 |
Edited by Tim Harding |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Edited by Tim Harding |
|
|
|
|
© Chess Mail Ltd.
Last modified:
15 March, 2008
For a more complete set of general chess links, try Chessopolis or New In Chess which are linked below in the Literature and Miscellaneous section.
Note to webmasters who may consider requesting a link: We only link to sites about chess and board games. If you are a poker or other gambling site, don't bother asking. Links on this page are reviewed periodically and a link to any site may be removed if the content appears to be out of date or unsuitable for our readers, many of whom are quite young.
Correspondence Chess Servers |
Major CC Organisations |
Other email chess clubs |
Other CC websites |
Player websites |
Chess literature |
Chess openings |
Other Favourites |
Miscellaneous Sites |
The national CC websites and Irish links are separate.
If you think your site deserves to be linked here, email us with your details. Note that we often do not include site logos (which make the page bigger) and we generally only give links where a site is of high quality or of special interest to correspondence players.
Major Correspondence Chess Organisations
International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF)
Recognised by FIDE as the world governing body for correspondence chess: ICCF makes rules, awards titles and runs the most comprehensive and authoritative CC rating list. ICCF was founded in 1951 and the legal successor to previous international bodies ICCA and IFSB (pre-WW2 European body).
The ICCF European zone also has its own good website.
ICCF is a true federation of national organisations. It published a book about the first 50 years of its activities, ICCF Gold.
Normally you have to pay entry fees to enter ICCF events. There are two major free email CC organisations.
International Email Chess Group (IECG)
IECG began around 1994 and was reconstituted at the end of 1996. It is the larger of the two free organisations and organises a wide range of competitions, including some new ones on the Chessfriend server. However, IECG is rather controversial because it awards titles and runs an event which it calls an email "world championship".
International Email Chess Club (IECC) ** NB: NEW URL **
IECC does not run championships or award bogus titles. It does have a wide range of other events including friendly matches. Its most controversial feature is its attempt to ban the use of computer analysis - so if you like to avoid computer opponents, you have a better chance with IECC. A major article on IECC appeared in Chess Mail 7/2002.
Back to the top of this page
These are not in any particular order but we have played on the first five.
The ICCF web server is now well established.
This is a fully-featured CC server where many serious correspondence chess tournaments have already been played. We strongly recommend email players to switch to this mode of play. Chess Mail sponsored the inaugural event with 91 players in 13 sections.
The above is not a complete list of servers where CC may be played; we may add to it later.
Back to the top of this page
Other email and postal chess clubs
Apart from the above and the national CC organisations (separate links page), there are a several clubs within the UK and USA that are separately run but affiliated to the national bodies.
| In the UK: | BCCA | BCCS | Natcor (NCCC) | Social CCA |
The British Correspondence Chess Association will be celebrating its centenary later this year. It has a new website run by Jonathan Rashleigh; see the link above.
The link we had to BCCS no longer seems to work. Does anybody know a new URL for this club?
| In the USA: | APCT | CCLA | USCF |
Note that many of Alex Dunne's "Check is in the Mail" columns from Chess Life can be read on the USCF site - a valuable resource! The ASPC site (which used to play a tune when you opened it) seems to have vanished?
There also a number of independent email CC clubs. Here are some:
So far as we can tell, 'For Chess Lovers', SIR and Eclipse no longer exist.
Back to the top of this page
Apart from our own Chess Mail website, where you are now, there was one other very important site to visit regularly: correspondencechess.com, which was established by John Knudsen. In February 2008 it was reported sold to a person not previously involved with it and we do not know yet what will happen with the site.
The main sections of this site are:
plus the Canadian CCA and APCT sites, Chess Journalists of America site etc. Something new can be found here almost every day.
Note that the ICCF online games archive (curator: Wes Green) is now hosted at the main ICCF website.
Back to the top of this page
Several individual CC players have their own websites.
