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TechKicker |
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Chess Players for File Sharing |
The Origins
In one of the fastest growing online communities in the World, Online File Sharing has brought the game of chess, a passtime that was once thought of as a Game of Kings, into a game for all.
Computer System Specialists like Ken Thompson, Joe Condon, Murry Cambell, and Feng-hsiung Hsu built impressively strong chess computers that paved the way for software authors like Stefan Meyer-Kahlen, Anheiser Bush, Vasik Rajlich, Frans Morsch, and Tommy Click, to create some of the strongest chess playing software titles the world has ever seen.
ChessMaster, by far the best known commercial chess software product has helped spawn several other terrific programs. Shredder, Fritz, Junior, Rybka, and Chess Tiger to name only a few, are some of the other most popular programs that play GrandMaster level chess. While they all have different authors, originating countries, programming techniques, and styles of play, they all have one thing in common....
They are all shared online.
Sharing... Who it helps...
Chess Players are regular people like you or I. They have jobs or are students. They might have a family to support. They have bills to pay.
And yet through talent and knowledge they find the time to play fantastic chess games for all to enjoy.
Countless hours are spent sharing an engine and then posting links. Beta testers then test for countless hours to find errors here and there for the author's to correct. Opening book creators are busy making libraries so that the program can play virtually any opening under the sun that a user would like to try. Someone is programming an interface for the chess program, because after all, if you can't see what the program is doing or where it is moving, it is not much good to you right? Once it is considered near perfect, the real sharing begins.
The author then has to take the ultimate chance. He must enter it into public tournaments and hope for good results, or allow his engine to be tested by an independant group called the SSDF. If his engine suffers during either of these two tasks, his sales would suffer. On the other hand, if his result is really good... his engine is likely to be the most shared engine that year.
So why would someone take the time to do all this work? The answer is very simple: The chance to possibly help some talented chess player from some underpriveleged community to get access to some good quality information and training resources.
That is what it comes down to. Sharing of chess products not only helps the everyone by having the product's price driven down, but it helps the actual chessplayer and his family. Some chess players come from incredibly poor countries and all their their income is needed to provide food and shelter for thier families or just themselves. They cannont afford to buy chess products.
When you share that program that costs $40, you are donatining $40 to someone's family. Make no mistake about it.. if you are sharing you are a saint.
Who we are
TechKicker is a non-profit organization located in Moscow, Russia that provides help to Computer Chess Players in the struggle against poverty.
Our mission is to share files and create sites where shared files are stored, and provide poor chess players with as much information as needed to with their chess careers.
Our team includes the following celebrities:
Extreme View (manager - site hosting)
Anhieser Buch (manager - hybrid engines)
Dukes of 'Azzard (commanding officer - internal security)
CBFreak (manager - engine cloning)
Abraham Jon Lincon (manager - legal department)
Tony Thomas (manager - serials and cracks)
Trix3 (manager - file sharing)
Just like the chess players that we represent, we live normal lives that include regular jobs but believe that this is a cause worth fighting for.
Who we represent
We represent any chess player who has shared files in the wild.
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