Chess.com a Blessing and a Curse to Online Chess

Chess.com is by far the biggest online chess entity that has been seen date. It has successfully managed to apply modern web technologies on top of a site dedicated to online chess using social profiles, streaming video, news feeds ,forums, private messages, chats, friends, groups and more. It has also successfully implemented a slick browser based interface to play on without a need to download an external client. Lastly it offers free membership which is made very easy sign up using Facebook or other social media. All of this working in tandem has put other prominent chess sites out of commission.

Having played online chess for around 20 years now, I have seen sites come and go. I have never seen an impact however as drastic as chess.com consuming the top player base. On top of that (from what I am told) there are players contracted to play only on chess.com and has basically become the end all be all of online chess for the time being. As a strong player, you will only find a handful of competition outside of chess.com.

That all said, I am actually a fan of this concept and its evolution. It is nice to have a consolidation of all the top players in the world playing on a single site. I must however address the issues this has caused. I decided to highlight the 2 biggest that have an impact on my enjoyment of online chess.

1) My biggest issue - server side lag affecting play in bullet chess: I can only speculate the root of the problem, but the way time-stamping works on this site needs to be readdressed. Too often players are penalized for server side lag. Past prominent chess sites had no issues with this as server side lag to not count against the players (which was actually very low) and players had a limit to client side lag of 1000ms before being penalized. This is not specific to having a web interface as this is not an issue whatsoever on other sites. Ultimately this has really killed bullet chess at the top level. You will see top bullet players like Nakamura, MVL, Grischuk, Grachev, Andreiken, Hansen etc straight up refuse to play 1/0 chess now because of the lag issues. Because many are locked into contracts the chess playing community no longer gets to see the best players play what they excel at. With the way lag is I find myself beating players 4/5 games I would normally lose 4/5 to and vice versa. I can only imagine the frustration of the top players in playing strength losing because of lag issues.

2) Pool play: There is still no concept of pools in which you are randomly matched vs opponents of similar ratings and do not have the ability to abort once you do (unless both agree). Pool play was the best thing to hit another site and you saw an influx of the worlds 2700+ players consistantly playing when pool play became available. This really prevents people from hand picking opponents and boosting rating by playing the same opponent again and again. It is really the truest form of rating and one of the biggest things I miss.

Sorry to drag this out but I really do like chess.com and think its the way of the future of online chess. There are however still a lot of key missing issues and features.

Out of online chess sites the most top players play here. The only exception really is Magnus has been playing lightning primarily elsewhere because of the lag issue here.

Thanks for posting your thoughts! I have removed specific references to competitor sites, as this is against Chess.com policy and not required to make your point.

Chess.com provides a couple of different options that you can try and see if that helps with your network lag - while you're in Live Chess, check your Settings --> Network

There's always going to be the issue of physical distance, and with their main servers located in the US, I can see how people in Europe would have less lag to servers physically hosted elsewhere in Europe - as you can see from the options, Chess.com is using a Content Delivery Network to improve content delivery to people located further away, but I'm not sure if that helps with Live Chess play. I think you'll find that it is an issue with online chess wherever you play, not just at Chess.com.

I'm not sure what you mean by "pool play", as what you describe is exactly how Live Chess seeks work - the algorithm matches you up with other people of similar strength. If you're asking about being able to apply further filters, such as limiting it to just titled players or just premium members, those are ideas that are worth mentioning, so long as people are aware that the more specific someone is with their seeks, the longer it will take for them to get a game.

@catdogorb Erik's in this for the long haul - he saw an opportunity to build a community around a past time he enjoyed, and continues to be committed to the growth of the game overall - hence the largest ever prize money for Titled Tuesday, the Pro Chess League, the Speed Chess Championship, the partnership with Twitch - I'd say the evidence is that it's very much the opposite of what you claim.

Thanks,

David, moderator

Unquestionably, v3 had some issues - Chess.com was without a CTO for a while there, but one of the founders, Jay Severson, has since come back on board in that capacity, so hopefully that means there won't be those sort of delays or challenges with the platform again; I found the Developer updates being published by @News quite helpful and gives some insight as to what's happening behind the scenes.

Bullet? That's bad for you. Maybe they want you to stop...

the grass is always greener by your neighbor across the street...

Just an FYI here, you're not "punished" for server side lag on chess.com.  However, anything holding your connection up before it reaches our server can indeed short you on time.  You can check this by going to live chess and typing in /ping in the chat box on the bottom right.  This will give you the time between your computer sending chess.com info, and us receiving said info.  If you're under 1000ms, then the time you have to think on your move in a bullet game is going to be 60 seconds.  If you're higher than that (or heck, if you're anywhere close to that!) you should reach out to us here:

https://support.chess.com/customer/portal/emails/new

And we'll work with you to get your connection with us in good shape.  David's connection options above are great too. 

Hi David,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my post, I'll refrain from making references to direct competitors in the future. To address your comments above:

1)  Does chess.com use any concept of time stamping? * Below is pulled and stripped from another site for a description of what time-stamping does**

"A "TimeStamp" program measures the amount of
time you spend thinking about each move. The server uses this
information to update the clocks.

