6 ms·

I wish this discussed the timing arbitration of each move. Based on the packet information (if that is correct & complete) then the timing is done entirely on

I wish this discussed the timing arbitration of each move. Based on the packet information (if that is correct & complete) then the timing is done entirely on the clients. However, they show the time in seconds which can't be right so I am curious how accurate this packet schema is (or if those are float values). Regardless, one thing I find maddening about chess.com is the time architecture of the game. I haven't seen the underlying code, but it feels like the SERVER is tracking the time. This completely neglects transport time & latency meaning that 1s to move isn't really a second. Playing on the mobile client is an exercise in frustration if you are playing timed games and down to the wire. Even when you aren't, your clock will jump on normal moves and it is most obvious during the opening. This could also be due to general poor network code as well. The number of errors I get during puzzles is also frustrating. Do they really not retry a send automatically?? <breath> Chess.com has the brand and the names... but dang, the tech feels SO rough to me.

mkagenius 2y ago
Vladimir Kramnik agrees with your observations about chesscom.
- chongli 2y ago
  I'm surprised to see anyone bring him up here!
  - sourcepluck 2y ago
    You're surprised that Kramnik is mentioned when the discussion topic is related to chess? I don't understand why. He's well-known in chess (and in chess memeland).
    - chongli 2y ago
      Kramnik is a former world champion who has taken a torch to his own reputation by accusing tons of people of cheating without evidence. He’s been banned as a regular columnist on chess.com after using his column as a platform to attack people. He has next to no credibility on any chess issues these days.
      - rjatran 2y ago
        A ban just means that a group of bureaucrats decided to take public action against a specific person and not against others. Carlsen, Nakamura and chess.com itself have participated in the Niemann witch hunt. No evidence of over-the-board cheating has ever been provided. None of the accusers is banned. Kramnik did the same as they did (by indeed going too far).
        watwut 2y ago
        I think there is difference between "accusing tons of people" and "using his column as a platform to attack people" vs "accusing that one person in one instance". It is actually perfectly fine to not ban people doing something wrong one or two times while banning people doing that exact thing for fifth time.
        krlamn 2y ago
        No, the difference is between a well connected mob going after a single person (Niemann) vs. a single person going after several. The former is always excused, presumably because people's ancient group instincts kick in. The latter is a single heretic that must be destroyed. The group does much more damage than the individual. Everyone already thought that Kramnik's pseudo-mathematical evidence was garbage, so why the ban? The answer is that he mentioned well connected people like Nakamura, so the rogue nail needed to be hammered in. Groups are never punished, and 95% of Internet commenters always excuse the group.
        chongli 2y ago
        No, Kramnik deserved a ban because he was going after not-well-connected, young, up-and-coming players who have no other recourse to defend themselves. Nakamura made it very clear that he was not going to tolerate this because it jeopardizes the future of the game. Niemann was already an admitted cheater who had been previously sanctioned for his activities. Carlsen’s accusations against him may have been unfounded for the specific game in question but Niemann’s reputation was already blemished. Niemann’s lawsuit was inexcusable though, as it was essentially a SLAPP [1] designed to hinder everyone’s efforts to get cheating out of chess. Thankfully the lawsuit was unsuccessful and Niemann continues to play chess. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...
- nih 2y ago
  Interesting
- tkahlrt 2y ago
  Yes, he had timing problems in an online tournament on chess.com (against a Mexican GM in the same room) where his computer did not have all Windows updates and/or the timezone was wrong. chess.com confirmed the issue.
pshc 2y ago
> it feels like the SERVER is tracking the time TBH this is what I expected for all online chess. How else to reconcile the two players' differing clocks and also prevent client-side cheating?
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  It hasn’t been done client side in any pvp game I’ve heard of.
  - stevage 2y ago
    I'm pretty sure freechess.org did.
    - MichaelZuo 2y ago
      How is it being done client side?
      - stevage 2y ago
        Well it's a long time since I played there. But it had custom chess clients, which I assume just recorded how much time your move actually took and sent that with the move. Yes, it's easy to cheat with this, but it's very easy to cheat with chess anyway.
