New Features & Fixes - May 3 2009

I support this change... as I also support NOT providing links to Game Explorer directly from games. We should not provide features which makes life easy for abusers... it is true it will inconvenience some - but better to have a cleaner environment than ease of abusing the system.

However I support the notion of enabling it only for the first 10 moves to help people with databases...

I found another bug.  After the upgrade, when you try to paste a FEN string into a diagram in Team Comments in Vote Chess games, the board always seems to revert back to the start position as soon as you press "Continue."

I disagree - that would be a *fantastic* feature.  Moreover, a link to the Game Explorer arguably reduces chances of abuse (that is, if you subscribe to the notion that you can protect people from themselves by making them expend more effort to do bad things).  If I have to take the FEN into my own database (which supports engines), I'm only one click away from the sort of naughtiness that gets accounts closed.

And that's the only 'abuse' to worry about.  Simply put:  A. The site allows database use during play and B. The site has its very own online database.  Integration of two existing features would simply increase the value of both of them.

I think that it may need to be reiterate that the use of opening databases is allowed in turn based.  Linking from a current game to the Opening Explorer doesn't facilitate its abuse, it facilitates its use.

Clearly, however, such a link from a Live Chess game would be a different story.

OK, I just accidentally accepted a seek via my Blackberry.  I went to check out the open seeks screen, and because there was an "Accept" button at the bottom of the screen, I didn't think that clicking on the seek itself would accept -- I was hoping to see if there was additional information behind the seek, but instead I accepted it.

Two comments:

1. There's no way to simultaneously highlight a particular seek and the accept button -- what is the accept button for?  (I'm afraid to click on it to find out)
2. It might be a good idea to implement a dialog to ask "Are you sure you want to accept this seek? Y/N"

Abuse? What abuse would be facilitated here?

Ten moves is arbitrary and wholly inadequate. I've had opening books that were too shallow at twenty-five moves, and others exhausted before move five. The depth is relative, and varies considerably from opening to opening.

That wouldn't really be fair to my opponent -- I accepted the seek, I'll play the game, I was just a little surprised when it told me I'd started a new game. 

The FEN/PGN features should be put back. I used it for thinking about the next movement when I was offline.

Oooh, very articulately put.  That's absolutely correct.

Please read post #115 of this thread. This argument is now moot. PGN and FEN will be coming back.

More feedback on the Mobile functionality:

I think it's great that I can create and accept seeks, I can even create a direct challenge.  One thing that appears to be missing, though, is the ability to accept a direct challenge.  I have one open right now, and I thought maybe it would appear under my open seeks list with some indication that it was a challenge instead of an open seek, but it's just not there.

Something for a future release I hope.

I found yet another bug.  In both Mozilla Firefox 3.0.10 and IE 7, when you click on the moves in Vote Chess games, the board no longer changes.

1) I am unsure if this was intentional, but vote chess games, archived live chess games, and game explorer games do not have animated moves.

2) I have been dying for this, but a flip chess board (Black /\ White) for any posted games. People never flip it to Black at the bottom even when that is the side they played, or the side they wish to showcase. Letting users flip the board themselves would fix this. Right now I have to manually copy and paste the pgn into my chess GUI to flip it over.

It's a shame that pgn files can't be downloaded anymore. I suppose this helps with cheating, but I use them a lot to help me analyse my current online games.

With an engine?

After this site update I can´t see the pieces with my Nokia 5800, before the update it was no problem.

We did do a big news piece: http://www.chess.com/news/new-professional-chess-video-lessons-now-on-chesscom-7100

I am the spokesman - I guess I'm failing.  :(

I generally think that the communication of these changes has been much better in the past six months or so.  I really like the new-features and fixes threads, perhaps always making the most recent one sticky would help as I don't always find them immediately.

But that's exactly what this thread is for.

What would you suggest in addition?  There as a news article, a forum topic and a mass mailing.