chess.com got me shamed with Magnus match

is it possible that the whole event could be available for download (if it was captured somehow)?

Okay, Pussimatti is right. I was there, too. It  was out of sync, it was lagin, it was chaotic. I had to refresh my browser a dozend times for the g-star-site and two times  with chess.com. But! It was fun. And, at least for me, that matters most. The chess.com comments where great, the chat was fun, the crowd was enthusastic... Later on I can fire up shredder (or any chess engine) feed him the pgn of the game an analyse over and over again without any interruptions. That's okay whith me. So therefore: cool event, hopin to see more of that, boys.

Well, I had to live with an totally crappy live coverage of the last wc-match where the pure html site was lagin like hell and the other option was silverlight (sic!) in an very early version (lighthouse project probably). I use Linux btw. So, if  screwing up is okay with professionals like CB and MS that seems still state of the art in 2010. I mean: havent't you seen "2001" and the malfunctioning hal9000? Have mercy ;-)

I really enjoyed it and took the glitches for what they were. I'm sure it will be much better next time around. Some people have nothing better to do than complain. Good thing Erik takes that for what it is as well.

Could we have such a match against for example Polgar in which we all can play every thinkable move instead of the advise given by three good players? I don't think the moves will be better then but the voting will be more exiting.

That was not harsh at all and this is a totally lame and inadequate explanation. You own and operate the number one chess website and you promoted this event for several weeks and now you want to shrug your shoulders and blame it on the Internet? You want to say that you "allowed" us to participate and since it was free you don't have to live up to your promises. That's the Internet way of doing business! With all the celebrities who were involved in this there must have been a substantial amount of cash flowing around. And you probably still want me to upgrade my account.

I have a high speed cable connection and a practically brand new computer and all of my browsers and software have been upgraded in the past few days and yes, I cleared my cache. And still, after the first 4 or 5 moves I was rarely looking at the real time position. The timer was blank most the time. There were several occasions when the move displayed as having been voted by the world was a totally different move than that displayed in the moves list or on the diagram which didn't really matter much because most of the time the moves list was two or three moves behind the real game. Sometimes I could see the moves the GMs were suggesting but I could not tell what move Magnus had made so I could not make an intelligent (or unintelligent) choice.

This is not 1995 - this is 2010. This was a great idea but a total failure.

Just admit it!

I don't knwo if Erik or some staff member will read this. In my case, the site was lagging terribly, like 4-5 half-moves behind what Susan Polgar was posting on her blog. Sure, I hit Refresh, but most of the time I received the message "connection reset since it's taking too long to respond". Maybe you wanted too much trying to broadcast live video at the same time and that caused way too much traffic? Well, anyway, any start is slow. Better luck next time!

I agree so much. I had to 'F5-Refresh' at least 3x per move. The feed was lagging so badly that it made the game so horrible to 'watch'.

The idea was great, the execution was discusting.

Even the comentators, which were GREAT, mentioned the 'lagging'. That was the bgiggest understatement of the match.

If you ever decide to do this type of match again, you MUST resolve the hardware/link problems.

I know this was not just my PC as I am in NY and my wife is in the UK experiencing the same problems.

Hopefully next time it will flow better. Good luck.

R

The OP may be an ungrateful jerk, but I also had a hard time following the match. If I didn't manually click on refresh (firefox) the game didn't advance. I eventually gave up and forgot about the game.

Guys, I have 30 years with computers. That's more than most of you have been alive. I know 'throughput', and the inevitable troubles. Maybe my expectations were too high.

I have worked for MAJOR banks in NY and I know what is required to make people happy with a 'working' network.

It does take a lot of work and money. It's just that it was so frustrating to hear moves and not be able to see the board or the choices.

Again, the idea was and still is great. The execution must be perfected a bit more.

Good luck to the chess.com and RAW teams.

