Internet and Chess

by Bill Wall

In the late 1980s, I was playing

chess by correspondence (email
chess) on the ARPANET while
assigned to NASA.

In 1987, I was playing email chess

on Leisure Linc, an early on-line
"internet" company. It was the first
national online chess bulletin board
system (BBS) and was run out of
Greensboro, NC. Leisure Linc later
became the USA Today (USAT) Bill Wall
Sport Center in 1989. The cost was
$5 an hour to be online.
CompuServe was charging 25 cents
a minute to be online, so LINC was
cheaper.
Many a Bishop has dominated
In 1988, I was active on the many a castle.
rec.games.chess Usenet newsgroup
and email chess. Other newsgroups
were rec.games.chess.analysis,
rec.games.chess.computer, and
rec.games.chess.politics.

In 1992, the first Internet chess

server (ICS) was launched. It later
evolved into the Internet Chess
Club (ICC) in 1995.

From 1993 to 1997, I had a small

web site at
www.txdirect.net/users/wall/. It was
one of the first personal web sites
dedicated to chess. Also in 1993, I
started converting all my games
into Portable Game Notation (pgn)
format, created by Steven Edwards,
which was perfect for databases and
computers.

In 1994, I was playing

correspondence chess at the
International E-mail Chess Club
(IECC) as one of its founders and
VP games and chess analysis editor
for Chess Bits & Pieces online
chess newsletter. I was also
tournament director of the pyramid
ladder challenge competition. I am
still an active member and played
several games in the past year.

I was also playing chess at the

International Email Chess Group
(IECG). IECG was active until
2010.

In 1995, I was one of the first

members of www.zone.com before
it was taken over by Microsoft
(Microsoft's Internet Gaming
Zone). I was one of the first sysops
and online tournament directors,
and directed the first online zone
chess tournament. I may have
directed the first worldwide Internet
chess tournament. Free prizes were
later sent out to winners in each
section by Microsoft. My handle
was ajeeb.

In 1996, I contributed pgn files of

game collections to ftp.pitt.edu.

In 1997, I had a web site at

geocities.com, the Bill Wall's Chess
Page. That was active until it closed
in 2007.

In 1997, I was playing chess at the

Yahoo! Games site.
In 1998, I was playing chess on the
Free Internet Chess Server (FICS). I
am still active on that site and my
handle, like everywhere else, is
billwall. Catch me if you can.

In 2003, an Italian player wrote a

Wikipedia article on me, which was
posted on Wikipedia until 2011. By
then, the Wikipedia police decided I
was not notable enough in the chess
world and deleted the Wikipedia
entry for Bill Wall (2
recommendations to keep, 5
recommendations to delete).

In 2004, I became a member of

chessgames.com (my handle is
wwall). It wasn't a site to play
chess, but it was a place that had a
large chess database. I have 369 of
my own games on the site and have
contributed hundreds of
biographical information and game
analysis.

In 2007, I was one of the first chess

players at www.chess.com, which is
now the largest online place to play
chess.

In 2009, I contributed about 100

collections of games in pgn format
at gambitchess.com. The collections
are not on my chess page at
http://billwall.phpwebhosting.com/.

In 2010, I wrote a chess e-magazine

called White Knight Review. All
the issues are available on my chess
page.

In 2011, I started playing blitz chess

at playchess.com, run by
ChessBase. It seems to be the
fastest place to get an opponent
with less waiting. I found that the
higher rated you get, the longer it
took to get an opponent. As a guest,
or anonymous player, I get an
opponent with a wait time less than
a minute in most cases.

In 2012, I started writing chess

columns at Chess Maniac, an online
chess-playing site.

In 2014, Thomas Katsampes of St.

Paul, Minnesota, put together my
web site, Bill Wall's Chess Page. I
have thousands of chess articles and
pgn games and we think it is the
world's largest online chess
collection. We added a Twitter
account for chess, @billwallchess
in December, 2016.

In 2015, I experimented with

making videos of chess miniature
games and put them on YouTube.

In 2016, I began to play regularly at

lichess.com and that is my current
favorite chess site to play chess.
You can find me playing 10 minute
games (or sometimes faster blitz)
under the handle billwall.

In 2017, I became a premium

member of 2700chess.com with
access to a 6 million game
database.

I play chess online at other sites,

too. These sites include
sparkchess.com, gameknot.com,
chesstempo.com, chesscube.com,
instantchess.com, chessok.com,
redhotpawn.com, and Internet
Chess Club (ICC).

I am also a member of sites with

large chess databases, such as
365chess.com and chess-db.com.

I have contributed to other sites,

including thechesspedia.com,
ChessBase, chessDryad,
ChessCentral, Chessopolis,
OlimpBase, Rick Kennedy's Jerome
Gambit site (my favorite gambit in
blitz), Marek's 1.b4 site, and Chess
Pastebin.

Many of my chess books have been

scanned and are available at my
chess page or at archive.org.

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Wall
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