SNAFU!!!!

It is often said, 'The best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry.'

This line from Burn's well known poem To a Mouse is cited whenever there is the mother of all cock-ups and none was as spectacular as the cock-up that happened yesterday just literally before the start of the opening round of group matches of the ECF's inaugural Online County Championship.

As the players were going through pre-match routine chess.com announced that they were to reboot their servers. Well how inconvenient is that! County captains had worked hard since the preparatory round to build their squads, select their teams and even assist the ECF Controller with a new format of submitting team sheets. All this hard work was undone with the words, 'Server reboot.' As to be expected these words wrecked the round as players were unable to issue or receive challenges, players in the midst of play were puzzled as to what would happen to their game in progress; would it resume from point of reboot? Or would they have to start again? Those who did try to restart found they were discombobulated and made errors in opening moves which they had not made since their days of learning how to play game in first place. If the players were having a fraught time how about the administrators? Try sending messages to players when a system does not allow group messages, or players have gone into non-match communication mode, (why is there a rule disabling chat? I'm sure at some stage during a match we've exchanged pleasantries made a cursory nod to a good move and so on so why not be able to do it here? Surely chat can be enabled so that communication only takes place between players and protocols applied?) Consequently numerous messages via email, chess.com messaging and text along with various telephone calls had to be fielded or made. Well this was the experience of Mx Captain and if he had to manage the queries of three teams it is safe to conclude captains with fewer teams had the same problems albeit to a lesser degree. Needless to say confusion abounded before and after the rescheduled start time. What was also galling was that problems remained after rescheduled time leading to the reasonable decision to abort the round. This though did not help players who were able to proceed with their game and were smug in their belief that their victory would push the team to victory or stave off inevitable defeat. For those brave few who were able to conclude their games they found their efforts were all for naught as their game would only count on an individual basis. All in all a shocking state of affairs.

There may be valid reasons for the reboot but there is no valid reason for a popular platform not to take reasonable actions to protect and inform its users ahead of time or take steps to avoid a major meltdown. More importantly surely a platform the size of chess.com has back up servers so that when a reboot is going to occur there can be a seamless switch? Your author does not profess to be a computer whizz but has been often told make sure you back up documents, etc in the event something goes wrong with your computer, i.e. blue screen of death! Many members of chess.com use other platforms and incidents such as this raise questions as to how arrogant the platform is? Is their thinking, 'We have many users and will continue to have many users so doesn't matter how we treat them'? From a customer's point of view this would not encourage them to continue to use or promote others to sign up. If ECF are aware of this God-Complex then why did they sign up to the platform? Now although the author has been critical it must be said here are many positive features to the platform but a major incident like this will hasten the loss of existing members and discourage others from joining. Furthermore for those clamouring for a transfer to another platform can they confidently say no major incident of this scale will occur on their platform of choice? Much needs to be explored regarding the playing of classical chess online and a competition such as this is a perfect testing ground. It therefore is beholden on Associations to support this endeavour. Yes questions about the correct platform will arise but it would be a pity if online chess became the preserve of quickplay and blitz.

Time will tell how the ECF respond to this incident and the impact it will have on the remainder of the competition but an incident of this scale at the outset does not augur well. The hope is that captains and players will not be too discouraged see it as one of those things and bounce back and be even stronger; the notion of bouncebackability!

Mx opening games have been abandoned but they look forward not only to their rescheduling but to the next (first?) round of matches on 20th June.

Mx A vs Yorkshire

Mx B vs. Gloucestershire

Mx u1825 have a rest week as their next game is not until 4th July

Mx top two teams are in action. Mx B expect a tougher encounter as they play Gloucestershire. It would be fair to say that due to the strength of Derbyshire had the match gone ahead in food terms they would have been an amuse bouche. The tie of next week's round must be the clash between Mx A and Yorkshire. The past few years have seen Yorkshire inflict OTB defeats in SF/F of the County Championship. Will Mx break the trend in their online contest? One thing for sure is how this week's incident affects the enthusiasm of all involved. It is hoped though that the contests they have played recently in the physical world will be replicated in the virtual one!