The Players list is a great way to get a feel for the ratings in the room. I generally use it to find people who aren't on my friends list though... often enough that's the only way to challenge them to a game (a hotkey to challenge might be nice).
As for the Games tab... if I want to watch a chess game I'm not doing it in live chess at chess.com.
Lite (the new way to spell light, but with 20% less letters) live chess is absolutely the way to go.
-matt
i use the players tab to look for available players near my rating so that i can challenge them. The current set up have done away this. What you can see now are players who are currently playing and most often they are in a match games.So have to wait for a long time before you can challenge them.
The GAMES tab, I've used two ways:
The PLAYERS tab, I've used only one way:
The "particular player" is often someone I've pre-arranged to play against. I know their username, but they aren't a friend, and aren't participating in the chat.
I used the players tab to navigate which members are online and also to issue challenges to members who normally don't check the seeks tab, which happens to be quiet a few people. :). Not to mention there avatars are totally freaken sweet. :)
As for the games tab, this is the only site that i know of that displays every game in a tab. I think having the top 3 games from each time control displayed in the list would be much more appropriate.
I agree with you!!! I prefer the player tab to the game tab, if I had to choose, player tab is ALOT easier to find the game you want than the game tab
why don't you have diff. lists in diff. rating levels like 0-500, 501-1000, etc. to challenge anyone in their respective levels or observe the games in their chosen ratings
the game window is cool, since you can look at the games of the higher rated people.
I use the games tab because I like to observe games! And when I play live chess, I get random observers regularly, so it seems to me that a lot of people similarly make good use of this tab.
And of course a players tab is useful because I may want to keep tabs on a certain player, communicate with him/her, or also use it to look for new players to issue a challenge to.
Both of these tabs are essential, if you really want to build a live chess site that can compete with the others. They are core features that go a long way towards making it a community.
Having a 'top games' tab is no good. Some players will want to observe games at their own level. The same argument holds for a 'top players' tab.
Like others have suggested, the clear solution is to make the tabs function only by queries. The default appearance of the tabs would be a few drop-down menus where the user could filter the results, choosing their desired rating range, time control (quick/long/blitz), etc. Only when the user submitted a query would the data be retrieved. Make the default settings in the drop-downs center on high-rated players/games if you find that people are looking for that stuff more than anything else.
Having the tabs update themselves continuously compromises performance greatly, while adding just a small amount of usability/functionality.
you kwno what i would like there on the games tab is a filter.
For example today i won a few games against person X.
I called it pure luck, and i wonder how X would play against others.
Then type in his name, and be able to see his online game with another player.
Also what would be nice, is to have a prefered play color, people dont have to fill it in, but when used and the other hasn't filled it in set to random, it becomes your prefered color game. This might be nice for people who try to train on a certain opening. If both prefer black or white ofcourse it becomes random again. And if non prefer its random too. Actualy that status your own color can be showed like now in the seek. So you know you can play your prefered color or not.
Also be able to ignor other watchers chat input by blocking, its okay to talk only after the game.
Another chat improvement maybe have a talking icon, so you can let now your the kind of person who likes to discus games afterwards if you loose or win them it doesnt matter your out there to learn, so you gladly discuss afterwards.
It's a pretty that this happen not that much i think.
have option to disallow oponents using pre-moves. or better have a small time penalty on them. (it should be visible in the seek if people deny that).
A better chat system, maybe like irc chat channels, about chess topics.
And a banning channel, for people who talk not that friendly.
(stay 5 minutes in the ban channel to cool down, or so).
Maybe.. instead of the current chessboard use something like a flash version.
I think it would work better with Internet Explorer, it doesnt matter much, but wel i dont like oponents having trouble and bad play because of their brouwser (yes i know its an ajax issue of M$) but still there are a lot of them.
Oh eh one last.. to see the top players in action it might be nice to have a follow option on them so when they start a new game you can automaticaly see it from start (and not plunge in halfway). (its verry difficult with those fast games, to get the start).
I use the games tab frequently to see what are the current highest rated games. Sometimes it's fun to watch an "epic battle". I liked the players tab to see what high rated players were online. I also used the players tab to see if specific people were online that I don't have as friends. I like to keep my friends list very short; only populated with people that I am relatively close with and interact with frequently.
Ever thought about having "lectures" like FICS does? Of course, it would be great if live chess supported more instructional features such as:
I love your site and Ilove to play live chess on it. However, I wish you could do something about the disconnection specially in the middle of a game and the game is lost for ever and we lose points in the process. I am glad you have people watching the conversations on the chat rooms. That keeps most of us honest. I am not too crazy about your robot spy. It's buzzer almost knocked me out of my chair even thought the one time It was only a french humorous joke, It didn't get it. I also wish you would do away with the 30 seconds rule on the chat room. Other than that you guys are doing a superlative job, keep on trucking
In buffalo NY
J C M aka Sabresfan