R

frankly, if people had stopped hitting "refresh" all of the time it would have been smoother - but the impatience of the moves was what overwhelmed the servers with so many frequent refreshes. that was one of the major learnings we had this time around - the number of visitors can actually artificially ballooooooon when they all start doing extra refreshes (causing extra connection requests to already overworked web servers). next time we do this we will plan for that. we've already discussed it and will make changes for the next event. obviously it was our fault that people started refreshing because once the board got SLIGHTLY out of sync, people refreshed instead of waiting it out (which i would have done too!). but then the refreshes would compound the problem. and more people would refresh. and more would... and so on. we hadn't anticipated that. this is also the explanation of why the lag got worse and worse over the course of the game (exponentially growing refreshes!). 

anyway, this was our first time ever doing an event like this, and we did it in 2 weeks on a tiny budget. not an excuse, but an explanation. i would have loved to have had 3 months to build and test this at scale. but if you must know, we literally finished programming at 4:15am this morning and ran ONE pre-test with a few hundred users, which finished at 5:45am. then the event started at 9am. 

in my mind, thinking of all of things that COULD have gone wrong and didn't, we were all relieved that it actually worked as well as it did. 

bumpy? certainly. learning experience? certainly. total failure? i don't think so. i enjoyed the game tremendously. 

I had a bad feeling that the short time control was going to create issues that everyone has already discussed within the chess.com forums.

The only time that something like this was done was with the "Kasparov Against the World" match that was done over a span of four months back in 1999. There would have been NO lag, refresh and connection issues if the same time control from Kasparov's match was used in 2010 because people would not be rushing their votes.

Food for thought: How would GOOGLE, INC handle the event if they were in charge?

I think it was a great idea and I was really excited about it.  Unfortunately, I am in South Korea, so I fell asleep before it started and missed it.  So, I don't know about the tech problems.  But, I hope another event like this gets set up in the future.  I just watched ChessNetwork's recap of the game.  It was very nicely done and it was an interesting game.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=ChessNetwork#p/u/0/i6iHOrvBzjw

Thanks Erik and Chess.com   Keep bringing us good things and trying to improve!

erik,

Chess.com is the best chess site on the planet period.

I love the game of chess, and being able to play  with people from around the globe is fantastic...especially at your low price (free).

I don't think people understand the logistics behind producing an event like this.

Yes, there were hickups etc. but we were still able to follow this epic production...and enjoy seeing one of the grestest chess players of all time (yes...I am talking future tense).

Anyway guys, thanks for entertaining us, and being part of something positive for chess.

And for those who have "flamed" the production, your input is also important...for it is through criticism that we improve, not conformity.

Best Wishes. 

In retrospect, it may have been a good idea to give each side 5 minutes per move or something, so that you had time to correct lag errors, and save the 1 minute move games for when this system works well.  I missed some moves because I was looking at it, thinking "should I refresh, or is it about to show me what to vote on?" and then by the time I give up and refresh, I missed two moves.  I was watching the live feed and saw Magnus move, and was like, "but I thought it was our turn!?".  Anyways, sorry I voted for cxd5.  It made me mad at Kasparov for not telling us it was a bad move until like, *right* after it happened

all the google adsense ads would have choked the servers and caused a lag.  either that or the internet would explode. 

Thanks for the link.  Info for others-- the video length is 17:03 and the chess board is oriented with Magnus on the bottom.

Wouldn't that be something?

I do agree that there were quite a few glitches it seemed. I had mozilla and chrome open and every time I reloaded the page (to get it refreshed) I had to re-click on the audio thing, and sometimes the voting didn't work very well, BUT it was a lot better than the test game yesterday, and I thought that for a first real time it was pretty good. Always should try to enjoy and be positive, I mean we did get to play Magnus even if there were a few tech problems, and it was cool and fun.

Thanks for taking a stab at this, chess.com, even if with short time and small budget.  This type of event is definitely a great idea to go after.

My user experience happened to be quite disheartening, even using refresh sparingly, and I missed moves several times, so I concluded I had set my expectations too high (hey, the rest of the chess.com site is so good that I'm spoiled :)

Nevertheless, I'm sure you've worked hard at setting this up in time, and I do appreciate that it did go live.  We were many participating, and many enjoyed.  Well done, way to go.  I'm sure the next one will be a huge success.