        4star3star 2y ago
        This makes the most sense. Start a timer when the UI actually hands control to the player whose move it is, stop the timer when they've completed their move, and simply subtract that from their remaining time. The interval gets sent to the server and relayed to the other player to update their opponent's clock accurately.
      - compiler-guy 2y ago
        Freechess shipped a binary called “timeseal” that did the calculations for you and encrypted the communications. It was not foolproof—-not by a long shot, but it also didn’t completely suck. You can read about what became timeseal here. https://eprint.iacr.org/2004/203.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2004/203.pdf
bongodongobob 2y ago
I can't play bullet on chess.com for this reason. Lost way too many games on "time" even though I had a second or two on the clock. Incredibly frustrating.
pengowray 2y ago
> they show the time in seconds which can't be right Seems right. If you export/download games from lichess, they use the .pgn (Portable Game Notation) format, which is a standard plain-text format circa 1993, used by pretty much everyone for describing a chess game. Lichess follows the specification to the letter, and as it only technically allows one-second accuracy, lichess only record moves with one-second accuracy. It seems insane, but that's how they do it. Chess.com also exports PGN files, but they add a decimal place, allowing subsecond accuracy. No one has a problem with this. There is no software which cannot handle this. But Lichess refuses to "break" the spec. lichess PGN export example: > 1. d3 { [%eval -0.15] [%clk 0:01:00] } 1... g6 { [%eval 0.04] [%clk 0:01:00] } Chess.com PGN export example: > 1. d4 {[%clk 0:02:58.6]} 1... b6 {[%clk 0:02:59.2]}
- kibwen 2y ago
  > lichess only record moves with one-second accuracy According to this blog post, this doesn't appear to be the case since at least 2017: https://lichess.org/@/lichess/blog/a-better-game-clock-history/WOEVrjAA https://lichess.org/@/lichess/blog/a-better-game-clock-histo... "Move times are now stored and displayed with a precision of one tenth of a second. The precision even goes up to one hundredth of a second, for positions where the player had less than 10 seconds left on their clock."
  - pengowray 2y ago
    Interesting. Thanks for the correction and link. I'll note though the .pgn downloads still only show 1 second precision, as do the game PGNs in lichess's "open database" archive.
Scene_Cast2 2y ago
What I'd love is for my pre-moves to be sent to the server immediately so I don't time out when I pre-moved.
- fbernier 2y ago
  What's interesting about this is chess.com allows you to stack as many pre-moves as you like but they each cost 0.1s, whereas on lichess you can only have one pre-move which is technically free but maybe not because of delay.
- y-curious 2y ago
  The worst part is they call it an intentional choice. "First off, premoves take 0.1 seconds. That is what has been preferred and agreed upon by most professional players we have consulted on the topic. They prefer .1 to .0 for premove. This is also what other chess servers do."[1] It's super annoying and the reason I only play blitz+ on chesscom. [1]https://www.chess.com/forum/view/help-support/mate-in-one-queued-in-premove-and-still-lose-on-time https://www.chess.com/forum/view/help-support/mate-in-one-qu...
  - CamelCaseName 2y ago
    Well, I'm not sure about "most professional players" but I strongly prefer .0 to .1
- KolmogorovComp 2y ago
  That would introduce other issues I think. Since premove are cancellable/changeable, what happen if you changed at the very last moment but due to delay it did not reached the server in time?
- ycombinete 2y ago
  This is how it works on Lichess
bluecalm 2y ago
Chess.com software might be the worst public facing software ever assembled. During their most popular weekly tournament (by the number of spectators) called Titled Tuesday where significant % of the world elite regularly competes they send links on a public chat to a 3rd site every 4 rounds. The reason is that there is a few minutes break and they failed implementing a clock on their side so they need 3rd party service for that. This is one of the many, many things but imo it's the most telling. They can't even add a clock counting down the 6 minutes to their web client.
- luisgvv 2y ago
  I can't believe this, but it makes sense now lol I think I heard a streamer say it was for kicking out the cheaters
  - bluecalm 2y ago
    Another thing is that you need to click around the chat area just before the break ends (and you need to monitor when the break ends on that 3rd party site) so the chess.com server won't throw you out of the tournament for inactivity :) >>I think I heard a streamer say it was for kicking out the cheaters I can't see how it can possibly help. Maybe he meant something else?

