Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

It seems that I can not take back moves in my games.

I do not see description of Maximum Time and Minimum Time fields.

Also, are any of the time controls allowed to be negative? I would suggest the following:

• Pace time and and pace moves should not be negative.
• If spare time is negative, then your initial reserve time is negative (which requires you to accumulate more bonus/extra before you actually have any spare time), and the grace time must be set positive (otherwise you will lose immediately).
• Grace time should not be negative.
• If extra time is negative, then there is a time penalty after every move.
• If bonus time is negative, then there is a penalty for moving too quickly.
• Bonus period should not be negative.

Here's a new way to send Game Courier invitations to people. You can share them on Facebook. After you have created an invitation, click the Share widget and select Facebook. Game Courier is now programmed to fill in the title and description fields with suitable values, and if you have chosen to render your game board as an image, a smaller version of that image should be available as a thumbnail.

You can probably use the Share widget to share invitations on Twitter or other social networking sites too. But I have only tested it and customized to work with Facebook.

The cards feature doesn't seem to work very well. I get a display of the backs of cards, and when I try to discard a card that is in my hand (just guessing, based on what remains in the deck; I tried with both players and ), I get an error message where the name of the card is missing. If it is not in my hand, the error message includes the name of the card. Also, what is the name of the PHP global variable that stores the contents of your hand? (I have already figured out $deck, $cards, and $discardpile) Also, a suggestion, it may be useful to display how many cards in opponent's hand and how many cards remain in the draw pile, and the ability to use setsystem with the $deck and $discardpile variables as well as whatever array stores the cards in each player's hand.

To prevent your opponent from seeing your hand, you can see your cards only when you are signed in with your password. One drawback to this is that you cannot see cards in solitaire mode. To test a game with cards, you will have to play a logged game where you enter your userid and password for each side.

I have just fixed some problems with the discard command and with displaying cards, but I'm not sure if my fixes addressed the same problems you were having. $hand1 and $hand2 are global variables for each player's hand. I'll think about your suggestions. Let me know if you come up with a game that requires certain features.

I don't know if it is me, or if it happens to others too, but I confess: I don't catch nothing at all in the explanations of Time Controls. It is not a problem of English, I'm used to read complex scientific stuff in English. Maybe it is because I never played chess in official competitions and I'm lacking some notions.

I wanted to put a time limit because I've been frustrated in some recent games to see opponents stopping to play after being in a difficult situation. Doing so, they never loose. An unfair behaviour certainly, I wanted to avoid this.

So I set a time limit but frankly I don't understand at all what I have selected and the effect it may have. I just guess there is a limit somehow.

To play games the way one plays correspondence games on lichess or chess.com, one simply has grace time without reserve time.

E.g.

If we have no (0) reserve time (Edit: In other words, no “spare time”, no “min time”, no “extra time”, and no “bonus time”), and we have a grace time of 24 hours, this means, as soon as one moves, the opponent has 24 hours to reply to your move. If they fail to reply within 24 hours, they lose the game.

Lichess makes things simple by having no reserve time whatsoever, and having only the following settings for grace time (which is simply the time needed to make a move before losing the game on Lichess) in correspondence games:

• 1 day
• 2 days
• 3 days
• 5 days
• 7 days
• 10 days
• 14 days
• Untimed

So, for dealing with “this guy never moves once they are losing”, having a grace time of 14 days ensures that both people have plenty of time to make moves (especially in today’s world with smart phones everywhere), but that forgotten games are won by the last person to make a move before forgetting the game exists.

Ignoring “Min Time”, “Bonus Time”, and “Bonus Period”, “Spare Time” is, using a Fischer (increment) chess clock the amount of time given for the game, “grace time” would be 0 (since a simple Fischer clock doesn’t have this), and “extra time” would be the increment (the amount of time given for each move).

Let me explain this with an example. We have a game with 5 days (120 hours) of spare time, a grace time of 24 hours (1 day), and an extra time of 1 hour.

The clock starts, and Alice (white) is playing Bob (black).

• Alice makes her first move as soon as the game starts. She now has 121 hours spare time: 120 hours at game start, then 1 hour added after making her first move.

• Bob replies 23 hours later. Since he replied within 24 hours, he loses no spare time, but gets one hour of extra time. So now Alice and Bob have 121 hours of spare time. Grace time is always the same for each move.

• Alice is busy the next day and needs 26 hours to reply to Bob’s move. The first 24 hours were against her grace time, so only the final two hours of her delay moving went against her spare time. She lost two hours of spare time (119 hours now), but gained one hour after making her move (so she now has 120 hours of spare time again; with grace time, if she doesn’t move within 144 hours, she loses).

• Alice created a lot of tactical complications for Bob, so Bob needs 72 hours to reply to Alice’s move. 24 hours is grace time, so we only look at the remaining 48 hours when calculating spare time lost. Bob lost 48 hours spare time taking so long to make his move, but gains one hour after making his move. 121 hours - 48 hours (delay moving after grace time) + 1 hour (extra time) = 74 hours left (with the 24 hour grace time, Bob needs to make his next move within 98 hours or lose the game)

• And so on.

(The time control that works best for me is 2 days: 48 hours to make a move or I lose. The problem with one day time controls without reserve time is that every day I have to make my move earlier in the day, but, with two days, if I make a move every day, it doesn’t matter what time of day I make the move. There are ways to have one-move-a-day without the issue of having to make my moves earlier and earlier each day, but our time controls are probably already too complicated).

Thank you Samuel for your explanations. I would recommend to the Editors to put your example in the explanation of those time notions. Not only it is complex to have “spare time”, “min time”, “extra time”, “bonus time”, etc. but the explanations, sorry to say, are themselves so complex that after reading the end it is impossible to remember. In other word, it is not understandable.

In my opinion, the way it is practiced in Lichess is largely quite enough and sufficient for chess variants play.

I would vote for simplifying our process.

Thanks again

I don't play much on GC, so I'm hesitant to make edits to the instructions or provide defaults on time controls, but I suspect Fergus or Greg would be amenable. My uninformed suggestion for a default setting would be something like grace_time=3days, spare_time=2months. The idea is to almost exclusively use grace time, but given substantive difficulties in life, a couple months of reserve time for the game. No bonus times or anything else, to keep it clean.

I don't see any issue here.

There is a drop-down with a selection of default time controls:

Real Time -- Blitz
Real Time -- Tournament
Real Time -- Leisurely
Correspondence -- Multiple Moves per Day
Correspondence -- Multiple Moves per Week
Correspondence -- Once a Day
Correspondence -- Tournament
Correspondence -- Leisurely

Personally, I always select "Correspondence -- Tournament"

The issue is that apparently you understand what you are doing whereas for me is like sitting in front of a Boeing cockpit control panel. Maybe this semantic is well known of people playing chess in competition, tournament, etc. but for occasional players without such experience is tough.

Otherwise I see the answers (thanks), some saying to use exclusively "grace time", others to set "grace time" to 0 and use "min time" only. My understanding is that there are different appreciations of these notions, so it is not so straightforward. OK OK, I will continue to try and find a setting which works for me.

You do not need to get too caught up in the details. As I understand it, you are simply looking to make sure the game makes some progress and the person will eventually lose if they quit playing. "Correspondence -- Leisurely" will meet those needs. If you want to make sure a general pace of at least a few moves a week, with the possibility of a week or two off for vacation, then use "Correspondence -- Tournament".