(June 2004)
Play chess anytime, anywhere.
The Internet revolution has made anytime possible and we expect that the wireless revolution will do the same for anywhere.
We've already written about online play in several of our weekly articles.
See the linkbox in the upper right corner of this article for our concluding article on
OTB
servers and our introductory article on email servers.
For this article we looked at the links we've collected on the topic under 'Play online' on the left navigation bar.
In case you're wondering 'What's an OTB server?' or 'Why do you mention two types of online play?', we're glad you asked.
Many people don't realize that there are two distinct types of online chess play.
The first type is where you login to a service and play someone who is logged-in at the same time you are.
The second type is where you login to a service and leave a move; your opponent logs-in at some other time and leaves the next move; you can play an entire game without ever logging-in at the same time as your opponent..
The first type of play is what most people think of when they meet the phrase online chess play.
It's also known as OTB play or realtime play.
The second type of play is less known, but is rapidly gaining popularity as people realize that it is an excellent method to improve their understanding of chess.
It's often known as turnbased play or correspondence play.
We've aggregated these links into the following categories.
We use the term server because all of these online play services are server based.
- Crossboard servers : These include the sites like ICC, FICS, and PlayChess.com which specialize in chess play, as well as the sites like Yahoo and Pogo which offer chess play among many other games.
- Email servers : These include sites like ItsYourTurn.com, PlayChess.de, and LetsPlayChess.com.
After some discussion with About Chess forum members (see 'Join the Discussion' in the link box) we decided on the term crossboard instead of OTB, because many newcomers to chess don't understand the acronym.
Crossboard is also somewhat obscure, but offers some chance of being understood without explanation.
We also decided on the term email server instead of correspondence server.
The user-friendliness of these servers is greatly enhanced by using email as a trigger when an opponent has moved, although email is not strictly necessary.
While we were preparing this article, we realized that there are two other types of online play which we had overlooked completely.
- Mobile/wireless services : These are services based on cell phone (like GSM) technology. They are an evolution of the services mentioned above and are often based on crossboard servers.
- Peer-to-peer software : These are services which don't rely on the presence of a chess server.
We collected a number of links in these categories.
Because we have no direct experience with the services, we used the descriptions found on the sites.
We expect that the links in these categories will change frequently as the services mature.
Two other categories which need some attention are:
- Topics of particular interest to online players : These inlude ratings, tournaments, leagues, clients & interfaces, cheating & spyware, time controls, and variants (especially bughouse).
- History of the online play services.
These are big topics in their own right, so we'll come back to these in a future article.
If you can't wait, see the resources we list under 'Elsewhere on the Web' (link box again).
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