How I joined IYT:Once while I was on Y! Messenger, a young man from USA, William Fay messaged me and asked if I liked wrestling and chess (As on my profile page I had written I like wrestling and chess). I said yes, and then he asked if I would like to 'wrestle' while playing chess online? The idea sound interesting to me but I refused politely. Main reason I gave was that I frequently gets disconnected from the net, and also power failures happen very often.
I didn't wanted to loose any game this way. He said that's not the problem, this website is turn based. And one can make his turn whenever he is online. The idea sound new to me and I joined IYT and had some great games of chess played with William, although the idea of wrestling along with chess never really attracted me.
After attack on Iraq, downfall of our friendship started and we said goodbye to each other in a friendly way, not before I returned his favor and gave him as good website in Gameknot, which he liked so much that he stopped using IYT, as he only likes playing chess.
So here I am writing about the BEST place to play BOARD games online
Features:All for free, I won't pay to play games, will I?
One can play as many as 20 games at same time.
Up to 25 games moves can be made in 24 hours. Now that may sound like a sufficient number, but such addictive is the website that 25 moves sound very little, especially on weekends. At Indian time, about 3:15 pm everyday, 25 more game moves are added.
One can send message along with submitting moves, that's how I found a great friend, in Sudharshini from Sri Lanka. She has gone to England now for marriage, and I wish her all the best.
Like Gameknot, one can either join any game in the waiting room or post his game on the waiting room.
Time limits allowed per game has option of 3,7,14,21,30,45 days and before starting a game, both players can settle with the time limit as per their convenience
If in between a game, one of player can't access net for some days, he can request his opponent to increase the time limit.
Tournaments: If feeling competitive, one can join tournaments, either 28 or 48 hours limit per move. However, to play in one tournament, one needs 14 or fewer games to join a tournament.
Ladders:A relatively new feature started by IYT and most addictive. Just like ladder, one starts at bottom and moves upwards with each win. However I will recommend this only for frequent visitors as once you join a ladder, it will become very addictive.
We can add our information on our profile page.
On profile we can give ratings of each games on our choice, in ratings we can mention either our skill level or anything else like ''will play only with girls'' ;).
We can have our buddy list as well as can ignore the people who bug us.
Games Offered
Chess: Well this is most popular board game in the world, but Gameknot has more features so I use Gameknot to play chess.
Along with chess there are various chess variations available to play. However my favourite are:
Horde Chess: White has regular pieces while black has just 32 pawns.
Anti Chess: Aim is to loose all your pieces before your enemy.
Dark Chess: We can't see our enemy's pieces unless we can capture them.
Rating: 8/10
Battle boats: A very simple game where we have to kill our opponents hidden pieces by guessing their locations. Sudharshini always defeats me in this game.
Rating: 5/10
Checkers: When we play in real it's interesting, however in turn based game, it is really boring and I've just played 3 checkers games.
Rating: 2/10
Chinese Chess: Arguably most played board game in world. I trued to play my first game last week but couldn't understand even the pieces so I humbly resigned.
Backgammon, Go, Go Moku, Halma, Jamble, Reversi, Stack 4: Have never played these game and don't feel like doing so in near future
Sabotage: This is the game, which has made IYT my homepage. (I hope Faisal don't read it ^_*.).It is initially a complex game, but once you get the concept it is very addictive. We control our pieces and aim is to capture your opponent's pieces and destroy his or her headquarters. One don't know any of our opponent's pieces are unless one expose them using Recon piece. One can use mines to protect the headquarters; any piece that goes on mine will be killed. Other than reckons there are generals #1,2,3,4,5, in increasing order of power. I.e. 5 can kill 4 and so on. And there is a Saboteur whose main aim is to destroy the mines, however they can also kill #5.
Rating: 20/10
I can say that I mainly use IYT to play sabotage and other chess variation games
My Record on IYT:(Till 17 Oct 2004)
Regular games
Won: 91
Lost: 69
Drawn: 04
Total: 164
Tournament games
Won: 15
Lost: 07
Drawn: 00
Total: 22
Ladder games
Won: 12
Lost: 10
Drawn: 00
Drawn: 22
Negative points of IYT: Every coin has 2 different sides (Unless one is using the coin Amitabh used in Sholay)and as good as IYT is, it still has some bad points:
It is highly addictive; you may come to play only for 2 minutes but end on playing for an hour.
Rarely and I mean very rarely, once in 2 months, the website gives error and hence for few SECONDS no moves can be made.
It can be said that rating system don't even exists, and players can give any rating they want to themselves. I remember 2 years ago when I just learned sabotage, I stated my rating as beginner and forgot to change it. A month ago I posted a challenge on waiting room, and seeing my rating a beginner joined me and when he saw my record he called me a liar, rightfully so. So I feel rating system should be controlled by the management.
20 Games at a single time seems very less some times and so does the 25 games move limit per day.
Leave these few disadvantages; IYT is definitely a great place to hang on.
Last but not least, when you join IYT, please M2M me so we can have a game or 2 :).
- Thank You! We appreciate your effort.
