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The Free Internet Chess Server invites all chess enthusiasts to
participate in a series of prize tourneys March 4th-6th, 2005.
These tourneys are in celebration of the creation of FICS on
March 3rd, 1995.
Michael Moore, of the University of Utah, and Richard Nash recognized
the potential of an Internet Chess Server and programmed its first
version at the Colorado School of Mines. The official opening date of
the ICS was January 15, 1992. John Chanak, William Kish, and Aaron
Putnam moved the server to a host machine at Carnegie Mellon
University in the fall of 1992, and took over its operation.
FICS, the Free Internet Chess Server was born from the original
AICS, the American Internet Chess Server. When it was announced that
AICS would become ICC and begin to charge a yearly fee for registered
players, a small group of dedicated programmers banded together to
create their own server and to continue to promote free chess on the
internet. Taking some ratty server code from the original server
(before Daniel Sleator began to maintain AICS at CMU), Sparky resigned
his admin position and began the creation of FICS. At this same time,
TheDane and Hawk had created their own test server at EICS, the European
Internet Chess Server hosted by Aarhus
University. Another effort was being made by foxbat, who had
the code up and running, and making improvements, on his MUD server at
Ohio State University. Sparky, foxbat, TheDane and Hawk brought their
efforts together and founded fics.onenet.net. With the notable
contributions from Shane, loon, mann, grimm, hersco, DAV,
vek, and too many others to mention, FICS slowly came alive.
FICS is now home to over 180,000 total players and growing daily!
FICS has an active staff of volunteers dedicated to free chess for all,
consisting of 36 admins (*), 26 non-admin Service Representatives (SR),
and 30 non-admin Tournament Managers (TM).
In order to celebrate its 10th Anniversary FICS will host 4 prized
events: an
All Events
Championship Tournament, a
Standard
Chess Tournament, a
Suicide
Chess Tournament, and a
FICS
Trivia Competition.
During the celebrations period, every Monday at approximately 9:30am PST
(5:30pm GMT) IM Attila Turzo will hold a simultaneous match.
Teams of FICS and US Chess Live will clash in a friendly battle spanning
both servers! This tourney is by invitation only but you may apply to
join the team by messaging
AcademiaNut or Chessty
on FICS. There will be two teams playing. The A team will be playing on
FICS, while the B Team will be playing on Chess Live.
Each team will consist of four boards and the time control will be 60 0.
Schedule and details will follow.
Finally the FICS Founders, the programming gurus that brought FICS to
life, will challenge a team of FICS users in a team game, anyone can join
the FICS users team! Schedule TBA.
All tourney entrants must be FICS registered users, if you are not already
you can
Register
for free online.
The All Events Championship Tourney is sponsored by
Wholesale Chess
with a guaranteed cash prize payout of $200.00, as well as merchandise
prizes for the 7 variant Champions. Lethalgambit is sponsoring the FICS
Trivia Competition.
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