Connecting to FIBS

FIBS works with your PC, Mac or Unix computer. You need only an internet service provider that supports telnet (most do).

No downloaded software is needed if you're happy with FIBS' default ASCII interface, which displays messages and commands in plain text, a backgammon board with X's and O's, and requires you to type in your moves. It's not pretty but it works -- but hey -- it's the 90's. Most players use one of the many shareware or freeware graphical interfaces developed by fibsters for fibsters for Win95, Windows, Mac and Unix operating systems.

Never visited FIBS before? Read the FIBS Guide for New Players for step by step instructions for connecting, registering and getting started on FIBS. Also, review the Guide to FIBS Commands; it explains all the FIBS commands (if you skip this guide, you can read the on-line help file while you're connected to FIBS by typing "help beginner".

Slow Connection? Fibsters in some European countries might find that the Norwegian Connection provides a faster link to FIBS by routing your connection through Norway's (usually) lag-free cross-Atlantic internet line.

Can't Wait? You may telnet to FIBS from here. If this link doesn't work for you:

Browsers: to jump from this page directly to FIBS, your browser must know where to find your telnet application. With Netscape, see Options/General Preferences/Apps. Microsoft Internet Explorer assumes you use Microsoft's telnet.exe program. If you have Windows or Win95, telnet.exe should be somewhere on your computer, probably in the c:\windows directory. Perhaps a dozen other free or shareware telnet programs can be downloaded from the World Wide Web. Computer systems at libraries, schools or work places may not be configured to allow complete internet access, including telnet, through a browser; for technical support, ask your system's administrator.

AOL: As of 1997, AOL supports telnet. Make sure you have the latest version of AOL's software. See AOL keywords TELNET and WINSOCK (and to download one of the graphical interfaces for FIBS for Windows, see keyword FIBSW).

WebTV doesn't support telnet. You cannot use FIBS with WebTV.

Graphical Interfaces for FIBS

Win95 and Windows 3.x

Cthulhu's JavaFIBS. Works best with Netscape.

Beggar's Backgammon Terminal (BBGT) by Matt Reklaitis and Gamer Cafe. Shareware, supported. Version 4.0 adds a bundle of new features, including: record and replay entire matches, export positions and matches to JellyFish .pos format, statistics on your matches, player profiling, real time players window, separate chat windows, a built-in ratings calculator, permanent buddy lists and gag lists.

John Fahey's WinFIBS for Win95 and Win98. John worked closely with Paul Ferguson, author of the acclaimed MacFIBS interface, in developing WinFIBS. Download version 0.66.

The first graphical interface developed for FIBS, Robin Davies' FIBS/W, is still popular but no longer supported. You can download it from many sites on the Web including Patti Beadles' gammon.com, Kate McCollough's Backgammon Page, and Elliott (ekw) Winslow´s backgammon page.

Egon Beermat offers his own EBBS/W. See screen shots and download alpha version 0.2a from http://www.crl.com/~egon/ebbs/index.html.

Collections of backgammon sounds for any FIBS Windows interface at ftp://yoda.u-strasbg.fr/pub/fibssounds/allwavs2.zip and http://wwwedu.cs.utwente.nl/~eyckelho/data/fibs.htm.

Macintosh

Mac users will enjoy Paul (fergy) Ferguson's shareware MacFIBS. The latest release (version 4.2, August 2000) adds some cool new features, including:
• real time player status information,
• a variety of board sizes and looks to choose from,
• extensive drag & drop and contextual menu features,
• new CD-quality game sounds,
• extensive online documentation in Apple Help (HTML) format
Check the MacFIBS pages for additional information and to download a copy.

UNIX

David Eggert's version of Tinyfugue for FIBS takes this popular IRC client and divides the screen into 3 parts for the board, server messages and user input. Not exactly graphical (the backgammon board is still X's and O's), it works well and can be customized with macros.

X-windows

Try xfibs by Torstein Hansen and Mike Quinn; TkFibs by Keith Vetter; or xibc by Jesper Blommaskog.

