FICS - Free Internet Chess Server
FICS
8708 31ST Ave N
New Hope
Mn 55427
FICS 10th Anniversary Celebrations
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.

History
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.

The present
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).

The Events
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.

The Team matches

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.

Registration

All tourney entrants must be FICS registered users, if you are not already you can Register for free online.

The Sponsors
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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Last modified: Mon Feb 14 18:00:41 GMT Standard Time 2005