ICC Help: correspondence

The ICC has correspondence (postal) chess! ICC makes it very easy to play correspondence chess by tracking all the necessary information automatically for you, such as move times and dates, positions, etc. Correspondence chess is a good way to improve your chess skills, by giving you hours to analyze the positions and make strong moves. Many famous players, such as Keres, played correspondence chess.

You can play both unrated quads and choose from a variety of rated correspondence events. Use of computers is not allowed in any official ICC correspondence tournaments except unrated quads started by the "CorrComputer" TD account. Read help cc-quads for more information.

Join the unrated ICC Correspondence Quads! help CC-Quads for info. Join rated ICC Correspondence Events! help CC-Events for info.

A correspondence game can last for many weeks or months. You can spend several days planning your move. A typical time control for correspondence games is 10 moves in 30 days. The time control is determined by the tournament director, or by agreement with your opponent for non-tournament games.

The two main differences between ICC correspondence chess games and other games on ICC are: 1) You and your opponent do not need to be logged into ICC at the same time, and 2) The clocks go up, and you cannot flag your opponent. Time forfeits can be claimed by you through the use of the "cc-ask" command, which is explained below, and determined by a tournament director. Typically, your opponent will receive one warning if they violate the time control and then the game will be adjudicated by the tournament director. In this case of two opponents never making a move in a tournament game, the tournament director will most often abort the correspondence game in question.

Here is a basic description of how to play. For complete details on each command, please read the descriptions below. Let's say you want to play a game against "Bob". You want to be White. To start the game, type:

cc-start-as-white Bob

This will create a game in your correspondence list and in Bob's list. You can see your list of games by typing "cc-list". Each game has a number. Your game with Bob might be number #3. Postal games have a "#" symbol. You can abort a game any time before Black's first move is played, as explained below in the command descriptions.

Let's say you want to make your first move, Nf3, against Bob. Type:

cc-move #3 Nf3

ICC will display the position after your move, and ask you if you really want to make that move. You MUST reply by typing "yes" or "no". The move will not be recorded unless you type "yes".

Each time you make a move, your opponent will get an ICC message, and the position and clocks will be updated in both players correspondence list. If you would like to receive email notification of moves, type "set messmail on".

"cc-list" shows you a list of all your games. The display shows the amount of time by each player in DAYS, the last two half-moves played, and a * if it is your turn to move in that game. It also displays the tournament label if the game is part of an official tournament with a director.

"smoves #3" will show you a complete list of all the moves in the game. It also shows the date each move was made, the time used to make each move in days, and the total time used by each player after each move.

"sposition #3" would show you the current position in your game #3.

For privacy, nobody can look at your correspondence games, except for you and the tournament director. Admins cannot see your games.

Channel 240 is the Correspondence Channel. You can look for opponents and chat about correspondence there.

To send comments or suggestions about correspondence chess to the ICC, please send email to icc@chessclub.com or send an ICC message to the "suggestion" account.

The commands below explain how you can offer draws and aborts, resign a game, delete a completed game, examine a game, display the move list, and email the move list.

Commands for playing correspondence chess on the ICC:

cc-start-as-white <player>
- Example: "cc-start-as-white Bob"
- Creates a correspondence game between you (as White) and the specified registered ICC member, who need not be present. This command also sends that player a message. You can then go ahead and make the first move with the cc-move command. Note that in correspondence chess tournaments, the tournament director will start your game for you, so you needn't use this command. You do "set ccopen 0" to avoid having random people start correspondence games with you. (The default is 1 for registered ICC members.)

cc-start-as-black <player>
- Starts a game with you playing Black.

cc-list
- Lists your correspondence games, with a summary of the state of each one. (Admins can do cc-list <player>)

cc-move #<num> <move>
- Example: "cc-move #3 e4"
- Play a move in a game #<num> on your cc-list. Actually this command will display the position after the move, and ask you if you are sure you want to play it, to which you should respond "yes" or "no". Making the move also results in a message being sent.

cc-delete #<num>
- Example: "cc-delete #5"
- Deletes a completed or aborted game from your cc-list. You can only have 50 games in your cc-list. You can save the game to your library before deleting it, using the libsave command described in help libraries.

cc-ask-director #<num> <message>
- Example: "cc-ask-director #5 I claim a time forfeit."
- This sends a message to the tournament director for that game, or to "adjudicate" if there is no TD. Use this instead of "message adjudicate", because even admins can't easily access your correspondence games. In general, we do NOT adjudicate correspondence games except in cases of time forfeits in a tournament with a time control. Or in the case of an expired account.

Correspondence games are specified by #<num>, for example #3. This can be used in commands such as sposition, libsave, etc. In some cases this does something more than you might expect:

smoves #<num>
- Example: "smoves #3"
- Lists the moves in one of your correspondence games, complete with information about when each move was played as well as the time used for that move and total time used by that player (in days).

mailstored #<num>
- Example: "mailstored #3"
- If you have mailformat=0, mailstored will use the correspondence format; i.e., it will include the date of each move, etc.

draw #<num>
- Example: draw #5
- Offer (or claim) a draw in a correspondence game (via a message). Like cc-move, this command will require a yes/no confirmation.

abort #<num>
- Example: abort #3 Ask to abort a correspondence game (via a message), after confirmation. You can unilaterally abort a game before both players have completed move one.

resign #<num>
- Example: resign #3
- Resign a correspondence game, after confirmation.

examine #<num>
- Example: examine #5
- Examines the game starting at the end. Examined correspondence games are private, meaning that no one else can observe them. Clock values displayed will not make sense. Use the "cc-list" or "smoves" command to see the actual clock times in days.

For commands used by correspondence tournament directors, please see help corr-tourn.

See also: corr-tourn, CC-Quads, CC-Event, CC-Rating