Hastings

[Carl Hibbard]

The EU Champs at Liverpool seemed to work fine, I remember - was there a technical issue with Hastings that didn't apply in Liverpool?

Yes, the shared hosting provider switched to a virtual (VMware...) based solution and away from physical equipment!

It's easier to maintain and in theory scale upwards but in my opinion is never up to a proper cluster type solution which is what we had before

Naturally there just isn't any way to test a broadcast to sufficient levels before the event

Liverpool reached 1.6 million "requests" an hour at it's peak

[Carl Hibbard]

When I saw twenty boards were promised I thought WOW English chess is finally aiming to compete at a high level in terms of internet coverage. Sadly, for me anyway, often a number of these boards were missing coverage. This is an area which would be very useful to work on, although again I accept it will cost money and work. Then again, what are 'game fees' for ?

Yes sorry about that...

I am afraid that nobody actually wants to pay the true costs needed to host a live broadcast to that degree

All hosting is done for free I should point out...

[IM Jack Rudd]

All rating calculations for Hastings will have been done on the October 2008 list, because it started before January 1. Which is a bit of a pity for me, because my rating went down between October and January, and I'd have gained more if playing off my January rating.

[Mark Howitt]

When I saw twenty boards were promised I thought WOW English chess is finally aiming to compete at a high level in terms of internet coverage. Sadly, for me anyway, often a number of these boards were missing coverage. This is an area which would be very useful to work on, although again I accept it will cost money and work. Then again, what are 'game fees' for ?

Yes sorry about that...

I am afraid that nobody actually wants to pay the true costs needed to host a live broadcast to that degree

All hosting is done for free I should point out...

The ECF should contribute then instead of hoarding our money.

[Sean Hewitt]

The ECF should contribute then instead of hoarding our money.

The ECF ran at a considerable 4 figure loss last year, and are projected to do so again this year. It's difficult therefore to see how they can be accused of "hoarding money".

[Steve Collyer]

It covers all games, although logic dictates you'd expect a slightly higher matchup %'s for longer time controls in CC than in OTB with 3 minutes or so per move.
However, many people playing CC have 50+ games in progress & make several hundred moves per month. All these are logged also, so unless you have a Super GM giving a free online simul blitz demonstration, anyone approaching the top 1 match = 60%, top 2 match = 75%, top 3 match = 85% is almost certainly being rather naughty.

Well this sounds a bit suspicious to me. The stats for CC (considering it is mostly bullet, blitz or quickplay) must be VASTLY different to over the board longplay. I just had a look at my last OTB game and came up with these stats:
Top 1 Match = 65%
Top 2 Match = 80%
Top 3 Match = 87%
I wouldn't be surprised if this is fairly normal for a half decent player in OTB longplay

Hi Nick.
I have recently completed analysis of all 20 games in the Fischer-Spassky 1972 WC match. Fischer is often spoken of as one of the all-time strongest players, also one of the least blunder-prone.

My analysis was under the same conditions as before:

Fritz 11 @ 30 seconds per move
Pentium 4 2.93GHz 1GB RAM
Hash Table 192MB
Database used http://www.chesslive.de

For obvious reasons a game is classed as “out of book” once I cannot find the position in the chesslive database prior to the 1972 Fischer-Spassky World Championship.

Fischer
Top 1 Match: 385/658 (58,5% )
Top 2 Match: 509/658 (77,4% )
Top 3 Match: 563/658 (85,6% )

Spassky
Top 1 Match: 368/657 (56,0% )
Top 2 Match: 461/657 (70,2% )
Top 3 Match: 525/657 (79,9% )

If you analyse your last 20 OTB games with more than 20 out-of-book moves (games must be objectively selected) against similarly rated players to you & can get near the Fischer matchup figures above then you are a very special player.

If anyone wants, I can post all the game matchup figures in a different thread.