An Internet chess server (ICS) is a server to facilitate the play, discussion, and viewing of chess over the Internet. Specifically, it is a server with a protocol based on that of the original Internet Chess Server (now the Internet Chess Club).
History
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.
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 $49. 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, a commercial Internet chess server to rival ICC. Both services remain operational today.
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, commonly called an interface. Currently, the most popular interface is XBoard (and its Windows counterpart, WinBoard). In recent years, however, it has lost ground to newer interfaces like BabasChess and Thief.
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.
Available servers
Over the years, several Internet chess servers have been created. The Internet Chess Club, with over 30,000 members, is by far the largest server. The second largest server is Playchess.com, the third largest is Free Internet Chess Server. Other servers include World Chess Network, Chess Live, Chess.net, ChessAnyTime, FICGS, as well as various local servers. However, these servers have significantly less membership than the ICC and FICS.
See also
- Internet Chess Club, the first Internet chess server
- Yahoo! Games, an online game server which includes another popular chess implementation
External links
- History of the Internet Chess Server, 1992-1995 by Chris Petroff
- A brief overview of Internet chess servers by Tim Mann
- Chess Server Comparisons Detailed feature list of the most popular chess servers
- ChessD, an open-source ICS implementation
- Lasker Chess Server, another ICS implementation, based on ChessD
- Correspondence chess server
- Real time and correspondence chess server
- Real time and correspondence php MySQL chess server
- official correspondence chess server of German BdF
- FICGS Correspondence Chess Server