Chess.com I love you, but live chess is a joke

Generally-speaking, LC2 works well for me *when* there is a challenger. But the problem I find is that although the site claims e.g. 1500+ players are playing LC, there is very seldom anyone to be found under the Challenges tab!!

Ocassionally LC2 loads with a monochrome board and I have to refresh the page (Firefox 3.5.3) to get it to appear the colour I have under my Settings.

What I don't yet understand is why several other high-profile chess sites can implement and run live chess for 1000s of players without difficulty, and yet this site, in so many other ways high-tech and cutting-edge, cannot. It seems most odd...

But Erik is a decent bloke, who clearly loves this site, chess, and us members, and I believe him when he says that LC will be continually fixed and improved.

Overall, this site is still the best out there IMHO and well worth the membership.

If you post a challenge (a reasonable one) very rarely will you wait more than 1 minute to play a game... if you do time controlls like ==== 120 min+20 p/m  or 60min+20 p/m or (depending on your level) 1min+0 you would have a hard time finding an opponent but in any level 5min+0  or 10min+2 is always taken hot off the press.

I have to wonder how many here have experience doing large scale software implementations for a distributed user base?  The expectation seems to be that everything should be 100% functional and 100% stable on day one and the fact of the matter is that this is just not the case when it comes to these types of deployments unless you take a significant amount of time to do extensive funtionality and stress testing.  Given the broken status of Live Chess 1.0 (and the numerous people clamouring for its immediate replacement) it's no surprise that this version went out without the months of internal testing that would have been required to meet what is ultimately an unrealistic expectation.

Also, those other sites that are stable are not in their first few months of operation as this version of Live Chess is so the comparison isn't really a fair one.  I'd urge some patience and understanding before writing this version off as broken.  Bugs are being fixed daily and frankly, it was an improvement over what was previously there on day one.

frankly, they have been doing it for longer. and most have limitations. we'll get there! we're working hard.

I don't think I've got a problem with bugs in live chess; I've got a problem with the people who play live chess!

They don't understand how to lose. They let their clock run out (wasting your time) or they 'disconnect'. I think this means they've navigated away rather than resigning. When they offer a draw from a comedy position it feels like they're saying "accept this draw or you know what will happen".

 The live chess players seem to be a different population from the regular opposition on this site. There is a larger percentage of annoying and childish individuals. I don't know why, there is live chess elsewhere without so many idiots.

agreed. and we're working on solutions!

Yeah, I agree on this as well.

And those computer guys in live chess bug me as well, what's the deal with those?

I've also noticed this, espcially those who frequent the Chat.

like once your interruption gets disconnected the clock keeps on moving and by the time i reconnect I already ran out of time. So this is a glitch that needs to be fixed.