Few suggestions (reposted)

[Guest]

gmiller, i am not sure if you saw these suggestions so i repost them here:

I have a couple of other suggestions after frequenting this site for quite a while now:

1) When you click on a match link for example:
http://www.slowchess.com/matchstats.cgi?id=m1085530948
It would be nice if you could click on a players name in the tournament table to view all of his ongoing games in that tournament/match, or maybe even have the option wether you would like to see all his/her ongoing games on the entire site or just for that particular tournament/match.
Also a "download all games" of the tournament/match you are looking at would be cool.

2) On the start page, the link for Server Statistics (All Ratings), should really be on top of the page, maybe even in the main menu on the left if you ask me.

3) the .pgn format produced on this site has a couple of header and notation errors:

[Event "m1058811613"]
[Site "net-chess.com"]
[Date "2003.10.20"]
[Round "1"]
[White "ramawolf"]
[Black "cohonas"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[WhiteElo "2908"]
[BlackElo "2883"]
[Game "g1058811623"]
[Reason "Draw."]

1.Ng1f3 d5 2.d4 Bc8f5 3.c4 e6 4.Nb1c3 Ng8f6 5.Bc1g5 c6 6.e3 Qd8b6
7.Qd1d2 Nb8d7 8.c5 Qb6d8 9.Bf1d3 Bf8e7 10.Bg5xf6 Nd7xf6 11.0-0
0-0 12.b4 Bf5xd3 13.Qd2xd3 Nf6d7 14.Rf1e1 Qd8c7 15.e4 dxe4 16.Qd3xe4
Nd7f6 17.Qe4c2 Ra8d8 18.Qc2a4 a6 19.a3 Nf6d5 20.Nc3e4 Qc7f4 21.Qa4c2
Nd5f6 22.Ra1d1 Nf6xe4 1/2-1/2

It should be:

[Event "m1058811613"]
[Site "net-chess.com"]
[Date "2004.08.05"]
[Round "1"]
[White "ramawolf"]
[Black "cohonas"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[WhiteElo "2908"]
[BlackElo "2883"]
[Game "g1058811623"]

1. Nf3 d5 2. d4 Bf5 3. c4 e6 4. Nc3 Nf6 5. Bg5 c6 6. e3 Qb6 7. Qd2 Nbd7 8.
c5 Qd8 9. Bd3 Be7 10. Bxf6 Nxf6 11. O-O O-O 12. b4 Bxd3 13. Qxd3 Nd7 14.
Rfe1 Qc7 15. e4 dxe4 16. Qxe4 Nf6 17. Qc2 Rad8 18. Qa4 a6 19. a3 Nd5 20.
Ne4 Qf4 21. Qc2 Nf6 22. Rad1 Nxe4
1/2-1/2

Unless the site script needs the tag, there is really no use for the [Reason "Draw."]. Also the notaion if done by the second example, would not only be standard notation, but also save some space in the database by as much as 25% (rough estimate).

4)In the advanced game and advanced archive search, it would be nice if one could search for games based on min or max rating for one or both sides, maybe even a from - to ie. search for games where both players are elo 2200->2500 and so on.

I think that was all for now, hope this dosen't make your head spin Smile
Comments are off course welcome from anyone.

[cohonas]

sorry i forgot to log in, but the above is suggestions from me.

[gmiller]

I've implemented the match view. So that's done.

Also for future games castling will be noted with O's rather than 0's, but games already played will still have their 0's. Few programs should care though.

The "reason" PGN tag is to denote why the game ended. "Draw" is pretty obvious, but it could also be a draw by 3 move repitition which would be noted there. Other values are things like "White timed out", "Black Resigned", "Checkmate", etc. These shouldn't hurt any programs which parse PGN and are somewhat helpful.

The long notation (Ng8f6) shouldn't hurt either, but I agree it looks ugly.

[cohonas]

I've implemented the match view. So that's done.

Also for future games castling will be noted with O's rather than 0's, but games already played will still have their 0's. Few programs should care though.

The "reason" PGN tag is to denote why the game ended. "Draw" is pretty obvious, but it could also be a draw by 3 move repitition which would be noted there. Other values are things like "White timed out", "Black Resigned", "Checkmate", etc. These shouldn't hurt any programs which parse PGN and are somewhat helpful.

The long notation (Ng8f6) shouldn't hurt either, but I agree it looks ugly.

I've implemented the match view. So that's done.

Great, and it works like a charm!

About the PGN tag "issue", the correct way to give the reason as to why the game ended would be (from this made up example):

[Event "ICS unrated blitz match"]
[Site "chessclub.com"]
[Date "2005.03.01"]
[Round "1"]
[White "guest1195"]
[Black "guest7799"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteElo "0"]
[BlackElo "0"]
[TimeControl "120+12"]

1. e4 d5 2. exd5 c6 3. dxc6 bxc6 4. Nf3 e5 5. Nxe5 f6 6. Qh5+
{guest7799 forfeits on time} 1-0

Scid which i use for database purposes and to archive mine and other players games from this site, does have some problems handling the tags produced in terms of making reports and some seach functions will not work properly, if you take a large pgn file of games from slowchess and try to make a rating report, it will return errors.

I just tried Arena instead to see if that wil read it properly, but that has serious problems reading these tags, it will only load half a game and sometimes even produce moves that are not even in the pgn file (with games from slowchess) which i guess it partly due to the long notation (Ng8f6), i can't speak for chessbase products and wheter they have problems reading this standard as i don't have any of them, but 2 should be enough to maybe reconsider the standard

Like i pointed out before, changing the format on this site to PGN standard would save space/bandwith and all database programs could read it.

[cohonas]

I did a rough calculation that suggests if you remove the "reason" tag alone will save 5 Mb in a 100.000 game database.

100 tags (and just the various possible "rason" tags) in a text file is about 5 Kb so:
10 Kb=200 tags
100 Kb = 2000 tags
1000 Kb = 20000 tags
etc.

Going from long notation to standard notation will save around 6.1 Mb (per 100.000 games)
based on 20 games of 40 moves each in long and standerd notation (without any tags), the difference is 1.23 Kb x 5000 = 6150.

Now i don't know how many games is in the database, but i am sure it will not get any smaller