICC and enjoy your chess with us!

Lyon

Profile
Posted: 19 August 2017 03:55 AM   [ # 2 ]  
Member
Rank
Total Posts:  18
Joined  2017-04-07
Lyon - 25 February 2017 04:09 AM

Hi Petrip.

In ICC you can find groups of people that organize long time controls games. There is a 54 54 “league”, with regular encounters between its members. Impromptu games with long time controls are a bit more hard to find, but for example the 15-minute pool is quite active.
We hope to see you in ICC and enjoy your chess with us!

Lyon

Actually, impromptu games of legitimately classical length aren’t difficult to find at all. They’re just difficult to find on ICC now. By removing the 45/45 pool and replacing it with the 25/10 pool, and keeping it so none of the blitz pools have an increment, you’ve funneled virtually all activity into the 1, 3, 5, and 15 minute pools here. The 15 min pool is indeed pretty active and I would say that’s your best pool right now. It was far better when it was 15/0 and 45/45. 25/10 is already a common seek time and it’s the blitz pools which need the increment. People already put increment in their seeks for many rapid and classical games. It’s human nature to not want to wait for a game so when someone’s seek isn’t responded to in a reasonable time frame, they just hit the 3, 5, or 15 min button. As a result, if you flip around the list of games being played on ICC at any given time, 90%+ of them are of a 15/0 time control or less. Seeks just sit there waiting, and eventually leaving or going into one of the pools.

This is YEARS like this. Your own admins admit that you keep things stagnant here to fit your work schedule and busy life. As a result, this site has become a ghost town. There’s 258 people online right now as I write this. Thousands upon thousands on multiple other live chess servers as we speak. I know “But this is the place the BEST play at!!” - It’s not 2006 anymore. The best players don’t exclusively play here today. You can’t just live in the past forever and expect your customers to go along for the ride. I used to put up with the longer seeks on this site because the quality of the games was superior to that of other sites. That’s really not the case at all anymore. Sure, I’ve improved at chess but when 1700 standards are missing mate in 1’s - this is not the ICC of old.

I have desperately tried to spend most of my online time on ICC as when all is said and done, it’s still my personal favorite chess server. That’s waning fast, though. Whenever I’m logged onto ICC the only game I can eventually find is a 15/0 or 3/0 and I’m drastically missing out on playing quality chess by not putting my seeks up on other sites. If you want to steadily improve and put in a lot of online volume, you can’t do it here. Not unless you want to play almost entirely blitz and rapid w/o increment and we all know that this is specifically not the route to improvement. It’s also not the way competitive chess is played today in 2017. Anywhere.

As I finish this post, I’m actually itching to log onto ICC. I know there’s virtually nobody online and I know it’s going to be hell to find a game but as said: I still like it here a lot. If your population was higher, I’d be here more. You have the 45/45 league, the 90/30 league, and the USCF events. This still makes your site more attractive to me than any other in the end. There are just so, so many other things you could easily change or implement to make the traffic here explode (as well as your bottom line $$) that it’s beyond frustrating to just not see any action taken month after month, year after year. You’ve deleted posts I’ve written like this in the past despite several other posters commenting on them and calling them “solid gold”. Urging you not to ignore my words. Ironic, huh? Instead of just shuffling this off to the trash bin, why don’t you read it and actually pay attention this time? I’m a huge fan of the site and I want to see it flourish. It’s not right now. Despite massive, massive advertisement campaigns. Obviously, you’re still doing something wrong and when you’re own customers are flat out telling you exactly what it is, you really need to start listening or you’re not going to be around at all eventually.

Profile