• Source: Free Internet Chess Server

The Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) is a volunteer-run internet chess server. It launched in 1995, in response to the commercialization of the original American Internet Chess Server (ICS).




History


In January 1992, Michael Moore of the University of Utah and Richard Nash started the first online service facilitating live chess games, the American Internet Chess Server (commonly known as the Internet Chess Server or ICS). The initial release, accessible via telnet, was hosted at the University of Utah, but over its first two years it moved repeatedly across American universities, with additional servers opening and connecting to each other through Nash's Internet Ratings Server. The software was coded, supported, and operated by volunteers. Daniel Sleator, professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, took over operation in July 1992 and improved the code. One of his primary contributions was a mechanism to adjust clock times for the effects of internet lag. He announced plans to commercialize the service, copyrighted the code in 1994, and rebranded it as the Internet Chess Club (ICC) in 1995, charging membership fees.
Sleator's decision to commercialize the ICS was controversial, outraging members who felt the internet should be free and open, or who simply did not want to pay for a service which had been free. Several former ICS programmers saw the move as exploiting their work. On the day its rebranding was announced, programmers created a mailing list focused on developing an alternative, though work had been in progress, using Nash's original code, since Sleator initially revealed his commercialization plans. Several developers contributed, led by Nash, Henrik Gram, David Flynn, and Chris Petroff. The effort reacting to commercialization led to servers in several places around the world and in the United States, with the latter consolidating to form the Free Internet Chess Server, which launched on March 5, 1995. Its tagline is "we do it for the game--not the money". After a few months, it had 1,500 members.
In 1998, the Free Internet Chess Organization (FICS) was organized as a nonprofit organization, although the formal entity was dissolved in 2007. The server is still maintained and administered by volunteers.
FICS never matched the popularity of ICC, but as of 2012 it had about 900 people logged in at any given time, and by August 2014 it had over 650,000 registered accounts. In 2016, 50,000 active players played a total of 23 million games.
In a 2024 book, Peter Doggers drew a comparison between the FICS and ICC rivalry and the later Lichess vs. Chess.com rivalry, with one side committed to free and open principles and the other offering more features for a fee.




Usage



FICS is accessible via telnet and was text-only by default. Before graphical interfaces, users would see a board created by ASCII characters, with the lines of the board created by hyphens and pipes, and pieces represented by letters. Whereas ICC has dedicated, proprietary graphical interfaces, several have been developed for FICS, with none having official status. The earliest were XICS and XBoard, with subsequent programs including WinBoard, BabasChess, Jin, Thief, Raptor, eboard, PyChess, and JavaBoard. Though built with pre-web technology which typically requires a dedicated client, there are also web-based interfaces. Users can play using an anonymous guest account or register for an account with a username. Registered users can play games rated using the Glicko rating system.
Once connected, discussion takes place in a wide number of function-specific or subject-specific chat channels numbered 0 through 255. For example, channel 0 is for administrators only, 1 is for general help, 50 is general chat, and 49 is for tournaments.
Players can choose any time control and increment. In addition to standard chess, FICS hosts several chess variants, including suicide, loser's, atomic, wild (including chess960), bughouse, and crazyhouse.




Relay


FICS relays major live chess events. A bot takes the moves in ongoing games and relays them to special demo accounts on FICS. These demo accounts bear the names of the players in the event. Users and guests on FICS can watch the games in progress and chat about the games with each other. The relay has covered every single World Chess Championship since its inception. Other major relays include the yearly relay of Wijk aan Zee, Morelia-Linares and Amber Melody. The web-based Lichess platform obtains its tournament relays via FICS.




Archive


All games played by registered users are recorded by a computer and made publicly available for free. The FICS game archive has been used in academic studies on memory, decision-making, and user interface design. The server and its archive have been used to train chess engines and chess-related machine learning projects, while the FICS code has been used to launch similar regional or thematic chess servers as well as influencing the design of other chess projects.




See also


List of Internet chess servers




References






External links


Official website
FICS Game Database – database of all games played

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• Free Internet Chess Server
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