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Correspondence chess was for decades until the 1990s predominantly postcard chess. It was expensive, and games could drag on for years. Then came email!
The official correspondence chess first had a hard time with it and stayed with the postcard. Email chess clubs arose. There were also primitive first chess servers, called boards, but the server correspondence chess had not yet reached maturity. Email blew!
Email correspondence chess is easy to play and easy to organize. Chess players who came from postcard chess and chess players who came from over the board chess organized it.
It was also the time when chess computers and computer chess engines became more and more powerful. Some gladly accepted it as a means for further development, others turned away with horror and prohibitions. The IECC stands for the latter.
Then the chess servers became suitable for correspondence chess. The operators came from commerce and IT. They had competence and courage for development, they combined love for chess with love for technology. The influx to the email correspondence chess stopped.
The advantage of email correspondence chess over postcard chess, being cost effective and fast, no longer played a role. It was a matter of playing off the advantages of email chess against server chess. These advantages are smaller, and they are countered by advantages of server correspondence chess. What is an advantage and what is a disadvantage depends essentially on preferences.
Server correspondence chess players enjoy more convenience and save emotions. Email correspondence chess players take more responsibility. Where, of course, all participants adhere to the rules, there are no advantages and disadvantages.
The convenience of server correspondence chess is that the server takes over essential parts of the game management. It controls the correctness of the games and the observance of the reflection time. If an opponent does not abide by the rules, he will lose for formal reasons.
The responsibility of the email correspondence chess players is applicable where the game is unclean. Players who communicate impossible messages, do not report or exceed the time limit for reflection challenge their fellow players emotionally and challenge them to make out-of-court decisions. If it is both players at the same time, the victim is the tournament director.
Email correspondence chess is the more sophisticated correspondence chess. The desire of server correspondence chess players for convenience is justified. It leads me to the opinion that with the optimal use of the possibilities of server correspondence chess and email correspondence chess in the long run a ratio of the played games of 2 : 1 in favor of server correspondence chess would be expected. This also means that server correspondence chess and email correspondence chess have a permanent right to exist side by side.
A look at the reality of correspondence chess shows, however, that the share of email correspondence chess does not reach its third share by far. It has not used its possibilities for many years. Whether it survives is questionable. I do my best.
Email correspondence chess cannot exist with the means of the late 1990s. Postcard chess and over the board chess cannot serve as models for organization. New, email correspondence chess specific rules had to be developed. The organizers of email correspondence chess ignored this. To ignore it led in 2003 to the disappearance of the ESC and to crisis-like developments at DESC and BdF. Opposite consequences were drawn, but on all sides not those that were good for email correspondence chess.
The BdF increasingly relied solely on server correspondence chess and terminated its own email correspondence chess operation with growing verve. I play there 2 games in the email pyramid. The rest of the email area is out of interest.
The DESC was gradually getting rid of its creative knacks. It went well for a long time. 2016 was the end of it. The game had clearly stopped. There were too few organisers left for the rest of the game, and the ability to delegate tasks had been lost.
Emailfernschach needed for over 15 years new rules, which were withheld from him. In my opinion it is important to develop what distinguishes correspondence email chess and correspondence server chess the most: The personal responsibility of the players for what happens with their games. The rules should leave it up to the players as far as possible how they deal with out-of-this-world behaviors of their fellow players.
A time overrun may only lead to the loss of a game if the opponent wants it to be so. It must be left to the player to decide beforehand whether or not he wants to follow his opponent's time consumption for reflection. Conversely, no player will be allowed to disclose a time overrun of his own. There is no strict obligation to provide any reflection period calculations, and not even to provide any at all.
The chess decision is always preferable to the external decision. Chess decisions are the mate and the non mate, i.e. win in winning position and draw in an unwinnable position.
The extrajudicial decision is thus made more difficult. The complaint of a time overrun is formalized. The basic prerequisite is that it is the complainant's turn.
The decision by the player and the tournament leader will be prevented by the strength of the other player and the tournament director, but if necessary the decision will be uncovered. Whoever tacitly backs out of games may play server chess. If necessary, he will be told so.
Email correspondence chess cannot provide the full convenience and bulging information space of server correspondence chess. But the shortcoming is not as big as it seems to some. You can learn from the servers what comfort is, and you can get suggestions for a clever choice of information.
Email correspondence chess must offer the best of what is possible in terms of convenience and information by reasonable means. The reasonable means are of the same kind as server correspondence chess, but the email correspondence chess uses only a tiny fraction of it. What they have in common is the use of PHP for the organization, the tournament administration and the presentation of tournaments on the Internet.A very important use of PHP is the processing of web forms. They generate a double benefit: For the player they promote the comfort, for the organizer also.
History is the dispute over the question of whether to conceal or publicly conceal lists of applicants. The use of PHP challenges it to put all the information the organizer has on the web server, and once there, it wants to be published. Email correspondence chess does not need notes.
Email correspondence chess players take a lot of responsibility. To do justice to this, they need a lot of freedom. Therefore well organized email correspondence chess avoids petty rules, petty rule interpretation and control compulsion. One of the great things about it is that relaxed tournament management is possible. Under our conditions anyone can do that. Well organized email correspondence chess does not need a guide procedure and no tournament leader training.
When the server correspondence chess was not yet in fashion, there are said to have been tricksters who always, when they didn't want to, didn't receive any emails. I have never met such tricksters. But if they really exist, correspondence chess servers are useful, because I can refer tricksters to them.
Email correspondence chess is correspondence chess for lovers. It is also correspondence chess for blind correspondence chess players. They are largely denied the game on the correspondence chess server. Without email correspondence chess they would have to play postcards, and only among themselves or with readers. In email correspondence chess they play with always available tools with.
The best email correspondence chess offers our EmailChessPoint. It is the only correspondence email chess area far and wide that shows a low but still visible growth. Let's make sure it stays that way!