Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Why I Don't Accept Tells on ICC

A long time ago I stopped accepting tells on ICC during games. Part of me feels bad about this, because I know I'm filtering out greetings like:

"Hello! My name is Paulo, and I am 11 years old. I am from Brazil. Where do you live?"

but poor Paulo's words meet a wall of cold silence.

Unfortunately, there are enough idiots on "Teh Intertubes" that I feel it's necessary.

Case in point: in a K+P vs. K endgame, I was about to promote the pawn, but my opponent didn't resign yet. That's totally fine...I have no hatred for people that are prepared to fight all the way to checkmate. I decided to underpromote to a rook just to practice the mating technique.

We reach a position where his king is in the corner, he has one legal move, and it will be followed by mate. He has over 7 minutes on the clock, to my 5.

After no response for a while, I decided I at least had 5 minutes to unload the dishwasher. My opponent let the clock run down to about 1 minute, then moved.

I immediately mated him, and got the following response:


(click for a larger view...if anyone knows how to circumvent this auto-shrinking Blogger does, let me know)

This amused me so much I had to share it, for two reasons:

1. He ran down the clock, and then complained about the game being a waste of time.

2. Why does he think I don't accept tells during games? Here's a hint for him: look in the mirror.

Feel free to respond to this post and share your most "my head a-splode" examples of idiotic behavior by online opponents.

6 comments:

rockyrook said...

I play on FICS. I run accross these types on a somewhat regular basis. There's not much I could do during the game ... just let the clock run out. I always add them to my noplay list and leave it at that. I also state this policy in my finger notes.

gorckat said...

if anyone knows how to circumvent this auto-shrinking Blogger does, let me know

If you upload the image while creating the post, I don't think you can.

You can get a free Photobucket account and use that to host the image. It takes an extra minute or two to upload it there and grab the code to put it here, but posts will generally look better.

Once an image is on Photobucket, they provide you the code to post a thumbnail or full-size image on forums, blogs etc... In this case, you would open the full-size image in your photobucket account and beneath it will be 4 rows of code; click the HTML line, then just paste/CTRL-V it into you Blogger post while writing it and Bam!

Not too complicated once you've done it a few times, and more portable since you can post the image anywhere.

As far as annoying tells, I haven't had that problem on FICS yet.

Grandpatzer said...

Thanks for the tech help, gorckat. I may use my photobucket in the future for such images.

transformation said...

i have had the same thing. and i noPlay these folks all the time.

all i can say is, as Russian-Armenian esoteric philospher of personal growth George Gurdjieff:

"They love their hate".

some folks just hate losing. me, i just thank my opponent for the game when i loose but, then again, a. i want to learn, and b. i loose a lot, the way i play most folks ++ to em in elo.

one guy was loosing badly, and outranked me by 300 elo and asked for a draw at a key junture. i got so flusterd, that i drew it by stalemate. very rude behavior to ask for a draw against someone -300 your elo when loosing badly, so as to destrict a person. he did.

i noPlayed him, too.

i appologize on behalf of the human race that folks like this exist.

warmest, dk

Chessaholic said...

Hmm I don't seem to have a problem with images shrinking when I upload them in blogger. Which settings do you choose when you upload?

As far as rude behavior on ICC, I've only been a member for a short while but have already encountered people who seem to be eager to insult me for no obvious reason... I either just ignore it, or report the "abusive" behavior (which luckily is very easy to do in ICC)

Blue Devil Knight said...

I like when I am thinking and they say "Hurry up." "Go." That hasn't happened since my rating improved.

On important games I also set quietplay to 2.