An Internet chess server (ICS) is an external
server that provides the facility to play, discuss, and view the board game of
chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...
over the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...
. The term specifically refers to facilities for connecting players through a variety of graphical chess clients located on each user's computer.
History
In the 1970s, one could play correspondence chess in a
PLATO System
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
program called 'chess3'. Several users used chess3 regularly; often a particular user would make several moves per day, sometimes with several games simultaneously in progress. In theory one could use chess3 to play a complete game of chess in one sitting, but chess3 was not usually used this way. PLATO was not connected to Internet predecessor
ARPANET
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical foun ...
in any way that allowed mass use by the public, and consequently, chess3 was and still is relatively unknown to the public.
In the eighties, chess
play by email
A play-by-mail game (also known as a PBM game, PBEM game, or a turn-based game) is a game played through postal mail, email or other digital media. Correspondence chess and Go were among the first PBM games. ''Diplomacy'' has been played by mail ...
was still fairly novel. Latency with email was less significant than with traditional
correspondence chess
Correspondence chess is chess played by various forms of long-distance correspondence, traditionally through the postal system. Today it is usually played through a correspondence chess server, a public internet chess forum, or e-mail, email. Les ...
via paper letters. Often one could complete a dozen moves in a week. As network technology improved, public, widespread use of a centralised server for live play became a possibility.
Michael Moore, of the
University of Utah
The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of D ...
, and Richard Nash recognised the potential of an Internet chess server and created its first incarnation, hosted at lark.utah.edu and accessible through
telnet
Telnet is an application protocol used on the Internet or local area network to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection. User data is interspersed in-band with Telnet cont ...
. The official opening date of the ICS was January 15, 1992. John Chanak, William Kish, and Aaron Putnam moved the server to a host machine at
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...
in July 1992, and took over its operation. Although it was
buggy and suffered from
lag problems, the server was popular among a small group of chess enthusiasts. Over time, many features were added to the ICS, such as
Elo ratings and support for
graphical clients, and the server was made more stable.
In late 1992,
Daniel Sleator
Daniel Dominic Kaplan Sleator (born 10 December 1953) is a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, United States. In 1999, he won the ACM Paris Kanellakis Award (jointly with Robert Tarjan) for the splay tree da ...
, professor of
computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includin ...
at Carnegie Mellon University, took over management of the ICS. He addressed, among other issues, the frequent complaint that players would lose blitz games on time due to network lag. In 1994, he copyrighted the code, and began receiving purchase offers from companies wanting to commercialise the server. There were questions about whether Sleator was right to claim that the ICS was his intellectual property, since he did not code the original server, although he had made substantial improvements to its code.
On March 1, 1995, Sleator announced his intentions to commercialise ICS himself, renaming it the
Internet Chess Club, or ICC, and charging a yearly membership fee of $US 49 ($US 59.95 in 2007). This announcement was highly controversial among existing members. Many volunteers who had contributed in various ways to the flourishing of ICS were upset that anyone would attempt to profit from their efforts. Active players on the server who were used to the service being provided without charge were not pleased with the addition of the membership fee.
A handful of programmers who had worked on the original ICS became unhappy with what they saw as the commoditization of their project. They formed the
Free Internet Chess Server (FICS), and continued to allow everyone to have access to all features for free. In 1996,
John Fanning, uncle of
Napster
Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing application. It originally launched on June 1, 1999, with an emphasis on digital audio file distribution. Audio songs shared on the service were typically encoded in the MP3 format. It was founded by Sh ...
founder
Shawn Fanning, started Chess.net,
a commercial Internet chess server to rival ICS. Both services remain operational today.
Protocol and access
The
ICS protocol is a simple,
text-based variant of the
TELNET
Telnet is an application protocol used on the Internet or local area network to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection. User data is interspersed in-band with Telnet cont ...
protocol. It is sparsely
documented
A document is a written, drawn, presented, or memorialized representation of thought, often the manifestation of non-fictional, as well as fictional, content. The word originates from the Latin ''Documentum'', which denotes a "teaching" or ...
and not standardised, although a few
reference implementations and several
clients exist.
In addition to standalone clients, many servers also offer websites that can be used directly from a
Web browser
A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...
. These are popular with
new users and users of public computers.
Available servers
Over the years, several Internet chess servers have been created. The most popular are
Chess.com,
Chesshub.com,
Lichess
Lichess (; ) is a free and open-source Internet chess server run by a non-profit organization of the same name. Users of the site can play online chess anonymously and optionally register an account to play rated games. Lichess is ad-free and ...
,
ICC,
Chess Craft,
Playchess.com
Playchess is a commercial Internet chess server managed by ChessBase devoted to the play and discussion of chess and chess variants. As of February 2011, Playchess has over 31,000 players online, including many internationally titled players wh ...
,
FICS and
Chesscube. Chess is also among the games previously offered by non-specialist site
Yahoo! Games.
See also
*
Chess engine
In computer chess, a chess engine is a computer program that analyzes chess or chess variant positions, and generates a move or list of moves that it regards as strongest.
A chess engine is usually a back end with a command-line interface with ...
*
Computer chess
Computer chess includes both hardware (dedicated computers) and software capable of playing chess. Computer chess provides opportunities for players to practice even in the absence of human opponents, and also provides opportunities for analysi ...
*
Correspondence chess server
Correspondence chess is chess played by various forms of long-distance correspondence, traditionally through the postal system. Today it is usually played through a correspondence chess server, a public internet chess forum, or email. Less common ...
*
List of Internet chess servers
This is a list of notable Internet chess servers.
Active
* Chess.com
* Chess24
* Caissa.com
* ChessBase
* FIDE Online Arena
* Free Internet Chess Server
* Internet Chess Club
* Kasparov Chess
* Lichess
* Playchess
* SchemingMind
Defunct
* ...
References
External links
History of the Internet Chess Server 1992–1995 Chris Petroff
{{DEFAULTSORT:Internet Chess Server
Chess websites
Internet protocols