In most games, the full amount of the delay in transmission (lag) will be
credited back to the clock, and only the time the player spent on the move
will actually be deducted from their clock. When the server is updated with
information about the actual time used for a move, the lag time being
credited may result in the appearance of the time being added to your
opponent's clock. In fact, the time added was never used by your
opponent, but was instead the time it took for your last move and your
opponent's last move to travel between the server and your
respective computers.

In rating pool games and in some special prize tournaments, the Flexible Lag
Compensation system limits how much lag time a player will be compensated
for during games. In such games a player will be compensated for up to one
second (1000 milliseconds) of lag per move. If the player's lag is less than
one second, as it is for 98% or 99% of players, none of the lag will be charged
to their clock. If lag exceeds one second during any move, the first second of
lag time is "free" and any additional lag time will be charged to the player's
clock."

2) Pool play: The concept of pool play is entering a pool of players with a specific predefined time control and randomly being matched vs a player of similar rating. You do not get to decide who you play using filters and you do not get to abort the game once it begins (unless both players agree). This prevents players from hand selecting opponents and boosting rating by playing a friend (or themselves) over and over again. Its also best that this is kept in different rating category (5-min rating, 3-min rating, 1-min rating - usually the most popular time controls should be predefined). The way pairing works to my understanding is when entering the pool the system looks for another player in the pool (lets say 5-minute pool for this example) of a similar rating (lets say it starts off at +100 to -100 rating points). After a certain amount of time if you are not matched, it increases the range (possibly after 10-20 seconds it looks for a range of -200 to +200 or -300 to +300) until you are matched with an opponent. Of course the upper and lower bounds will always be someone you can gain or lose points from. This concept has shown to be incredibly popular among top rated titled players and the truest form of rating.

Thanks again for the response and look forward to your feedback.

I'm skeptical about staff's response to the lag issue.  I play on some competitor sites based in Europe and I typically have less lag there than I do here, despite living in the US.  Not long ago I was playing blitz and lagging every move; literally each move took at least 2 seconds even if it was made instantly.  After playing a book opening my opponent had more time than he started with, due to increment, and I was behind about 30 seconds on the clock.  Not surprisingly I was at a huge disadvantage and had a poor session.  I still wanted to play chess, so I went to the competitor site and everything was just fine.  This kind of thing happens fairly regularly.  I love chess.com but lag is my biggest issue.  I've tried the "connections options" listed above but I'm not tech savvy and given that my internet is fast on other sites and doing other things, I seriously doubt the problem is on my end.

chess.com like anything else in life is a choice.  

You choose to play here, or not.  

Yes..some stay here, with no other intention, but to badmouth everything in site.  

If you dont like the site, you have a choice to either stay, or leave.

Its the internet, you take the good with the bad.

 maybe it is possible that some people have some kind of lag hack.  I played a guy in bullet a couple of days ago, and I was losing 1-2 seconds EVERY move while PREMOVING... for the entire game... the game before it and the game after that my lag was fine and the player in question was playing quite poorly for his rating as if this was how he was getting wins.

I've always wondered about that too. Typically in any free market or profit driven situation a good business WANTS to be compared to it's competition. That way it can specifically say why it's better. Of the three main chess websites I like this one the best because of version 2. If that goes away then there really isn't any good reason to say this one is better. 

I also suffer big lag issues in bullet since December.

So I play 30 seconds per game, rather than 1 mins bullet, as if I were playing hyperbullet! 

I solved my problem like that!  

While i am getting used to V3, i still use V2 for pretty much everything.  If and when V2 goes away for good, I will still be here.  Again...its a choice.

<slow handclap> Yeah, that makes sense.

I guess the point is that there are other platforms and sites that have found a way to credit lag, so it's proof that the engineering is feasible. Meanwhile, on chess.com we get a "Your move was not received in time!" message if we move with time left but server decides we flagged.

 Yes, this message alone leaves me to believe chess.com is not using time-stamping or there is an issue with it. 

I'm a moderator, not a technical person, but from the Chess.com FAQ at https://support.chess.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1444876-what-is-lag-and-what-are-the-colored-lag-indicators-in-live-chess and https://support.chess.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1444849-why-did-the-clock-times-suddenly-change-the-clocks-seem-broken-?b_id=12321 I would say that they very much use this idea but just don't call it "timestamping"; from the latter:

Here is how lag works on chess.com: 

You make a move, the move gets sent to our server, & then your opponent's computer. We adjust the clocks dynamically so that neither player is "charged" for communication time - but rather, only for the time actually spent thinking.

Again, that sounds almost exactly close what happens when you issue a seek for a Live Chess game - you specify the rating range from your own rating, the time control, and the system randomly pairs you up with someone who meets those criteria (and whose criteria you match, of course); the only difference is that either person can abort the game before they make their first move rather than both players needing to agree to such, although the system also takes note of how many aborts someone makes in succession and does issue a fair play warning if they are doing it too much.

Chess.com has both of these features, it just seems like a slightly different terminology is being used.

That's a separate issue from the lag compensation system is actually working for an individual or not, but as @shaun pointed out, Chess.com Support really wants to work with people to understand their lag situation and work with them to figure it out - just contact them via Help --> Ask a Question --> Contact. I know that there's at least one person who was having a lot of problems with V3 that @jdcannon actually went and physically visited to get an exact picture of what was happening (although, fair warning - I don't know that they'll do that for every support ticket )