Roscoe's Story

postcards

Ah, postcards

Chess Card

A few days ago jetgirl wrote about her fascination with postcards on her blog. Reading her delightful post brought back fond memories of years ago when I used to send and receive them on a regular basis.

I am a Correspondence Chess (CC) player you see, and have been for longer than most Fosstodon folks have been alive. Before the advent of personal computers, most of us mailed our moves back and forth to each other on postal correspondence cards. At the top of this post are pictured the front and back of one such card. (Yes, I still have a small stash of them.)

It was common practice for us then to have two games in progress at the same time with reversed colors with each opponent. In Game “A” for example I may play the White pieces, and in Game “B” I'd be Black. You'll notice on the front side of each card there is a small board diagram. When preparing to send a card we'd fill the diagram with the board position of one of our games, usually using red ink to denote each White Piece and Black ink for the Black.

On the back of each card you'll see there's ample room to list the three most recent moves in algebraic notation for each game.

Now we all use the Internet, most often via server-based chess clubs, to play our CC games. But I do miss using the postal cards... sometimes.

And the adventure continues.


Published on 17 July 2020, ~20:30 CDT, this is my post number 45/100/365 of the https://100daystooffload.com blogging challenge.

#100DaysToOffload #postcards #Postalchess #SevenTwoProject


by Roscoe