Correspondence Chess Sets

While a few people have played correspondence chess for centuries, paying for a messenger, or even paying letter rates, was relatively expensive for messages that contained little more than a confirmation of the last move and a description of the next move. But, once postal services began charging lower rates for postcards late in the 19th century, playing chess with a pen pal -- and using the paraphernalia associated with it -- became widespread.

Postcards printed for chess games included spaces for information like the players' names, confirmation of the last move, the move being made, the dates the moves were sent and received (for time controls), and situations such as conditional moves, protesting an illegal move, making a draw offer, resignation, and tournament information like section and round numbers.

Far-flung correspondents might use different notation systems, so correspondence chess organizations adopted a universal notation system, which used only two, two-digit numbers to represent chessmen being moved from one square to another.

When the entire form took up only one side of the postcard, the board diagrams were usually too small for anything but notation reference or indications of recent moves. However, when a postal system allowed both sides of the card to be pre-printed, the boards could occupy part of the obverse side and be large enough to allow complete chess diagrams, either with letter abbreviations for the pieces, or inked rubber-stamped chessmen.

Since games could last for months, correspondence players usually played several games at once. Using actual boards to keep track of many simultaneous games was impractical, so spiral-bound cards of chess boards with paper pieces inserted in them and paper scoresheets inserted on the obverse sides of the cards were frequently used instead.