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(March 2005) Continuing our series of top-level reviews of Chess Categories (see Articles & Resources to the left) we looked at our Correspondence Chess: Email / Postal category. If you look now, you won't see the category: more about that later.

The age of computers and the Internet has had as profound an impact on correspondence chess as on chess in general. Until the dawn of the Internet age, correspondence chess meant postal chess: sending and receiving moves via the postal service. Correspondence organizations served a useful purpose in matching players who sought opponents in other parts of their country or the world. Postal players had difficulty locating each other outside of a central organization.

The godfather of correspondence organizations is the International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF), founded in 1951. The ICCF's web site (www.iccf.com), operational since 1996, tells us that the ICCF is 'a federation of national member organizations' representing 'over 60 national member federations with altogether more than 100.000 individual member correspondence chess players'.

The ICCF's charter as a federation of national organizations gives it a structure similar to FIDE's. Indeed, the ICCF site boasts that 'all ICCF titles, championships and ratings are recognised by FIDE'. As far as we know, the ICCF is the only correspondence organization having the endorsement of FIDE.

Because of its long standing roots in postal chess, the ICCF was slow to adopt more modern forms of communication. As late as 1994, it was still experimenting with play by fax.

Chess, as a turn-based game, was easily adapted to email technology, and other, more nimble groups were ready to fill the organizational gap left by the ICCF and its member organizations. The International Email Chess Group (IECG), founded at the beginning of 1994, showed that there was serious interest in playing chess by Internet email. It established ground rules for email play, organized tournaments, and calculated ratings.

One of the disadvantages of using everyday email to play chess is the clerical chore of preparing and sending the messages. The first email servers were introduced in 1998. Players could use web browser technology to send moves and enter their email address to receive moves. It was no longer even necessary to keep track of opponents' email addresses.

The server's biggest advantage over email play was tracking the administrative data -- recording moves, calculating elapsed time, and tracking vacations -- needed to avoid misunderstandings and disputes. The email chess servers came to offer most of the functionality that was previously available only through the correspondence organizations : matching opponents, organizing tournaments, and calculating ratings. They also offered a wide choice of time controls to satisfy serious players, who prefer lots of time to think, as well as casual players, who often move after only a few minutes reflection.

In fact, the 'email' in email servers is an option. The primary function of the servers is to allow play between opponents who are not necessarily online at the same time. They are better called correspondence servers.

As for the ICCF, its first email world championship was announced in 1998, and play started in 1999. It was as slow in adopting server technology as it was in adopting email play and, after years of discussions, it opened its own server in 2004. Without a server to implement policy, the only functions left to traditional correspondence organizations like ICCF are awarding titles and organizing conventions for members to meet face-to-face.

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What happened to our category called 'Correspondence Chess'? We separated it into two categories -- one for correspondence organizations and one for publications -- and placed those links in the appropriate higher level category.

• Organizations > Correspondence Organizations • We renamed our former top-level category from 'Correspondence Chess' to 'Correspondence Organizations', and placed it under the category called 'Organizations'.
  
  
• Blogs/Magazines/Columns > Correspondence Publications • Here we include web sites and magazines whose focus is correspondence chess.
  
  
• Play Online > Correspondence Servers • These will continue to provide an important alternative to crossboard servers like ICC and FICS, where both opponents are online at the same time.
  
  

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