Summary

  • FICS's September 1995 guidance said network delay could consume a player's chess time. An opponent could offer extra time or agree to stop, but was free to keep playing.
  • Timeseal recorded thinking time so transmission time could be excluded. Using it required suitable software and the right connection path; the server's clock remained official.

Chess already gave players enough ways to lose. Early internet play added one more: spend your allotted thinking time waiting for the internet. The opponent had made a move, the position was travelling across the network, and your clock could be paying for the journey. The connection had joined the game without learning the rules.

Free Internet Chess Server, or FICS, dates its then-current form to March 1995 in its July 1998 FAQ. Its contemporary help files reveal a service working out what online competition should count. A timed game gives each player a limited amount of time to decide their moves. Network delay made that allowance depend partly on how long the moves and positions took to travel.

The lag guidance revised in September 1995 offered a remarkably human menu of remedies. Choose longer games or a larger increment—the extra time added for each move. Play unrated games while the connection improves. Tell your opponent. They might give you time, hold off claiming a win on the clock, agree to cancel the game or adjourn it until later. They might also carry on. Courtesy was available; compulsory generosity was absent.

This mattered because a time claim had a defined result. The November 1995 flag instructions told players that the command asked the server to inspect both clocks. If the opponent had run out while the claimant still had time, it claimed a win. If both had run out, it claimed a draw. If the opponent had time left, the server returned an error. The program had to decide what the clock actually said before the score could follow.

The same instructions contained a detail capable of spoiling a premature celebration: zero on your screen could differ from the official time. FICS kept the authoritative clocks on the server and sent them again after each move. Transmission delay and Timeseal could leave the display showing something different. A number on one player's screen was a local view of an ongoing exchange.

Timeseal addressed the accounting problem. The help file written in August 1995 and revised in May 1998 describes it as a relay that tracked transmission timing and recorded the player's thinking time. The network could take its usual leisurely route; those travel seconds were excluded from the player's allowance. Fairness had acquired a software component.

Obtaining that treatment took work. Some interfaces included Timeseal; other users needed a version for the host connecting them to the chess server. The Unix instructions revised in April 1998 preserved a platform list dated January 1996, spanning systems including AIX, Linux, NeXTSTEP and SunOS. Users had to identify their host, obtain a suitable program and make the chess interface use it.

One instruction was particularly consequential. In the local-relay arrangement, the interface had to connect to the relay on its own machine. Connecting straight to the remote chess server bypassed Timeseal. A player could have the right program sitting on disk and still send every move around it. Installing the remedy and using the remedy were separate pieces of work.

The documents therefore describe two ways to cope with the same irritation. Players could negotiate a concession across the board, or arrange for timing software to apply a different calculation. The first depended on the opponent's response; the second depended on a working client setup. Help files and the service's help channel were part of making that setup usable.

For a chess service, this was a small but pointed test of its rules. The server could judge a time loss, yet it also had to decide which elapsed seconds belonged to the player. Timeseal gave it a way to charge for thought while letting the connection do its waiting elsewhere. The modem had finally been taken off the clock.