Is it possible to add time stamping to Live Chess games?

Over at ICC, they use time stamping, which means that when I review one of my games, I can see what time on the clock that I played a move, and more importantly, how much time I am using per move, and how well I am using my time, which helps me with improving my time management, a lot.

Can time stamping be added to Live Chess games?

BTW - Dan Heisman says that it is best to play internet games where time stamping is used. A coach or stronger player can learn how well the student is using his or her time with this information.

Is the student playing too fast? Too slow? Is the student using enough time on critical moves? Can the student even recognize a critical move from a non-critical move? Does the student take way too much time, like 30 seconds, on a non-critical opening move, where, for example, placing a light square bishop on either e2, d3 or c4, would all be equally good?

This request comes up quite often e.g.

I guess it's not that simple, otherwise it might have been implemented by now.

I'd guess that the reason they haven't done it is because of the amount of data it would require. Let's just say that it would require 4 bytes of data per move. This would be the time in seconds it took for a player to make their move. The average game is about 40 moves, or 80 ply, so it would require 320 bytes per game. I've no idea how many live games chess.com is storing, so let's just guess high at 10,000,000. That's 3.2 GB of data. Wow, that actually isn't that much considering how big the forums are, and considering that my puny hard drive is about 600 GB.

Okay, I've no idea of what other complications would be involved, and the above reason doesn't seem like It'd be an issue.

4 bytes of data per move? Where did you get that number? No matter. Good stuff. I doubt that time stamping even takes 1/100th of 3.2 GB for storage. It's been done since the birth of internet chess, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. A simple first generation  processor in the first Texas Instruments calculator could do the math required for time stamping.

Has a staff member ever replied in a public post to this request? It's kinda important. You can't improve at time management without it, or at the very least, keeping track of your time per move in the more clumsy, slower way of pencil and paper - which is a ridiculous thing to have to do in the information age, not to mention the 21st century with technology and widgets up the wazoo! 

I feel like I am asking to play internet chess here, and be able to see the chess pieces on my computer screen, all at the same time. Something as basic as that.

I don't visit that many chess sites anymore, but I know of two sites that have time stamping, and that was without even looking for that feature, so I figure that it's a basic part of every internet chess site. Is chess.com the only site that does not have time stamping? 

Am I missing something here? Couldn't time stamping be added by simply throwing a switch? So what if Live Chess is down for 15 minutes to add time stamping. Would most folks jump off a bridge if Live Chess were down for 15 minutes?

Of greater significance than the amount of space required to store timestamps is:

- the effect of having to manage two formats for saved games: older ones stored without timestamps and newer ones with

- the changes that would required to loads of screens to handle time display

- the addition of extra options to enable those that don't want timestamps to not see them, but those that do to do so c.f. the CHAT tab brouhaha

- the proportion of the chess.com membership to whom this matters

Well, I don't really agree with any of those.

1. Time stamps could be presented as comments in PGN notation. I don't think there would be significant issues with new formats.

2. I don't really know what you mean. I think the OP only wants them available post-game.

3. Few would complain about it. No sane person would complain about the availability post game. This part would probably be easy to implement anyway.

4. It would be an interesting feature for a lot of people I think.

@Musikamole: I said 4 bytes per move because a float in C is 4 bytes, so basic floating point values are represented in RAM with 4 bytes. It could also be written to a hard drive with the size 4 bytes. 3GB is my best guess at the required space because I've no idea how many games chess.com is storing. They could probably get the size down with data compression and data storage tricks, but not by much.

1/100*3.2 GB is only 32 MB. Do you realize how little that is? 3 GB is a very reasonable guess in my opinion.

Were you here for the Chat tab war Artfizz referred to?  There really weren't all that many people complaining, but they went on and on and on and on and on and on and on about it, even to the point of denying chess.com's own statistics regarding how few chat messages actually get written.  Assuming sanity is pointless, as a membership as large as chess.com's has no problem supplying a battalion of irrational respondents.

My comments.

I am surprised that the interest for time stamping is low. Perhaps the words are unfamilar to most members. Should I word the topic differently, i.e., Can we see time per move in Live Chess post-game analysis?

I am not asking for the staff to go through all of the Live Chess games and add time stamping, just new games.

The old games and the new time stamped games could reside in one saved game archive, correct? That would keep things simple for everyone.

There is no legitimate technical reason why this data isn't provided.

The only valid reason for chess.com to continue to not provide this data is that they don't think enough members care about the info.  So the best thing to do is keep asking for it.

But what about all the insane people?

Stop being silly, no one's ever heard of an insane chess player.

I have, but maybe it was just the voices.

Sometimes I wish they would go away, but they're much better than me at chess, so I tolerate their presence.

Are you positive? Interesting.

I am not a software engineer, so I don't know the inner workings of internet chess. Are you sure that chess.com can provide this data, time stamping, to its members? 

I find it odd that a chess.com staff member has yet to answer my question, especially being a paying customer. Where is the customer service now?  They have never been silent on all of my other questions, and I ask a lot of questions. Why the silence this time?

To: Chess.com Staff

From: Musikamole

Please answer these two questions: 1. Can you, or can you not add time stamping to Live Chess games? 2. If not, then why?  Thank you.

Yes, I am positive.  Otherwise I would not have said so.

I suppose there could be some situation where the code might be somehow 'frozen' due to original developer(s) being gone and no one left to add such a simple enhancement--or being so bad that even adding such a trivial feature would be too much of a mess.  But there is no evidence to suggest that chess.com is in any sort of technical disarray like that.  On the contrary, they are undergoing a complete redesign (which could influence the priority of this item, even if they would like to do it).

But any of the intimations of technical limitations ITT such as the amount of data being involved are quite insignificant and not even worth discussing. 

I don't really know anything about web developement, but from what I do know about programming in general, which still isn't a whole lot, I don't think there should be very many technical issues. Perhaps they're working on other things right now?

I think it's more likely that time stamps would be stored as a string. I don't think they should use time stamps, but just the time taken in seconds for each move. On average this would take about 5 bytes per ply. 32.15 is five characters.

Keep in mind that while some staff may (or may not) see these posts, it still may not be the right staff for the question.  Although the forum is called help/support it's not a direct communication link with staff.  Almost all interaction in all the threads in this forum is just among members.

I have played other games on the internet several years back, and the ones that are server based, instead of peer to peer, run faster, with little to no lag. When I played a shooting game, Call of Duty, I don't recall any lag. The hit detection in that game was amazing. What I hit, stumbled or dropped instantly.

A game like Call of Duty has millions of times more information flowing through the internet, compared to a slow, two dimensional board game. I am surprised that there is any lag at all in Live Chess here, no matter what technology is used.

Yep. At ICC, the piece movement is crisp. I feel like I have to play more agressive and faster, because the opponent's moves hit me instantly, like in Call of Duty.

A correspondence chess update

I know that you really like CC here. In my past two issues of Chess Life, USCF says it will launch correspondence chess online, soon! I thought it was going to start this month, and it might - with beta first. I look forward to checking it out.