A couple of suggestions

... in one thread in the hopes they will be discussed for longer than if they were in single threads (potentially quickly buried).

1) A reliability rating of sorts. I find that many players pseudo-quit (defined here as quitting playing without leaving the screen, i.e. letting time run out instead) or intentionally "disconnect" upon reaching a lost position, which hurts the game IMO. As such I would like to see a reliability rating system of some sort implemented, one in which players could a) see how reliable players are in this regard, or b) allowing players - maybe limited to VIP to promote the VIP? - to filter out other players with low reliability in this regard. Related, a limit on draw requests would perhaps be nice to avoid those (rare) players who choose to spam the draw button.

2) A choice of a more open game choice spread mechanism. For example, one player might be willing to play anywhere between a 1.0 min game up to a 3+2 min game between a certain range of players, while another player might be looking to play a 3+2 up to a 10 min game - maybe including 960 - with another rating range of players. It would be nice to have this option available - again maybe as a VIP feature - to make it easier to find a game.

Related to 2), having the option to limiting those games viewable to those within a chosen range (excluding regular or 960 if one so desired) would also be nice, and would cut down on mis-clicks/mis-choices of chosen games, i.e. accidentally choosing a game that one did not want due to the quick shuffling of the game-choice screen. As someone who plays 960 exclusively, I find that many people quit before starting play, and suspect that many of those are misclicks due to the quick shuffling of the seek screen which resulted in them choosing my game instead of the one that was in that slot a second ago.

Related, it might also be wise to leave the "Removed" seeks up a little longer - and perhaps clear them from the screen all together at a specific interval, maybe 5 secs or so, also in order to prevent people from accidentally joining games they would otherwise not want to play.

Otherwise, excellent site. My thanks and best wishes to all of you going forward .


Oh, one more thing. I hope you will consider re-allowing all chat room participants to post links unless there is a regular/widespread spam problem in a particular room. I think this would encourage community and communication for the (majority?) of slow-moving chat rooms where spam is not a genuine regular concern and where links would help in promoting discourse among the participants.

Edit: One more suggestion, put a link to the forum in the game site itself. I suspect more people would use these forums if it was obvious that said forums existed. Doing so might also contribute to loyalty & community among ChessCube users...

Good afternoon Tao,

1) A reliability rating of sorts. I find that many players pseudo-quit (defined here as quitting playing without leaving the screen, i.e. letting time run out instead) or intentionally "disconnect" upon reaching a lost position, which hurts the game IMO. As such I would like to see a reliability rating system of some sort implemented, one in which players could a) see how reliable players are in this regard, or b) allowing players - maybe limited to VIP to promote the VIP? - to filter out other players with low reliability in this regard.

Firstly I must say it would be a nice thing to sort out, but it I do not see it very viable. Since in longer games it might be easier to spot this people who loses by time, but you do not know if they do it intentionally or not and to see a lost it means that you need to actually apart from record every game, you need to analize them and to do this automatically where will you put the threashold to know whether someone is waisting time on purpose or not. Then there is another issue in that matter, when the game is analized by an engine how could the engine know lost positions between games of players that can have mistakes even on supposedly won positions. Moreover, some of those won positions might be actually not so lost positions for the oponent from an engine position.

... Related, a limit on draw requests would perhaps be nice to avoid those (rare) players who choose to spam the draw button.

There is already a limit on the draw request which is 3 draw requests per game for each player.

... 2) A choice of a more open game choice spread mechanism. For example, one player might be willing to play anywhere between a 1.0 min game up to a 3+2 min game between a certain range of players, while another player might be looking to play a 3+2 up to a 10 min game - maybe including 960 - with another rating range of players. It would be nice to have this option available - again maybe as a VIP feature - to make it easier to find a game.

Well you can use the seek graph and play the one you want, the rating range is something might matter more in my opinion since a player can only play at max 500+ his rating or 500- his rating. This might be no problem to get games between standar rated players but it might be problematic for really high rated players or really low rated players.

... Related to 2), having the option to limiting those games viewable to those within a chosen range (excluding regular or 960 if one so desired) would also be nice, and would cut down on mis-clicks/mis-choices of chosen games, i.e. accidentally choosing a game that one did not want due to the quick shuffling of the game-choice screen. As someone who plays 960 exclusively, I find that many people quit before starting play, and suspect that many of those are misclicks due to the quick shuffling of the seek screen which resulted in them choosing my game instead of the one that was in that slot a second ago.

I suggest you to use the seek graph instead of the seek list, in the graph as I have wanted to say previously is easier to choose the game. It gets updated as well as the list graph but it is in a more visible way and much easier to enter the game you want to choose.

Edit: One more suggestion, put a link to the forum in the game site itself. I suspect more people would use these forums if it was obvious that said forums existed. Doing so might also contribute to loyalty & community among ChessCube users...

Me too I think that this would be a good feature.

Have a nice day.

