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.
Many years ago, searching for the Internet over chess problem, I bumped into a very interesting piece.
Find it on the bottom as a FEN row, clicking on it the board will also appear.
The task is: white mates in one!
Can't be too hard, I thought, but scrolling over the possibilities the solution just didn't come up.
I check everything once more, then again, and again, and once I found another way that was hidden for me before. The solution also hid there. It became my favourite chess problem then, but of course, it's true, there are many many beautiful problems out there.
This was the first problem I submitted to the server. Some players can solve it, some don't. Some believe there is no valid solution.
So, check this problem if you want. And enjoy.
To provide the widest compatibility with email clients the server uses this format by default to communicate with the players.
If their email clients are able to display graphic and html messages, they usually turn on the html message format, which is really friendlier than the plain text format.
Of course, it often happens, that the two players of the same game uses different message formats, and the same game displays differently for them.
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