Chess Tempo

22nd October 2008

A few new features have been added (some today, one a week ago) and some bug fixes made:

• Allow users to change the problem selection algorithm so that they can request 'hard', 'normal' or 'easy' problems. Perhaps counter-intuitively this feature does NOT impact user ratings due to the way the glicko rating system works. The setting can be changed in the user preferences. This feature is available to all registered users.
• Username and (for subscribing members) membership expiry details are now shown at top of the stats page (expiry details only viewable by the actual member).
• Problem attempts rating distribution graphs now include seperate distributions for correct and incorrect problems. Available for gold members only.
• The 'Problems' page now includes a 'Problem Set Stats' tab which shows Problem set problem rating distributions and other statistics. Available to all users.
• Added a new 'Percentile Rank' graph to the stats page. This allows users to see how the 'better than x% of users' changes over time. Available to gold members only.
• Fixed a bug (or two) in the Glicko rating calculations, this may lead to some rating movement, but initial testing indicates the movement if any is small.
• Added some new code to improve the ability to detect users who use computers to assist them with standard problems. A reminder that computer analysis is allowed once the problem is finished, but not while the problem is 'live'.

Please provide feedback (positive or negative) in the forum.

12th October 2008

Another small update with 3199 new problems added to the problem set.

6th September 2008

A minor problem set update has been made with just over 2000 new problems added.

5th August 2008

A problem set update has been made and some new UI features have been added. The problem set has had around 5000 problems removed and 4000 new problems added. The new problem set fixes 2 bugs that led to some winning alternatives to be marked wrong and also decreased the threshold for what is considered to be a "winning alternative". In addition, a greater than 1 pawn gap between the best move and the best alternative winning move is now being enforced, this should make it less confusing as to why one move was preferred over another.

The most important UI change in this update is the addition of a move list to the tactics and problem viewing pages. Gold members are now able to see all the moves and computer evaluations for the four best lines for the user at each point in the problem. Variations can be viewed and navigated through on the board. Silver members get to see the computer evaluations and only the first move of each line. Both gold and silver members are able to see which moves were designated as "allowed alternatives". Non-Premium users can view the computer line for the best solution (the same line that was previously shown by the "computer analysis" button). For more details and screenshots of this feature please see the Membership Information page.

A "My Comments" tab has been added to the view problems page, this shows all the comments for each problem the user has commented on in the past. The most recent updates are shown first, this allows a convenient way to track replies to previous comments. The "My Comments" tab is available to both premium and non-premium users.

User's using larger board sizes or small browser windows may need to slightly reduce their board size to fit the new move list display onto the screen.

A quick note on browser compatibility, Chess Tempo should continue to work on Internet Explorer 6, however support for IE6 is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. There are several known annoyances with IE6 (and some lesser issues with IE7) when using this site. The browser which currently provides the best experience when using Chess Tempo is Firefox 3 , you can download it here.

2nd July 2008

The new premium membership features have been released. Please see a description of the premium features on the Membership Information page. Sign up and help support Chess Tempo development!

15th June 2008

An important problem set update has been made. Lots of positions which had alternative winning lines have either been removed or had their alternatives explicitly recorded. If moves recorded as alternative winning lines are played, the user is told they have played a good move but asked to look for another one. No points are lost for choosing a recorded alternative. I'm hoping this change leads to a signficant improvement in perceived problem set quality, especially for higher rated players.

The threshold for being considered an active user has been dropped from an RD of 140 to an RD of 80. This should allow a wider range of users to appear in the top rated lists due to inactive users dropping out more quickly.

27th May 2008

An improved problem selection algorithm has been deployed. It should cluster problems more reliably around the user's current rating. The new selection sytem also prefers to give users problems they have not seen before or where that is not possible, the least recently seen from the appropriate range.

The new system may cause some short term rating fluctuations, but should ensure that users are given a set of problems more appropriate to their current level.

23rd May 2008

Another smaller update has just been made. Ratings are now stored as floating point numbers. This prevents the annoying behaviour where ratings changes between 0 and 0.5 were rounded to 0. The correct/failed reporting for the just completed problem is now kept around until replaced by the next problem's result.

IMPORTANT: Please reload browser window to update to new version.

21st May 2008

A major upgrade to problem sets and the user interface has just been made. Many improvements have been made, you can read about the details in this forum post

IMPORTANT: To ensure a smooth transition to the new interface, please log out and log back in. You may also need to force your browser to reload the tactics page and in some cases you many have to ask your browser to flush its cache in order to access the new features.

I expect some rating inflation to occur, especially in standard mode due to removing the questionable mate problems. Hopefully this will not get out of control, I'll keep a close eye on it for the next few days.

8th January 2008

Another 14543 problems have been added to the site. Again it will take a few days before the new problems settle into reasonable ratings. I tested a "Provisional" system where new problems didn't impact user ratings, unfortunately the result seemed more annoying than the issue it addressed so I've scrapped it for now. This will be the last set of problems generated with the old problem generator. The next addition will (hopefully!) come from an improved generator. Happy New Year! :-)

3rd September 2007

3712 new positions have been added to the problem set. It will take several days for the new problems to receive appropriate ratings, so expect the unexpected until that occurs :-)

13th August 2007

Another problem set update has been made. This update should further improve problem set quality for non-mating tactics. Further details in this forum post.

25th June 2007

A PGN Viewer has been added to the site. The viewer can show arbitrary PGN formatted games using the board from the tactics interface. The viewer can also be embedded into your own webpage to view PGN games on your own site. Several improvements made to the board during development of the viewer should also improve the tactics UI. This includes the capability (but not yet the interface [coming soon]) to select alternative piece styles and board looks. The PGN parsing component is still under active development, so please let me know if you find PGN files that the viewer has trouble with.

27th May 2007

Another update to the problem set has been made. In addition to adding new problems, this update also removes some ambiguous mates that crept in recently. An issue with ratings adjustment has also been resolved. As a result of this, blitz users may receive larger penalties for taking too long on a problem.

13th May 2007

The problem set has been updated. Many problems with more than one "best move" have been removed from the set. See this forum post for more details.

20th April 2007

Site goes live! Currently we are still testing the site so apologies in advance for any problems you may come across. Firefox 2.x, Internet Explorer 6 and 7 and recent versions of Safari should work with the site. The Opera browser has issues with the tactics page which are being investigated.