Regards Xabier.

ya i liked the second option ,that one can see a game with -500 to +500 rating difference but why not in time like he said there are only 2 players online (suppose) and if (player a) wants to play a game with time control 1 to 6 minutes(so most probably he will seek for a 3 min game(median) and player (B) wants to play any game between 4 t0 10(so he seeks a 7 min(median) game(most probably) and even both players see seek graph also they cant accept as they are not in their preference(although their common preference 5,6 min is there but they cant even pair manually as 5,6 is missing in their preference seeks,,,if time prefence for a range is allowed then and (b) can be paired automatically and sorry for my longgg english

ya i liked the second option ,that one can see a game with -500 to +500 rating difference but why not in time like he said there are only 2 players online (suppose) and if (player a) wants to play a game with time control 1 to 6 minutes(so most probably he will seek for a 3 min game(median) and player (B) wants to play any game between 4 t0 10(so he seeks a 7 min(median) game(most probably) and even both players see seek graph also they cant accept as they are not in their preference(although their common preference 5,6 min is there but they cant even pair manually as 5,6 is missing in their preference seeks,,,if time prefence for a range is allowed then (player a) and (b) can be paired automatically and sorry for my longgg english

i would rather die than standing up on my knees -ernesto cheguevara

Note: I am not sure how double-quoting works, so I will preface my replies by a R: to make them more obvious.

Good afternoon Tao,

1) A reliability rating of sorts. I find that many players pseudo-quit (defined here as quitting playing without leaving the screen, i.e. letting time run out instead) or intentionally "disconnect" upon reaching a lost position, which hurts the game IMO. As such I would like to see a reliability rating system of some sort implemented, one in which players could a) see how reliable players are in this regard, or b) allowing players - maybe limited to VIP to promote the VIP? - to filter out other players with low reliability in this regard.

Firstly I must say it would be a nice thing to sort out, but it I do not see it very viable. Since in longer games it might be easier to spot this people who loses by time, but you do not know if they do it intentionally or not and to see a lost it means that you need to actually apart from record every game, you need to analyze them and to do this automatically where will you put the threshold to know whether someone is wasting time on purpose or not. Then there is another issue in that matter, when the game is analyzed by an engine how could the engine know lost positions between games of players that can have mistakes even on supposedly won positions. Moreover, some of those won positions might be actually not so lost positions for the opponent from an engine position.


R: What I am thinking about here is the (rather obvious to the player) case in which I am playing a 10 min game, my opponent drops a piece or two maybe 2-5 minutes in (rendering the game near-hopeless for him) and lets the 5-8 minutes of time run out without making any more moves whatsoever. Clearly this is a waste of time for the winning player and serves no other higher purpose for anyone else. Maybe as an alternative to automated analysis this issue could be included in the "report abuse" menu, with obvious/repeat offenders facing warnings/temp-suspensions/bans for repeated bad behavior. If done with only the obvious and repeat offenders, I think dealing with this would improve the game.

... Related, a limit on draw requests would perhaps be nice to avoid those (rare) players who choose to spam the draw button.

There is already a limit on the draw request which is 3 draw requests per game for each player.


R: Glad to hear it, apparently this has been changed from the time I encountered it, where my challenger made 10 or so draw requests in short succession.

... 2) A choice of a more open game choice spread mechanism. For example, one player might be willing to play anywhere between a 1.0 min game up to a 3+2 min game between a certain range of players, while another player might be looking to play a 3+2 up to a 10 min game - maybe including 960 - with another rating range of players. It would be nice to have this option available - again maybe as a VIP feature - to make it easier to find a game.

Well you can use the seek graph and play the one you want, the rating range is something might matter more in my opinion since a player can only play at max 500+ his rating or 500- his rating. This might be no problem to get games between standard rated players but it might be problematic for really high rated players or really low rated players.


R: What I am suggesting is that the players themselves decide what is shown on the lists (also including betting ranges btw), just as those offering games decide who is acceptable to challenge them. It seems to me that this would make for better and quicker pairings overall. With this idea, two people who were in each others preferred ranges of opponents would find each other quickly and easily while avoiding accidentally playing games (via misclicks) that they didn't want to play. If they had a problem getting games they could simply widen their seeks.

... Related to 2), having the option to limiting those games viewable to those within a chosen range (excluding regular or 960 if one so desired) would also be nice, and would cut down on mis-clicks/mis-choices of chosen games, i.e. accidentally choosing a game that one did not want due to the quick shuffling of the game-choice screen. As someone who plays 960 exclusively, I find that many people quit before starting play, and suspect that many of those are misclicks due to the quick shuffling of the seek screen which resulted in them choosing my game instead of the one that was in that slot a second ago.

I suggest you to use the seek graph instead of the seek list, in the graph as I have wanted to say previously is easier to choose the game. It gets updated as well as the list graph but it is in a more visible way and much easier to enter the game you want to choose.


R: Insofar as many people prefer lists to graphs, and insofar as a 5 second synchronized delay would improve things for those preferring the list system, I still think this would be a valuable addition. To clarify, when I say "synchronized delay", I mean that cancelled games would still show up as cancelled, but that they would remain on the screen for a few seconds until a mass-removal of all cancelled games is done at the 5 sec. interval. This would make it much easier to click on the game you wanted, especially with the suggestion previous (seek ranges for both players)