Linux/KDE

There is a nice graphical FIBS client for Linux called KFibs. More info at the KFibs Home Page.

Saving and replaying FIBS matches and positions

We don't mean saving unfinished matches on FIBS that you will resume later -- FIBS does this for you automatically. We mean saving a record of a match to a "log file" that you can then read or replay using another program.

The perfectly painless way to do this hasn't been written yet, but you can save matches and positions using one of the graphical interfaces or one of several other record/replay programs written by fibsters for fibsters.

See the FIBS replay page for instructions for saving matches and positions with FIBS/W, BBGT and MacFIBS, and for pointers to other programs that convert log files to some other format or let you replay these matches with another program, including JellyFish.

Tournaments and teams on FIBS

davide's FIBS Tournaments

David Escoffery and co-director Kit (kitwoolsey)Woolsey have directed four tournaments a year on FIBS since 1994.

Spring and Fall tournaments are double elimination with consolation in two divisions, Open and Limited, with up to 128 players in each division. Summer and Winter tournaments are blitzes, with 128 players grouped in sixteen 8-player 5-point match knockouts. Group winners advance to the playoffs.

See davide's home page page for registration info, tournament ladders, results and player lists.

Here's a list of prize winners in previous tournaments.

Jackpots

Københavns Backgammon Klub runs jackpot tournaments on FIBS. Entry fees in Danish crowns from 50 to 500. See the clubs Jackpot home page for drawsheets, results, rules and entry form.

texan's $MONEY$ Tournament

See Randy (texan) Aven's home page for current information on his occasional  $MONEY$ tournaments.

bibi's Annual Tournament

Roberto (bibi) Gobbo's  annual free tournaments attract a crowd! See bibi´s s home page for the latest tournament information and results from bibi I, II, III and IV.

Rambeau's Shootout

David (monty) Montgomery) was the winner at double match point over Christian (ch_lh) Liebe-Harkort in the 21-point final of Richard (rambeau) McIntosh's inaugural rambeau's shootout, an invitational money tournment. At rambeau's Backgammon Habitat you'll find tournament results and the unannotated final match. You can also view the final match with annotations by Motif at Backgammon Galore.

Richard is co-director with Beth (towanda) Skillman of Backgammon by the Bay's monthly tournaments in San Mateo, California.

Team Competition

Team Denmark was the winner by the narrowest of margins in a seven-team round robin tournament directed by Roberto (bibi) Gobbo in Spring '97. In 1998, some seventeen teams from Europe, the USA, Japan, Australia and South Africa have been challenging each other in friendly competition. See bibi's web page for results, team lists and information about how to join or form a FIBS team.

Meet the fibsters

FIBSter Home Pages

Stephen (Turner) Turner has a list of FIBS player's home pages on the WWW Backgammon Page. Lars (sencay) Sözüer's Fibsters Around the World lists fibsters by country. Evangelia (Jasmin) Spanou and Stavros (zucchini) Mavroskoufis have a Greek Fibsters Gallery. Daniel (Raccoon) Murphy has a list of Danish players on FIBS.

James (Ivan) Eibisch's FIBS Bot Page describes all known bots, past and present, standalone bg programs, miscellaneous bots, suspected bots and human-operated bots that play on FIBS. Complete with bot family tree and even a photo or two. Ivan's pages keep growing: a new addition is an "equity table bot."

Parli italiano? See collections of links to helpful FIBS pages in Italian at http://alpha.science.unitn.it/~gobbo/INTERNET/servers.html and http://alpha.science.unitn.it/~gobbo/INTERNET/cmds.html.

To celebrating Monte Carlo's 100,000th 1-point match on FIBS, Gamercafe is offering a free Windows version of this veteran bot.

Photos and Parties

Kate (mccool) McCollough's Backgammon Page includes McCool's Fibs Photo Files, links to other fibster photo sites and a lot more on backgammon.

Fibsters meet frequently at real life tournaments around the world.

