New Features & Fixes - July 28 2009

 Have you SEEN that wishlist thread(s)? Erik has enough to do as is lol...

this will be a LONG way off :( sorry!

My Live Chess page no longer uses my custom theme.  Not a big deal, but just pointing it out.

G

live chess960 man forgot about that

Mine is like that as well. I hope it gets fixed soon, but I'm in no hurry.

OMG

so excited for Live chess 2!!!

Also chess 960 vote chess and team matches sounds epic!

i just saw the conditional moves thing,

epic! it loads soo fast now

Erik, the pairements for TEAM MATCHES are done according to Standard Chess ratings instead of the 960Chess ones. I guess that after 1 month playing 960Chess, we could use them as it'll be more reliable and fair (I might be a strong stnd chess and have no idea on FRC) :)

Thanks for your reply! :)

Do we know yet whether or not our Live Chess ratings will reset once Live Chess 2 comes out?

When's the (c)entaur section coming online, erik?

Is there a link to Live Chess 2 features? (I know, I am lazy and am not searching).  Because what I would like to do is play 1 to 2 hour games.   And in speed chess when time runs out, the person with the most material wins, not the least time.  You spend all your time working for a checkmate and they just do rapid delaying moves.  I quit playing (even though my ranking is better there than my normal rating).

 That would be insane. Firstly, because material isn't the goal of the game in any way, so why should it be rewarded. Secondly, because whoever went up a pawn first would then let his clock run out.

What happened in the situation you describe is that you used too much time. It's easy to beat the other guy if you get to use more time than you have and he's trying to stick to the limit you agreed before the game...

You're the best, Erik. Thanks

Neither is winning the goal.  The goal is to take the least amount of time.   Hence, to be good just memorize a bunch of quick moves, useless perhaps, but quick.  I kept trying to win the game, and my opponents would get a minute ahead and just stall quickly.

It develops zero skills.  I thought it might develop my skills to see things faster not.

I get your point, I pawn up and you stall.  Not much different that just stalling as players do now.   A cap, perhaps, you lose on time unless you have material difference of at least 10 points or more.  I lost on time the other night and I had something like 22 to 5 advantage in material.  I was within seconds of a mate --BUT I could see it would never happen.  I didn't have a way to cut off one root of escape and no time to develop it.

My opponent was moving useless pawns to win.  What skill is that?  What art?  What love of the game?

Now it's "game drawn by mutual agreement" instead of "game drawn by agreement". I think that "game drawn by agreement" was better.

No list of features yet, but, you can play 60-90 minute games now, I don't see why you won't be able to later as well.

As for winning by material... that doesn't happen on this site, where have you seen that? If a player runs out of time, they lose, period. What you might be seeing is that if a player disconnects from the server, either by their doing or by the server's, they will be awarded a loss, but that is the main issue that is going to be fixed by Live Chess 2.

Any hints on how it's going to be fixed?  I know Live Chess 2 is supposed to be more stable, but there will always be some disconnects.  Is the plan to implement game adjournment and adjudication of those games not resumed after a set amount of elapsed time (or, alternatively to simply assign the loss to the disconnected player of the game is not resumed)?

New bug(s) in vote chess

Previously any member could join a game anytime - e.g.: new members could join a vote chess already in progress.

Now members can join only at the beginning of a game - after a game is in progress, nobody can join! Links are absent.

This is a bug, please fix it ASAP - sometimes members forget to join at the beginning, or like to join past the opening phase when the game becomes interesting or the team start losing, or new members want to join a game in progress. This is greatly inconveniencing us in some games...

Thanks for timely fixing it... You are great!

Thanks for updating the conditional moves eric! - much nicer now and I'm not limited to one move (you're too kind).

It appears all of my on-going vote chess games are gone though.

I stopped getting alerts about vote chess! Must be another bug!