New Features & Fixes - June 30 2009

Hard working people, Don Erik and his gang.

Merci!

I second that!  Also 960 team matches would be very cool!

I started the 2nd one!

Also good work Erik!!!!!!!!

Will there be a database of the Chess960 games played on the site?

good question.

The new features look cool, thanks for your hard work!

It looks like all the games in a 960 tournament get the same start position.  Was that intended?  I think it would be better to randomize the starts within the tournament.

 Chess 960 or Fischer-Random is a revolt against Opening Books and database! You want a database on it??

(1) It will have to be a totally different kind (wont be browsable by a standard browser), with more complexity of fields, as the starting position is 960 types, not one!

(2) Not so many games are available to fill it!

If anybody is looking for databases on Chess960, better avoid it altogether!

So regular old members can no longer write articles? =(

 I'm on a smaller site that offers Fischer Random, and they have a database for all the games played there. Works fine in a standard browser. They only have about 10 games per starting position, but like I said, they're a smaller site. Given time, Chess.com could get quite a large database, even if it's not master level games.

And Fischer Random is a reaction to memorization of openings, not opening theory. A database could help answer questions about general theory in non-standard positions. What works best with both bishops in the center, or both knights off to one side? An analysis across similar positions might help answer those questions.

 One issue with FRC/960 is that some positions are thought to be more advantageous for white. Generally, tournaments use one start position each round so that one player doesn't get an advantage from a particular start position. Playing both sides with the same position is also often used to even out any possible advantages from the position.

It would be very nice if chess960 seeks were separated from regular chess in open seeks. I don't want to play 960 and find it annoying that it is impossible to find out whether it's regular or 960 without viewing the seek.

Wonderful news about chess960!

Hoping to play it soon and at live chess.

Also great work with game explorer and thanks for the fixed photo uploader.

Keep on the good work!!

The triumph of Chess960. . . this is fantastic. I think I'm switching over to only Chess960 games for a very long time. Thank you staff!

EDIT: I do have to express my disappointment in the Articles change. That was a poor choice IMO. I was about to start a series covering the Dutch Leningrad... guess I can't do that now because I'm not 'qualified'. Great.

I greatly appreciate the PGN Download upgrade.  I was using an open-source program called ChessDB that had an import all games in a folder option to get them in one PGN for a Chessbase import, which was not cool.

Gonna go try chess 960 right now

Hey all that's great

but could you also add the chess variant of Omega Chess?

Thank you for the nice new features.

However, I couldn't locate new games in Game Explorer : I searched for Anand's games through the search form and couldn't find games after 2006

I completely agree. =( Even though we're not titled players, we still have knowledge that would be useful to others. I really think that perhaps instead of shutting out all articles written by non-pros, a system of quality control should be implemented. (i.e. an experienced player reads submitted articles and if the article contains inaccurate information, the article is not uploaded to the site.)

that is what we are doing - anyone can apply to be an author. this will just keep junk out of it.

Hmm . . . really? That link where "Submit an Article" used to be seems to now link to some sort of job application. Based on that page, it seems to me that chess.com is looking for people who are writing articles seriously, not people who tend to just post one every once in a while. And where did the text editor go? Is one supposed to type their article or qualifications into "Message Details?" Or is the deal that once you've been approved via that application, you can then write all the articles you want?

I like the idea, but perhaps articles should be judged by the individual article, not the author? Even the worst at chess (Me! =D) have some valuable contributions. What I mean is that someone who appears to suck at chess may be denied after submitting the application on the aforementioned link, but they might actually have some valuable information on a couple of subjects.

I know it would be more work, but if the same author would produce a bad article and a very good article, it would be beneficial to the chess.com community to be able to read the good article. (While the crappy one is not published.) It's ultimately your decision, though.

What about Chess960 Vote Chess? Live Chess?