Game lost by abandonment again

Not sure if my last thread about this issue was deleted, but it seems to have been.

We just lost another game by abandonment where the opponent’s move never showed. The board has definitely gotten a lot less reliable with the most recent update.

What firmware are you on?

The thread is still here - when bugs are fixed, we unlist it:
https://community.playchessup.com/t/game-lost-by-abandonment/745/10
(I closed that one too soon, forgetting it was two issues)

There were two issues:

  1. on our end
  2. on chess.com end

This sounds like #2 issue and we are waiting on Chess.com to fix

Thanks. I’m on the latest, 5.5.

Ok - this is #1 priority for us. Official launch is a couple of weeks out and letting us know about failed games helps us iron out the final issues.

Glad to hear. Should definitely be the first priority. Thanks.

Just wanted to check in about this issue. I know there have been no firmware updates, but has this issue been addressed at all on the chesscom side?

We’ve stopped using the board since I last reported this because of the failed games, but we’d love to be able to start using it again.

Thanks.

As part of the pilot group - it is not going to be 100%. But we need people to play. That was the assignment of the pilot run group. You can watch the game on chess.com (via another account) if you want to protect the ratings points. Or play unrated as well.

Sorry - but that is what we tried to communicate with on boarding people into the group. Pilot Run group’s job is to test and find the bugs. So that we fix the bugs in time for everyone else - and then everyone has a good user experience in the end.

We have an open bug(s) we are fixing with Chess.com. Records of games proving the fix or not-fixed help speed up the process.

*Also - We have a dashboard and are tracking game success.

We have not had a failure in a few days. So I would try it again.

Hey Jeff,

I can understand your perspective on this, but it’s a bit much to say we were given an “assignment” and suggest that I’m failing to fulfill my end of the bargain just because I’ve stopped using the board for a few days.

We were given pilot units with the understanding that we’d be happy to test and give feedback in good faith. I’m sure I’ve contributed more than your average pilot tester since receiving the unit.

I understand bugs like these are to be expected during the beta period. But if the board has started to cause nearly half our online games to fail and cost us rating points to boot, we certainly have no obligation to keep using the board before this game-failure bug has been resolved. We’re not paid employees here.

I was simply asking if the issue has been addressed at all on the back end because I do want to use the board again. It was not meant to be taken as a complaint.

I will gladly continue to test the board and report bugs once I can trust the board enough to complete games.

Just throwing my oppinion out there: This is why I made a second ‘test’ account (approved by chess.com).

We were promised a working physical board with unfinished/buggy/problematic software. So far, they have almost delivered (I expected a lot more problems than we had so far).

So, honestly, yes, unrated should be the way to go.

I played 2 rated games today with no problems. I even used my phone between them to review the first one with board still on. Secound game gave non problems. Not needed to relogin or something else.
I wanted to test this to see if I ran against the same problems.
ChessDOTcom works with no issues for me.

Unrated games would make sense, and I’m sure it is useful for them. But personally speaking, we only have so much time in the day to spend on chess, and unfortunately we don’t happen to have the luxury of spending that time playing games that may disconnect midgame too frequently. And we’re certainly not obligated to continue playing online games with the device if current bugs are too disruptive.

Again, I’m not complaining about the bugs here. Just disagreeing with the suggestion that we have an obligation to keep playing no matter what.

It’s perfectly reasonable to report the game-breaking bug and wait for it to be resolved before continuing to test.

Good to know, thanks. We played maybe 4-5 games after updating to 5.5, but two of those games failed, which made us wary of playing more.

To give more context, we’re not playing blitz or bullet games. We’re playing games with 30 minute time control, so to have a game fail after putting half an hour into it is enough to ward us away for the time being.

psl
Can you test quicly a few games against bots and look if there are problems with that? Those aren’t recorded or rated.
I can understand you don’t want to play rated games when there are problems. But it’s good to narrow down things. Like the test against bots. Loose or win it doesn’t matter mutch when testing.

And in the pilot run we test all, not just ChessDOTcom. We must find bugs and stuff before the software goes live. Our frustration sometimes let the mass players calm if the problems and bugs are worked out :wink:

We haven’t played against the chesscom bots since updating to 5.5, but we have done some chessup bot games, and haven’t experienced any problems with those.

It’s about the ChessDOTcom connection. And if possible take your time. Let the game in the background now and then to extended the time played because you talk about 30 min games.
Just trying to help you narrow down. One step at a time.
My 2 games today with no problem where 15+10.

^Sorry this is just something coming across wrong in text vs conversation. What I was saying came across wrong.

We did fix one of the bugs. And I completely agree I would stop playing too if half of games were failing.

We see more data on our end:

I was trying to let you know that it should be safe to try again.

Out of the two issues, one was fixed. The other one we need to collect game logs to sort out the bug.

From the data on our end, we are ~30 games in a row clean. So there may still be a glitch here and there, but not every other game.

The final thing we are resolving is recovering from a broken connection to Chess.com. And unfortunately, that requires us collecting some data on these broken connections and testing our recovery.

What I do (and this is not a long term expectation of users) - is I watch the game from another account. If it ever fails to relay a move, then I take over the game on my computer and turn off the board.

It has been ~12 games for me since I have had a failure. Once I am confident again, I start to just rely on the board again

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Thanks for explaining, Jeff. I guess I misunderstood your intent.

Glad to hear things are looking smoother. We’ll try more online games and see.

It’s a bit difficult in our circumstances to watch the game on another device while playing, but that would make sense to do.

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What we may find is that the bug is only happening in 30 minute games and there is a timeout on the server or such (*likely not the real issue, but it is always a surprise on root cause)

So if it is happening a lot to one user and not all users, that narrows us in on reproducing it and solving it.

In an odd way, they most valuable user to us (at this stage) - is the one having the most problems.

I completely understand the limited time for chess and the value of that time. Sorry, it was not a demand to play. It is that I am committed to fixing this, so we can make sure the experience is what you expect.

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