match endpoints feedback

Hi @skelos yes the team1 is the one on the left (this is valid since the language is LTR).

Thanks. LTR isn't familiar to me from my (outdated?) CS degree, but left-to-right is OK.

Maybe document that? Or (breaking change) "left_team" and "right_team" would be blatantly obvious. (Other than that they're clubs in V3 ...  )

Another item:

Background: One World League is a new competition running a series of rating limited 25 and 50 board competitions.

In examining a match balance, looking on the web I noticed one player @cibletownslim  exceeded the rating ceiling and thought, "I'd better update my script to exclude such players." Only he's in the api.chess.com data but without a rating.

Some documentation covering what we might expect to see when:

1. A player's current rating is inappropriate for the match (the website as you will know pushes their name to the bottom of the list, and if they increase or decrease rating before the start of the match and become eligible they'll be included)

2. What happens for boards outside the limit for the maximum number of boards? (As an aside, I think that match was set up incorrectly. It is supposed to be a 25 board match precisely, so minimum and maximum should have been the same, but that's irrelevant for my request for documentation).

Current example:

https://www.chess.com/club/matches/no-pasaran/880348/games

https://api.chess.com/pub/match/880348

{"username":"cibletownslim","timeout_percent":0,"status":"premium"},

Thanks, and if I've not been sufficiently clear, please don't hesitate to ask questions to clarify.

Giles

Another oddity, although this may involve caching in part and a website/backend bug as well.

A player whose account is closed (not a fair play closure, simply closed; could be anything including self-closure from V2) is showing on the website in this match on board one:

https://www.chess.com/club/matches/outback/880134

https://www.chess.com/club/matches/outback/880134

{"username":"laklom53","rating":2176,"timeout_percent":0,"status":"basic"},

That status usually goes to "closed" quite quickly; I see it sometimes in the national players endpoint where someone has logged in in the last 24 hours and closed their account. Hence my thought about caching.

It remains odd that the player hasn't been removed from the match, but that's where I think it may be a website (or the backend store for matches) getting something wrong. That's been reported by someone else as a potential bug but is probably in support's hands right now. (i.e. If you want, go hunt for it, but a ticket should be opened reasonably soon if this is a bug, and it doesn't seem like useful behaviour).

Thanks,

Giles

I think this was caching ... the account being closed didn't trigger an update to the match endpoint perhaps, but when the player was removed (automatically or manually I don't know) that does seem to have triggered a cache update for api.chess.com.

My next problem was my match report wasn't seeing the user but I was in my browser. My browser was caching the data ... force a reload of the page and the user is gone.

Isn't programming fun?

Me again. During the registration phase of a match rating and timeout percentage(*) are supplied. While interesting, to predict the result of a board requires not just both players' ratings but their Glicko RDs. Those are available in each player's statistics, so I can get them, but as a low priority enhancement request I will ask for the RD to be included along with the rating since data is already duplicated.

(*) I still would prefer that the timeout value be a decimal value and match the website, not an integer. Failing that, I would like the value to be lowered to an integer floor rather than rounded, and that be documented for both users and developers to maintain. I've mentioned this before somewhere but don't recall any comments about it.

@skelos :

- Yes you are right, user status change doesn't directly invalidates Team Match endpoint. We will think pros and cons of adding also this invalidation;

- The missing rating looks like a bug, I've created an issue and I'll take the chance to check if it is possible to add Glicko RD as requested.

Thanks. I'm not sure what to do about a "closed" account, but if the website leaves someone in a match I'd like to see "closed". I suspect that's a bug, but inconsistency is also a bug ... and if the missing rating is a bug then we'll need to code against minimum and maximum ratings. Easy. I did that then took the code out again. I can reverse it once more.

- Timeout integer vs decimal value? (Nag, nag. )

If the ratings are non-empty for ineligible players, I note that the rating limits for the match are not included in the endpoint. I suggest they belong in settings.

Clearly, I've been looking only at open matches until the last couple of days!

@skelos I haven't forgot about the timeout issue. At this very moment there is a little funny PHP issue that is forcing us to use integers instead of floats. So for now the timeout is integer and is rounded to floor or ceiling depending which one is nearest.

I know that In this case "14.99" rounds to "15" that isn't what needed, but I'm confident we will have this fixed in a week.

OK, thanks. Matching the website is always good!