Inside Correspondence Chess

The famous Café de la Régence of Paris

Image published on "Le Monde Illustré" of March 7, 1874.
In the 1830s the London chess club was playing the Paris chess club in a series of correspondence matches.


This website is designed to test a new scoring system
for tiebreaks in correspondence chess.


The basic idea behind the new scoring system is to rate the players' performances per match on a scale of 0 to 5 points in the event of a tie at the end of a tournament.

For the first time, drawn games will be scored differently in the tiebreaker, depending on whether players maintained a material advantage or suffered a material disadvantage.

Starting on 15 November, the website will report on a high-level tournament featuring 13 players, most of whom are grandmasters in correspondence chess. They will test the new ideas on the ICCF server in accordance with the rules of play and tournament rules applicable there.

The website will report on the progress of the tournament, which is expected to last one to two years (or even langer), document the tiebreak scoring and provide important background information.

The inventor of the new and unique scoring system, Venceslav Rutar, is donating a prize fund of $1,000 for the test tournament.

More on this coming soon...