In alphabetical order, others I know about:
Uwe Bekemann (Germany)
Raymond Boger (Norway): see also the CL pages for Randaberg Vikings.
Philippe Chopin (France)
German CC-GM Dr. Stephan Busemann
Dr Michael J. Donnelly (England)
David Flude (Australia) - WRG special!
Viking Chess by Karsten Fyhn: interesting site about Scandinavian chess, written in English by a Dane.
Semyon Goubnitsky (Ukraine) - site partly in English; mostly Russian
Arild Haugen (Norway) is another of the Randaberg Vikings; this is his 'Ramiras' site (NEW URL).
Keith Hayward (USA)
"Herbie" by Christof Herbrechtsmeier (Germany); interesting games (in German).
13th CC World Champion Mikhail Umansky (in German)
Jaap
van der Kooij (The Netherlands)
(Beware: games he offers for download are in old ChessBase format, often
contain duplicates and truncated games, and files usually require a lot
of cleaning up.)
Ragnar Wikman (Finland) Not much chess here.
Back to the top of this page
The principal non-CC links of interest to us are:
The Chess Cafe (home of The Kibitzer). Proprietor: Hanon W. Russell.
Tim Harding's monthly Kibitzer column resides at this very large online magazine website, which is particularly of value to people with an interest in chess history and curiosities, with many columns by other writers. There is also a bulletin board, weekly book reviews of a high standard and an online shop.
The Week In Chess (TWIC) Editor: Mark Crowther; hosted by London Chess Centre.
FIDE (World Chess Federation, governing body for OTB play). Ratings, rules and more.
Ken Whyld Association (The KWA is an international association of people interested in chess literature and chess history. Tim Harding gave a lecture at its 2005 annual meeting in Amsterdam in September 2005.)
Chess History Editor: Richard Forster. This site now includes Edward Winter's Chess Notes which has moved from The Chess Cafe.
Chess
Archaeology Editor: Richard Pope. An older chess history site which
doesn't seem to be kept up to date.
The Irish Chess Archive Editor: IM Mark Orr.
ChessLab
A popular high-tech site, featuring a database of two million interactive
games you can play through with the Chess Tutor java applet. Find games,
download PGN, play through online, analyse online with their engine.
Chessopolis Important site with categorised links and other stuff.
Palamede was an important group of sites but it no longer seems to be functioning except as a loose network of French sites based at a new URL. The name comes from the first French chess magazine published in the 1830s and 1840s.
You can still find the brilliant program Palview4 which is used extensively to present games on our website).
Chess Variants used to be part of Palamede.
GM Alexander Baburin's daily Chess Today and website, GM Square.
Tim Krabbé's Chess Curiosities - a treasure trove of unusual chess facts and strange games.
Back to the top of this page
Books, magazines and publishers
New
In Chess
The world's top chess magazine: eight printed issues per year. Good site
for links and now with an online database of 800,000 games.
British
Chess Magazine
BCM have the contract to do the Chess Notes site for the OTB British Chess
Federation; GM John Emms looks after that.
McFarland
Publishing
U.S. publishers of quality chess history books (usually heavy and expensive,
however).
Moravian
Chess
Dr Vlastimil Fiala's reprint house for chess books and periodicals from
the 19th and early 20th century. They also publish (at erratic intervals)
the 'Quarterly for Chess History'.
Chess
Informator
Yugoslav outfit with the must-have periodicals for the past 30 years but
their ideas about how to make an electronic publication are not to everyone's
taste.
Kingpin
Scurrilous, funny, sometimes serious, sometimes libellous. Only comes
out about 3 times a year when editor Jon Manley is in the mood. A new
issue is just out!
Europe
Echecs The principal chess magazine in French.
Gambit Publications Books published by company run by GMs John Nunn and Murray Chandler and by FM Graham Burgess.
Pickard & Son Based in Dallas, Texas. Pioneers in chess e-books.
Everyman Chess Prolific British chess book publisher.
Alternative reviews are available at: Randy Bauer's Revealing Reviews.
