Internet chess server

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An Internet chess server (ICS) is an external server that provides the facility to play, discuss, and view chess over the Internet. The term specifically refers to facilities for connecting players through a variety of graphical chess clients located on each user's computer. The term also is used in the generic sense to refer to general gaming sites that may or may not offer chess, such as Yahoo!Games, Pogo, and FlyOrDie.^[1]

1 History
2 Protocol and access
3 Available servers
4 Notes
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] History

In the late eighties, chess play by email was a novelty. Latency was improved over correspondence chess. Often one could complete a dozen moves in a week. As internet technology improved, using a centralized server for real time play became a possibility.

Michael Moore, of the University of Utah, and Richard Nash recognized the potential of an Internet chess server and created its first incarnation. 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 in July of 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.^[2]

In late 1992, Daniel Sleator, professor of computer science 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 Internet lag. In 1994, he copyrighted the code, and began receiving purchase offers from companies wanting to commercialize 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 commercialize 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 founder Shawn Fanning, started Chess.net,^[3] a commercial Internet chess server to rival ICC. Both services remain operational today.

[edit] Protocol and access

The ICS protocol is a simple, text-based variant of the TELNET protocol. It is sparsely documented and not standardized, although a few reference implementations and several clients exist.

In theory, an ICS can be accessed from any TELNET client. That said, almost all users choose to play using a graphical client, called an interface. Currently, the most popular interface is XBoard (and its Windows counterpart, WinBoard)^{[citation needed]}. In recent years, however, it has lost ground to newer interfaces like BabasChess, Thief, Pychess and eboard^{[citation needed]}.

In addition to standalone clients, many servers also offer Java interfaces that can be used directly from a Web browser. These are popular with new users and users of public computers.

[edit] Available servers

Over the years, several Internet chess servers have been created. The Internet Chess Club is currently the largest server but each server has its own strengths and character.^[4] However, Mark Weeks claims that Yahoo! Games accounts for 44% of the players online, compared to 12% for ICC and 7% for Playchess.^[5] A quick check at 16:01, 16 March 2007 shows approximately 2000 chess players at Yahoo!, 1800 at ICC, and 3800 at Playchess. Because Playchess is more popular in Europe, it is more active when it is evening there, while ICC and Yahoo! appear to peak when it is evening in the United States.

For a list of servers see Category:Internet chess servers.

[edit] Notes

^ See Ed Collins, "Yahoo vs. the Chess Servers," http://www.edcollins.com/chess/yahoo-vs-servers.htm.
^ Tim Mann, "Internet Chess Servers," http://www.tim-mann.org/ics.html.
^ Welcome to Chess.net
^ Christian Kongsted, How to Use Computers to Improve Your Chess (London: Gambit Publications, 2003), pp. 178-180.
^ Mark Weeks, "Crossboard Chess Servers," http://chess.about.com/od/otbservers/.