The idea of creating an email chess server began early in 2001. A few lines of codes were written to see if it is possible to make email chess easier. Could we establish a club where people can play chess simply by email? I know what huge efforts are needed to maintain an email chess club, but what are the computers for if not to take the hard and regular work from humans?
The club was founded in the middle of 2001, when a few obsessed and curious players were trying to use the system's first facilities. It had no name, and a lot of very useful things were still unsupported. But at least we could make moves. :-)
At the beginning of 2002 the club was deemed ready for the Internet public, most of the basic facilities needed to start and play games were working.
By the end of 2002 much work had been done and the following facilities were supported: the pairing system, PGN and FEN support, time controls, vacation policy, the reminder system, and a lot of other stuff were ready, such as starting games with standard openings, assigning colour during a challenge, friendly games, and the chess problem system, to mention only the major things.
On November 20, 2002 the club got it's final name, E4EC, which stands for E4 Emailchess Club, and e4ec.org became the club's Internet domain.
A few things remain to be completed in 2004. The biggest challenge is to support more types of tournaments.
Dmitriy Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907) is best known for devising the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements.
He loved to play chess, among other games, and correspondence chess too. A beautiful but hard chess problem follows from him from July 4, 1889, white mates in two:
There are chess tournaments in the club continously.
Now single round-robin, class based tournaments run only. They are class based that ensures players in similar ratings play each other. The games run simultaneously in round-robin tournaments, so a seven player event means 6 games in one time.
There are single class tournaments, where players of each 200 points class play each other. These events are always for 7 players.
And there are multiclass tournaments also, where players from 3 neigbour classes can play in. These are always for 9 players.
Whenever a tournamet fills up, another one starts with the same parameters.
To protect serious players, new members can enter for tournaments after they have finished 5 games in order, and if their reliability factor is not below the value of 5.