Very good site.
I have been noticing that a lot of players will do things like wait until somebody joins the game and then leave--either because of the opponent's rating or just for the fun of it--forcing you to
either abort the game yourself or leave it hanging indefinitely in your games profile.
Could we not have that result, please? It also messes up the stats a bit: The total games played count includes those which were aborted (which, logically, it has no reason to, cause they weren't
really "played"), but win, loss, and draw ratios base off of that factor. Obviously, adding up the total number of won, drawn, and lost games under mine or many others' profiles, does not equate to
the total number of games played.
Since the list of games played grows huge pretty quickly there will definitely be some use for a player opening database search or something later on to find old games, but, in the meantime, listing
games that were aborted on player profiles is kind of a waste of space.
Although it has proven an useful way to find users who abort every single game where people with just 1 ELO lower than them join, but maybe a control for that can be added later as well.
Aborted games, as well as unplayed/stalling games, are automatically removed after 2 days.
Okay, apparently that's true. That's good to know.
Well I was confused because it shows "[$games] games played", and if you add up the wins, losses and draws (at least in my case but others' as well evidently), it doesn't add up to the total number of
games played.
In my case, my profile says this:
298 games played,
180 wins ~= 61.4%,
100 losses ~= 34.1%,
13 draws ~= 4.4%,
/* Adds up to 293 games. */
Fortunately, I was wrong about it messing up the stats (i.e. the pie graph), so it's not a big deal. It would be less confusing in the future if aborted games were removed from the list immediately
rather than after a delay, or at least if the counter got fixed.
It's annoying when people do abort - and from looking at the records you just can't tell who did it! Normally, it's the much lower rated player, but I've had it happen today when we were very closely
matched.
Yeah it seems the only way to identify who aborted the game, was based on your knowledge of both players.
Like, if you see a time control of (x), where (x) is the favorite time control for player White to create games with, and you see that White played a move, you can usually safely assume that Black
aborted the game. Otherwise there doesn't seem to be a way to identify.
The only thing that truly annoyed me about aborted games, though, was the illusion that they're permanently stored in my database / games profile. Fortunately as thibault pointed out such games are
eventually omitted.
There's this one dude here who aborts every single game with players rated lower than him, to make sure he gains enough Elo with games he does play (a failed plan, mind you).
I know one other dude who aborts every single game with players rated higher than him XD, which is even less successful than the strategy above.
I'm relatively new here, after a gap of 30+years from playing chess, and it seems to me that you just can't tell a player's strength from the given rating - starting at 1200 is a quite low base-line
(I'm from a wholly OTB 'long-game' background, by the way) - although you can make a relative 'guess'.
Is it known how many active players there are on the site? Is there any merit in closing accounts if not used in a - reasonably long - period, and excluding these from the registered player count? It
sounds impressive being ranked 'x' from nearly 20,000 but it's a false impression!
Imo games with
provisional players should not count as a provsional rating is not yet establish.
Additionally there are some people who are at 1200 but dont play any rated games.
I'm noticing that higher-rated players frequently abort when challenged by a lower-rated player (that would be me).
Obviously, they have a lot of points to lose and nothing to gain against a lower-rated player.
I'm currently playing about 1350, so I'm not a total chump.
I also have won games against players 200-300 points higher than myself.
Anyway, the only time I abort a game is when the other player just doesn't move (e.g. they're White) for 20-30 seconds.
I sometimes check, and they are frequently playing multiple games (which means I really don't want to play with them anyway). A tell-tale sign, if you will.
Anyway, I think it's rude to click on a game -- no one made you -- then don't play.
And, to all you higher-rated players who do play all comers, thank you.
^
"Anyway, the only time I abort a game is when the other player just doesn't move (e.g. they're White) for 20-30 seconds."
Just to be clear, I'm talking about their opening move (not during the game itself).
