A few ideas to improve the experience of Live Chess:

It would be good to be able to ping your opponent to see if they're still online. Lag can be very annoying and it can be hard to work out if it's you or your opposition.

Bring back the parameters of people's seeks. I used to like being able to see the ranges of other people's seeks. Why mask the information?

Bring back the Players tab. Again, why hide this information? It was nice to be able to have a peek and see who was online.

That's all from me for now. Anyone have any other suggestions?

I pretty much agree, though I think they changed not showing the parameters now because you can only see the seeks of other people you fit the parameters of?

Definitely seconding (very strongly) the players tab coming back, although I thought I heard someone say that they had some problems with it and were working on bringing it back.

thanks w_mihaly,

definitely said what many are thinking,

easy access to player info is a big requirement for the development of a true online community.

agree on all fronts

i would like to add one more idea -

should be possible to have a criteria as well for players ms when you make a seek. don't know if that would ruin it for people with a bad connection, it might, but when you play fast games the exstra time both players get is just...mehh, kinda ruins the point of playing fast games x.x

It would be better if we make the game flexible by putting some keyword proposals such as 

- extend time

- put the last move back

- restart the game

- how are you, wassup, hifi, rofl, etc. keyword shortcuts ........

if possible.

In that way, there will be no hassle on playing this game.

In the seeks tab i think that only the current  rating is not enough to find out a player s strength....

it is useful to see - from the stats sheet - the avarage rating for the players opponnts.

example: you can push your rating to 1500 by playing 1100- 1200 rated opponents...so your real rating is around 1200

And perhaps the ability to ditch a game without losing rating points when the opposition is clearly having connection troubles but doesn't seem to have abandoned the game yet.

Can you make it so we can import a custom chess position/board?

For example, a user can load a game from their archive, and start playing from move 30 or whatever?

Cheers.

And stop the disconnecting.

also ive actually had chess.com resign me in a game twice without me resigning at all.

Ping-ing is a brilliant idea! Use that networking concept here. What i do to check for lag, type 'test' everytime i think there might be a lag. But then again, i wouldn't know if its me or the opponent. If ping-ing could be incorporated here, it would greatly improve playing Live.

I think the live chess interface is very nice, especially being able to choose the piece font and board colours, bravo. I also like the ability to choose 'randomly switch sides'; Yahoo! Chess is lacking that. 

What is lacking here is a 'request undo' button for friendly games, as in Yahoo! Chess, Caissa and Pogo. Everyone makes a mouse gaff or a ridiculous blunder when playing a friendly/learning session. Also when showing someone a variation etc, one could use the 'request undo' button for backing up and trying a different line. 

Here's one that would be good: somewhere I'd like to be able to see the mods/staff/help people who are online, so that I know who to address if I have a question/problem/concern

Furthermore, if you pre-move to promote a pawn, it shouldn't automatically be a queen unless you also have that option checked.

Make it possible to rejoin your game if you are disconnected. I am dc'ed about 1 out of every 3 games and it is beginning to be very annoying. I understand that nothing is perfect but come-on....the disconnects are out of hand.

Reduce the amount of bandwidth Live Chess uses. Even better, provide a protocol so the community can come up with their own (or use other freely available, like xboard) clients.

T think that losing to someone due to disconnection is totally unfair. Please try to remedie this situation, it's so annoying and it happens a lot.  

I suggest that when you have internet connection problems and you lose it wont affect rating problems.

I play another game, pente at pente.org, that a couple features that would solve some concerns if added here. When a player gets disconnected, the game is immediately paused and s/he has 7 minutes to return before the opponent can cancel the game or force a resignation if the winner is clear. Also, it has an undo button that can be used at any time, but the opponent chooses whether or not to allow the undo. These two features, in my opinion, have removed most computer related promblems like internet disconnection and accidental mouse clicks.