February 14, 2010

Linares 2010

 During the live event you will have extended chess-clock information including a pondering time which is a running estimate of the time spent contemplating the next move. I believe this innovative new feature will enhance the experience by making the heat of the battle more vivid. I love it and I hope that one day other live coverage Web sites will implement similar function­ality in their software. Until then you can always come back and enjoy it with me.

The tournament schedule and the original live broadcast can be found here.

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author Nikolai Pilafov
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Nikolai Pilafov said...

IMPORTANT NOTE: As it turns out, in this tournament, time management is as crucial as ever. From live relays’ point of view the problem with time management is slightly different. The goal is to reflect the actual chess clock of an ongoing game as accurately as possible, so that a visitor can have a clear idea of the clock situation. How tough is this job?

I was very surprised to find a major flaw in the way the clock works in the original CTBApplet (see the official site). The issue becomes obvious in the middle game when nobody makes a move for quite a while. On the surface, it appears that the clock is running down on the side to move next (as it should). But if we switch away from the current game (eg to display another game) and then switch back to the previous, the clock will magically reset itself back to the time of the latest move. The easiest way to reproduce this is to leave it running for a minute or two, make note of the time and then switch the game away and back. After that you will be scratching your head exactly the way I was.

Fortunately my live relay doesn’t have this problem. You will always have an accurate clock reading (in 20s increments), especially when no moves have been made for a while. And yes, that’s regardless of whether you just logged on to the site or how often you switch games. Shortly, you’ve come to the right place.