***** NEW FEATURES ***** This is a summary of new features available on ICC or changes made to existing features, in the server code, in robots, etc: 1-Aug-2006: Guests can no longer play games on ICC. Guests may speak to admins and helpers, and channel 1, and use certain limited commands. Refer to www.chessclub.com/news/1856 21-Dec-2005: A new variable "allowkib" controls kibitzing in your game. Choices are: 0=No *kibitzes will be converted to whispers, 1=Yes, 2=Yes, but only in unrated games. The default is "2". See "help allowkib" 2-Sep-2005: Help files recently added: "help Recorder", "help view". 3-Aug-2005: When someone gets disconnected on move 2-4, it used to abort the game saying it was "too short to adjourn" -- no longer. That rule has been removed, and short games will get adjourned the same as longer ones. 23-Jul-2005: Blitzin 2.5 is officially released! See https://www.chessclub.com/helpcenter/BlitzIn25/ for descriptions of the new features. 2-Jun-2005: Standardized the line-wrapping of "finger" notes. The idea is that everyone will see the line breaks in the same places, as long as their console is at least 79 characters wide. 26-Apr-2005: Blitzin 2.5 beta is available, see "news 1802". 26-Apr-2005: "premove" can be a term in formulae. See "help formula" and "help premove". 12-Apr-2005: Correspondence ratings are now maintained by the ICC server. Only games in certain tournaments are rated. See "help CC-Rating". 12-Apr-2005: We re-engineered the network and timer code at the heart of the chess server, to make it more efficient. That should decrease lag times somewhat, and help with scalability. 19-Mar-2005: When "extend" or "c-buy" go to open the secure payment page, you no longer need to enter your ICC name and password -- the page automatically knows who you are. This also works if you log in with an expired account, entering EXTEND-mode that way. 1-Mar-2005: "news" headlines are listed most-recent-first. 26-Feb-2005: "tell FindName name Alfred" to list players whose real name contains "alfred" and have namepublic=1. 5-Feb-2005: Jin can be used as an applet at www.chessclub.com/jin See "news 1790". 26-Dec-2004: A new command "showadmin" lists the same people as "who *H" but with some extra information. See "help showadmin". 16-Dec-2004: Added support for classical time controls (e.g. adding time at move 40) in tournaments. 16-Dec-2004: "set mailformat 2" to get clock times in PGN output. 2-Dec-2004: When a helper or admin fields a question using "tell 1 ..." and the person who asked the question has logged out, it now sends the answer via ICC message to him/her. 16-Nov-2004: Internally, there's a now a table of "help" terms that get mapped to existing help files. E.g. "help cc-move" brings up "help correspondence". 16-Nov-2004: quietplay=2 now also blocks out kibitzes while you're playing. Also, quietplay=1 blocks out observers' kibitzes while you're playing (but not those of your opponent). 5-Nov-2004: We're running now on new servers at a new location. In our tests, the new location (NAC, in New Jersey) has better connnectivity to our members. The IP address for chessclub.com is now 207.99.83.228. 8-Oct-2004: The web site now supports Google-powered search of its pages. This feature is available on the right side of the main page. 8-Oct-2004: The web site www.chessclub.com will display in French, Spanish, German, or English depending on your browser's language settings or on which language you select from the menu in the upper right corner. 1-Oct-2004: Exploiting having high lag by moving before your seeing your opponent's move no longer works; you'll just get "It's not your turn". That trick was never reliable anyway, since you had to hope that your move would reach the server *after* your opponent's move did (as well as hoping that your move turned out to be legal, not to mention good). This change simplifies the client-server protocol with respect to timestamp and moves, and should stop a problem we've seen occasionally where time isn't deducted from the clock correctly. Clients with a true "premove" feature are not affected. 11-Sep-2004: We have a new secure chekel purchase form at https://www.chessclub.com/store/members/buy-chekels.php "c-buy" now takes you there or points you to it. You'll need to sign in with your handle and password, to access that page. Also, your browser needs 128-bit cipher strength for the SSL. 11-Sep-2004: There's a new help file, "help security". 10-Sep-2004: We have a new secure payment form at https://www.chessclub.com/store/members/payment.php Extend mode now goes there. You'll need to sign in with your handle and password to access that page. Also, your browser needs 128-bit cipher strength for the SSL. 10-Sep-2004: The complain command no longer has a confirmation step. Just "complain". (The confirmation step was occasionally getting in the way of a chess move or other command.) 11-Aug-2004: The registration form is simpler now, and gives better feedback to the user on bad entries. 11-Aug-2004: Because the registration form no longer asks for your rating (it assumes 1400 for most players, 2000 or titled players and computers), no weight is given to the initial rating now. Also, your first two games in a category can be against a wider range of ratings. 30-Jun-2004: The web site, when displaying help files will now make *bold text*, _italicized text_, draw boxes around quoted sample commands that start with a slash, e.g. "/say Hello", and make subheadings like the one below. (This is all somewhat on the experimental side -- let me know if you see problems.) ---++ Sample section heading 22-Jun-2004: The ICC web site, www.chessclub.com, has been completely revamped, see "news 1764". Help files are a bit prettier there (most of them, anyway) so you might want to try "set webhelp 1" again if you had set it to 0 before. 17-May-2004: New passwords must be at least six characters long, and not a dictionary word or name. (Longer is better, and using a mixture of upper and lower case letters, digits and other symbols is also advisable.) 10-May-2004: When you send a tell to a guest, even if you have tell=0 or otell=0 he can now reply, until one of you logs out (or you censor him). 10-May-2004: Guests can no longer chat in channel 50. This was not an easy decision, but for a long time now we've had trouble with a few guests spoiling the atmosphere there, bombarding the channel with very ugly profanity. Our admins used IP filters and other methods to keep these people from accessing ICC. However, those filters also blocked access by many legitimate guests who hadn't done anything wrong. ICC decided it was better to restrict guest access to channel 50 so that we could allow all legitimate guests to access the ICC servers. 10-May-2004: Resolution of abbreviated handles is done slightly differently, taking into account all registered handles not just the players online. Also, guest numbers aren't recycled as quickly. These two features are designed to prevent mistells. 24-Mar-2004: Help-channel question numbers aren't re-used until there are 100 pending questions. 24-Mar-2004: "moretime