mkagenius 2y ago

Vladimir Kramnik agrees with your observations about chesscom.

chongli 2y ago
I'm surprised to see anyone bring him up here!
- sourcepluck 2y ago
  You're surprised that Kramnik is mentioned when the discussion topic is related to chess? I don't understand why. He's well-known in chess (and in chess memeland).
  - chongli 2y ago
    Kramnik is a former world champion who has taken a torch to his own reputation by accusing tons of people of cheating without evidence. He’s been banned as a regular columnist on chess.com after using his column as a platform to attack people. He has next to no credibility on any chess issues these days.
    - rjatran 2y ago
      A ban just means that a group of bureaucrats decided to take public action against a specific person and not against others. Carlsen, Nakamura and chess.com itself have participated in the Niemann witch hunt. No evidence of over-the-board cheating has ever been provided. None of the accusers is banned. Kramnik did the same as they did (by indeed going too far).
      - watwut 2y ago
        I think there is difference between "accusing tons of people" and "using his column as a platform to attack people" vs "accusing that one person in one instance". It is actually perfectly fine to not ban people doing something wrong one or two times while banning people doing that exact thing for fifth time.
        krlamn 2y ago
        No, the difference is between a well connected mob going after a single person (Niemann) vs. a single person going after several. The former is always excused, presumably because people's ancient group instincts kick in. The latter is a single heretic that must be destroyed. The group does much more damage than the individual. Everyone already thought that Kramnik's pseudo-mathematical evidence was garbage, so why the ban? The answer is that he mentioned well connected people like Nakamura, so the rogue nail needed to be hammered in. Groups are never punished, and 95% of Internet commenters always excuse the group.
        chongli 2y ago
        No, Kramnik deserved a ban because he was going after not-well-connected, young, up-and-coming players who have no other recourse to defend themselves. Nakamura made it very clear that he was not going to tolerate this because it jeopardizes the future of the game. Niemann was already an admitted cheater who had been previously sanctioned for his activities. Carlsen’s accusations against him may have been unfounded for the specific game in question but Niemann’s reputation was already blemished. Niemann’s lawsuit was inexcusable though, as it was essentially a SLAPP [1] designed to hinder everyone’s efforts to get cheating out of chess. Thankfully the lawsuit was unsuccessful and Niemann continues to play chess. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...
nih 2y ago
Interesting
tkahlrt 2y ago
Yes, he had timing problems in an online tournament on chess.com (against a Mexican GM in the same room) where his computer did not have all Windows updates and/or the timezone was wrong. chess.com confirmed the issue.

pshc 2y ago

> it feels like the SERVER is tracking the time TBH this is what I expected for all online chess. How else to reconcile the two players' differing clocks and also prevent client-side cheating?

MichaelZuo 2y ago
It hasn’t been done client side in any pvp game I’ve heard of.
- stevage 2y ago
  I'm pretty sure freechess.org did.
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    How is it being done client side?
    - stevage 2y ago
      Well it's a long time since I played there. But it had custom chess clients, which I assume just recorded how much time your move actually took and sent that with the move. Yes, it's easy to cheat with this, but it's very easy to cheat with chess anyway.
      - 4star3star 2y ago
        This makes the most sense. Start a timer when the UI actually hands control to the player whose move it is, stop the timer when they've completed their move, and simply subtract that from their remaining time. The interval gets sent to the server and relayed to the other player to update their opponent's clock accurately.
    - compiler-guy 2y ago
      Freechess shipped a binary called “timeseal” that did the calculations for you and encrypted the communications. It was not foolproof—-not by a long shot, but it also didn’t completely suck. You can read about what became timeseal here. https://eprint.iacr.org/2004/203.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2004/203.pdf

bongodongobob 2y ago

I can't play bullet on chess.com for this reason. Lost way too many games on "time" even though I had a second or two on the clock. Incredibly frustrating.

