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The Internet Chess Club (ICC) is a commercial Internet site devoted to the play and discussion of chess and chess variants. ICC currently has over 30,000 subscribing members, and there are typically, around 2,500 members logged on at any given time, including many internationally titled players. Since 1 August 2006 the 'guest' facility has been withdrawn so the options are to subscribe or take a trial.
Software The recommended interface is the proprietary BlitzIn software, currently at version 2.52. The software has arrangements to try to detect players using the assistance of chess programs. It does this, in part, by detecting changes in window input focus, based on information on the activities being undertaken on the computer that the program is able to detect. Other than BlitzIn, there are many other software front-ends which work with the ICC system. In particular, the Dasher package which is intended to superceed BlitzIn. There are also a number of Java Applet interfaces available which allow full-featured play via a browser with the Java plug-in installed. Services available Subscriptions and trials Trial memberships to the Internet Chess Club are available for Windows users only. Trials are initially for one week but there is an automatic right to extend to a second week. The trial can be repeated every four months. On August 01, 2006, ICC raised its rates for the first time in 11 years from $49 to $59.95 per year for adult memberships with three year membership now priced at $149.95. Students pay $29.95. Players with GM, IM, WGM, or WIM titles get two complimentary accounts. One of these accounts must carry a note of the player's real name but games can be played on the anonymous account. History In the late 1980s a band of volunteers created the first Internet chess server (ICS) for fun. Players logged in by telnet, and the board was displayed as ASCII text. Bugs in the server software allowed illegal moves such as the taking of rooks en passant, but the server was popular among a small group of chess enthusiasts excited by the possibility of playing chess at great distances with the new technology. Over time more and more features were added to ICS, such as Elo ratings and a choice of graphical interfaces. The playing pool grew steadily, many of the server bugs were fixed, and players began to have higher expectations for stability. In 1992, Daniel Sleator volunteered to take over as head programmer, and began a large overhaul of the server code. 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. On March 1, 1995, Sleator announced his intentions to commercialize ICS, 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 development of ICS were upset that anyone would attempt to profit from their efforts. ICC distributed several dozen free accounts to volunteers, but not everyone was mollified. 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. Also, students complained that the $49 per year bill was too much for them to pay, so ICC implemented a 50% discount for students. 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. Some programmers who had worked on the original ICS, led by Chris Petroff, 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. The free game services provided by Yahoo! and Pogo.com typically have more players logged on at any given time than the ICC, but there are fewer features and services available. See also | ||||||||
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