Chess.com Feature Request and Wishlist #5

I would love to see a better interface for book opennings.  Maybe a way to practice book opennings would be nice.  It could even be like the tactics trainer, you choose a specific openning variation and then play it out on either side receiving a score based on time limit and if you missed a move.  You could take it one stop further and have random variations based on the first two moves, so you will be ready with anything your opponent throws at you in a specific system.

Absolutely seconded. 

Another good suggestion gumpty.

There was also some talk a while about about allowing vote chess to be broken out into nominate/vote phases.  Basically dividing the group into two based on rating and having one group do a preliminary vote in order to determine the top 3-5 choices, and to have a second group vote from among those choices (without seeing the distribution of the nomination vote) to select the move.

I think some interesting possibilities come up depending on whether you choose to have the higher or lower rated group doing the nominating versus voting.

I haven't read all 300+ posts in this thread, so I don't know whether this has been suggested, but...

How about a place somewhere in the profile or in the My Online Chess page where we can see the current scores in our team matches?  Maybe there could be links to the matches, too.  Maybe "My Team Matches"?  Also, how about a "My Vote Chess" page that features only the games that we have joined (in addition to the current "Vote Chess" button in the "Play" tab on the green bar at the top of the screen, which shows all vote chess games, including the ones we haven't joined).

I'd especially like the team matches feature, as I suppose most of us World League participants would find this very useful!

A suggestion for vacation protection:

Just because I've come dangerously close to timing out on one of my games doesn't mean that the timer should be stopped on all of my games.  I think that it's terribly unfair, particularly to my opponents who's games didn't trigger time out, to have my clock in their games stopped earlier in the cycle than those in the game that actually triggered the auto-vacation.

I'd propose that when I come back off of vacation protection that the time remaining on each of my games be the larger of the actual time had the clock continued to count down, or 90 minutes (which I believe is roughly the threshold to trigger timeout protection).

It really should only be used as a last resort, I'd hope that something like this would drive that point home.  I think it also makes the impact of auto-protection slightly more fair amongst all of the opponents of the person using it.

that's not the way the script works :( you can't just be on vacation for certain games...

Understood -- it's the idealist in me....

Perhaps a more practical request:

I'd love the ability to be able to set up a timed game refresh that triggered on a periodic basis for mobile chess but only when the application is not in focus.

I often keep the app running in the background so that I don't have to wait to login, but currently I still have to wait to refresh games.  The reason I'd only want it to trigger when the application is not in focus is so that it wouldn't interrupt me when I'm actually using it.

As an added bonus, if at all possible when a new game comes in on one of these autorefreshes having the application icon change, or setting some other kind of visual alert on my Blackberry would be invaluable.

Yeah, that's a nice idea...

It would be nice if you could tell from the games archive page which games have had computer analysis and which have not. Right now, you have to open each game individually which is a little tedious.

http://www.chess.com/home/my_archive.html?show=echess - computer icon on the left :)

Many times when I post a comment in a vote game the comment disappears.  Also, I'm not sure if staff is aware but the formatting of posts in Vote games is different from posts on the forums.  You have to leave double-spaces between paragraphs or it's as if you just pressed return once.

Also, the analysis board option is hidden on some computers (with smaller screens), you have to scroll right to scroll down on the moves list to click analysis board.

Also, I checked out the site without being logged in &, in my opinion, it's a bit too clogged with ads.  I know y'all have got to make a living but (again in my opinion) popups are a major turn off & might be turning away potential new customers albeit for short term profit (also ads that speak to you make me want to exit a site & not come back to it).

If the ads would have been as annoying as they are now in the beginning I may not have become so enamored (also I liked the 10 Tactics Trainer probs a day, I think you should re-raise it to at least 5 for non-paying members).

I understand it's a fine line between making the site too nice for non-paying members & having it be so restricted (and or cluttered with ads) that it turns off potential clients.  In my opinion it's best to err slightly on the side of making it too nice.

easy to say from where you sit :)

Like I said, I know you got to make a living here & that all these cool features come with a price.  I'm not commenting to complain (I don't personally have to see the stuff anyway) just giving feedback.

Anyway, while I'm here, let me offer a constructive idea - as much as I don't like ads I think maybe a single small text-ad in the corner of Live chess (rotating once an hour or so maybe) might be A : unobtrustive enough to not get much guff about from members, B : visible enough (& for long enough & by 400-500 people at any given moment) to be attractive to advertisers.

Obviously you should make this add invisible to premium members though of course.

Anyway, thanks for personally stopping by from time to time & keep up the good work.

That's perfect, but when I click on My Games Archive from my Online Chess, it takes me to game_archive.html, which doesn't show that handy-dandy icon :)

There is a drop-down on the upper-left hand side of the page where you can choose "Computer Analyzed" games.

Tuning E-mail alerts?

I don't want to be notified when it is my move, but everything else is fine for me

List of vote chess games that I'm playing, the same way as the online chess games list.

Try My Home > Account > Alert & Email Settings