pengowray 2y ago

> they show the time in seconds which can't be right Seems right. If you export/download games from lichess, they use the .pgn (Portable Game Notation) format, which is a standard plain-text format circa 1993, used by pretty much everyone for describing a chess game. Lichess follows the specification to the letter, and as it only technically allows one-second accuracy, lichess only record moves with one-second accuracy. It seems insane, but that's how they do it. Chess.com also exports PGN files, but they add a decimal place, allowing subsecond accuracy. No one has a problem with this. There is no software which cannot handle this. But Lichess refuses to "break" the spec. lichess PGN export example: > 1. d3 { [%eval -0.15] [%clk 0:01:00] } 1... g6 { [%eval 0.04] [%clk 0:01:00] } Chess.com PGN export example: > 1. d4 {[%clk 0:02:58.6]} 1... b6 {[%clk 0:02:59.2]}

kibwen 2y ago
> lichess only record moves with one-second accuracy According to this blog post, this doesn't appear to be the case since at least 2017: https://lichess.org/@/lichess/blog/a-better-game-clock-history/WOEVrjAA https://lichess.org/@/lichess/blog/a-better-game-clock-histo... "Move times are now stored and displayed with a precision of one tenth of a second. The precision even goes up to one hundredth of a second, for positions where the player had less than 10 seconds left on their clock."
- pengowray 2y ago
  Interesting. Thanks for the correction and link. I'll note though the .pgn downloads still only show 1 second precision, as do the game PGNs in lichess's "open database" archive.

Scene_Cast2 2y ago

What I'd love is for my pre-moves to be sent to the server immediately so I don't time out when I pre-moved.

fbernier 2y ago
What's interesting about this is chess.com allows you to stack as many pre-moves as you like but they each cost 0.1s, whereas on lichess you can only have one pre-move which is technically free but maybe not because of delay.
y-curious 2y ago
The worst part is they call it an intentional choice. "First off, premoves take 0.1 seconds. That is what has been preferred and agreed upon by most professional players we have consulted on the topic. They prefer .1 to .0 for premove. This is also what other chess servers do."[1] It's super annoying and the reason I only play blitz+ on chesscom. [1]https://www.chess.com/forum/view/help-support/mate-in-one-queued-in-premove-and-still-lose-on-time https://www.chess.com/forum/view/help-support/mate-in-one-qu...
- CamelCaseName 2y ago
  Well, I'm not sure about "most professional players" but I strongly prefer .0 to .1
KolmogorovComp 2y ago
That would introduce other issues I think. Since premove are cancellable/changeable, what happen if you changed at the very last moment but due to delay it did not reached the server in time?
ycombinete 2y ago
This is how it works on Lichess

bluecalm 2y ago

Chess.com software might be the worst public facing software ever assembled. During their most popular weekly tournament (by the number of spectators) called Titled Tuesday where significant % of the world elite regularly competes they send links on a public chat to a 3rd site every 4 rounds. The reason is that there is a few minutes break and they failed implementing a clock on their side so they need 3rd party service for that. This is one of the many, many things but imo it's the most telling. They can't even add a clock counting down the 6 minutes to their web client.

luisgvv 2y ago
I can't believe this, but it makes sense now lol I think I heard a streamer say it was for kicking out the cheaters
- bluecalm 2y ago
  Another thing is that you need to click around the chat area just before the break ends (and you need to monitor when the break ends on that 3rd party site) so the chess.com server won't throw you out of the tournament for inactivity :) >>I think I heard a streamer say it was for kicking out the cheaters I can't see how it can possibly help. Maybe he meant something else?