Looking for rare chess books?
Here are four dealers you can contact:
Raimo Lindroos, T:MI Shakeril, Finland, Email: raimo.lindroos@pp.kolumbus.fi
(Also good for literature on oriental games)
Manfred Mädler, Dresden, Germany. Email: Schachhaus.Maedler@t-online.de
(A long-established German dealer and CC master)
Schachbücher Urs Frischherz, Switzerland, Email: urs.frischherz@bluewin.ch
(Good site for bibliographical information on chess books)
Chess Books Online (new Dutch outfit)
Back to the top of this page
Commercial, Software & Miscellaneous
Some other sites we consider worth visiting from time to time:
Australian Chess Enterprises (agent for Chess Mail products Down Under)
Wholesale Chess - Buy chess sets, clocks, boards, pieces, books, and other chess equipment.
Useful Chess - play or learn
Chess Books Online (Netherlands retailers)
Chess Maze International (UK retailers)
DirectoryGame.com - an online directory of game sites
A searchable online chess encyclopaedia: La Mecca.
For game collectors: Britbase is a site we highly recommend for good free downloads of archived British OTB events, plus many links to other sites where more games may be found. This is run by John Saunders who now edits BCM. It links to similar sites in other countries.
If you want to download games by ftp for your database, first get the index from the tremendous University of Pittsburgh pitt.edu site, which has zillions of games and chess software utilities to download in any format you might need. The gamefiles are not really recommended as they include a tremendous amount of incorrect data and garbage,
A particularly good chess coaching page is run by D.R. Regis
of Exeter in England:
The
Exeter Coaching page.
Excellent beginners' information is also available on the site of former North American CC Champion Jon Edwards who is active as a teacher of chess to children.
Bruno Berenguer's Chess Problem of the Day has a new URL.
Internet Chess Club (commercial).
Doctor Unclear's Homepage: exposing cheating on chess servers!
World Chess Network. Ambitious online play site. Pay to join for most features.Microsoft Internet Gaming Zone offers other games besides chess.
Bobby Fischer page by Chuck Ayoub
Software
Dr Robert Pawlak's site for his chess software reviews.
The best program for ICCF email play is probably Ectool by Andres Valverde. Not free, but cheap and it supports both PGN and ICCF message formats.
ChessBase GmbH. The world's biggest chess software company hardly need any introduction, do they?
ChessBase USA US agent for ChessBase.
Chess Assistant Excellent rival Russian program with support in USA and UK.
For chess fonts, we use the Alpine Electronics series created by the late Steve Smith, the true professional choice for chess publishers but perhaps expensive for others. They are now available again for online purchase.
For advice about diagrams, fonts and chess publishing tips, try the page run by Eric Bentzen for Nørresundby Chess Club's En Passant pages (Denmark). Part of the highly recommended Palamede site (listed under Favourites)
Chess Puzzles: chess tutorial software and training simulators for beginners and tournament chess players.
Back to the top of this page
So you want to play some strange openings?
Diemer-Duhm Gambit: Jyrki Heikkinen
The Chess Kamikaze Page wild and woolly openings and gambits
Sokolsky Opening, 1 b4: Marek Trokenheim.
Alternative Orang-Utan opening site (editor Benoit St.-Jean).
Urusov Gambit and related lines (Michael Goeller). MUCH IMPROVED!
Winckelmann-Reimer Gambit site (David Flude).
Nimzowitsch
Defence and Clarendon Court Opening (Marek Soszynski, Sutton Coldfield
Chess Club site, England)
ChessPublishing.com
If you want to play proper openings and are willing to pay good money...
English-run subscription venture, updated monthly and aimed primarily
at the keen amateur and improving player. It's a sort of opening theory
encyclopaedia/magazine divided into twelve sections edited by different
experts (mostly GMs). You can subscribe to just the openings you want,
or the lot. Updated monthly with PDF booklets and downloadable games.
Back to the top of this page