Patti (Patti) Beadles' home page has pictures of the June 1996 San Francisco FIBS Party.

sencay's European FIBS Party Newsletter has information about past and future FIBS gatherings in Europe, and photos from the 1st European FIBS Party (London, October '97),  and the 2nd European FIBS party (Trento, Italy, February 1998).

Photos from the 3rd European FIBS party (Copenhagen, April '98) are temporarily lost in cyberspace. Look for photos from the 4th European FIBS party (Helsinki, May '98) and other tournaments on Tapio (tapio) Palmroth's home page.

The 5th European FIBS party was in July ´98 at the 10th International City of Venice tournament, and the 6th -- a FIBS/GamesGrid gathering, was at Franken ganz Open in August '98 in Uttenreuth, Germany. Word has it that the winner received a free subscription to Games Grid... and everyone else got a free subscription to FIBS :)

FIBS rating system

All matches on FIBS (except "unlimited" length matches) are rated. Active players with more than 50 experience points make it to the "rated" list. Inactive accounts are deleted after some time which may or may not be exactly 100 days, depending on the weather and how kindly the server is feeling.

As of November 1999, there were over 15,265 registered users and about 6,754 active, rated players on FIBS.

"toggle ratings" to YES to see how your rating changes after each completed match. Type "ratings" (or "rat") to see your rating and the top 20 rated accounts. Type "ratings name" (or "rat name") to see the rate and ranking of player name. Type "ratings from number to number" to see the rating of all players ranked from number to number (maximum range is 100). There's plenty of information in the FIBS help files or the Guide to FIBS Commands about ratings, formulas and toggles.

McCool's Backgammon Page has Kevin (KevinB) Bastian's explanation of the FIBS rating system. James Eibisch has a Javascript FIBS ratings calculator. François Hochede's home page offers both an on-line Javascript and a downloadable Windows FIBS rating calculator. On FIBS, player "rat" has nothing to do but tell you how many points you're about to win or lose and the correct time of day, if you ask.

Ratings reports from 1997 and 1998 are at GamerCafe. Current reports are somewhere .... where are they?

The blot you save may be your own

• Make Stephen Turner's comprehensive WWW Backgammon Page your first stop on the World Wide Web for backgammon information. View the home site in England or the mirror site nearest you in Australia, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Portugal, South Africa, Russia, UKor the USA.

 
• Tom (tomkeith) Keith's Backgammon Galore includes an illustrated explanation of the rules of backgammon, a glossary of backgammon terminology, a collection of some of the best articles posted to rec.games.backgammon, and annotated matches including several matches from FIBS tournaments.

• The newsgroup for backgammon lovers is rec.games.backgammon. Read the complete rec.games.backgammon FAQ (last updated in 1995) at the WWW Backgammon Page, or see a brief but up to date "mini-FAQ."

• Play! On FIBS or any of the more than 20 backgammon servers on the internet, or In Real Life at a club or tournament near you. The WWW Backgammon Page has a worldwide list of backgammon clubs. Carol Joy Cole's Mark Your Calendar "Alive" lists upcoming tournaments.

FIBS, the First Internet Backgammon Server has been on the net since July 19, 1992. Originally at a site in Germany, FIBS moved to a site in Sweden in 1993 and to a site in California in 1996.

FIBS is the creation and intellectual property of sysop Andreas (marvin) Schneider. Thank you, marvin! Day-to-day site administration is performed by Patti (Patti) Beadles. Thanks, Patti! FIBS is paid for by voluntary contributions by fibsters and by Kit (kitwoolsey) and Sally (SallySue) Woolsey.

The home page of FIBS, the First Internet Backgammon Server is maintained by Daniel (Raccoon) Murphy, http://www.cityraccoon.com, Helsingør, Denmark. Comments and suggestions about this home page, or questions about FIBS not answered here are welcome; send email to webmaster@cityraccoon.com.

URL: http://www.fibs.com/index.html
revised 1999-11-04
© 1997, 1998, 1999 Daniel Murphy