New tournaments available

I corrected the state of several tournaments and created new ones. The missing games problem will probably be corrected tomorrow. Please make your moves in these "missing games" tournaments. The missing games will be created soon.

Tournament problems solved

I found and corrected the error that caused the tournament problems. You can enroll in tournaments again - if you can find an open tournament.

Several tournaments have missing games. In most classes there are too few open tournaments. I will try to correct both problems tonight. Tomorrow most of these problems should be gone.

Sorry!

Tournament problems

Some tournaments have errors: missing games, wrong status, ...
Please do not enroll in tournaments until tomorrow!
I will try to find the source of these problems tonight. Until then, continue playing your running games or start some private games.

Conditional moves available

From now on, conditional moves are available for all games.
Thank you to all testers! The final version has been improved quite a bit over the initial one. I hope you will enjoy it.

A conditional move is a move that you plan as a reply to a certain move of your opponent. For example, if you have Black in a freshly started game, you plan to answer c5 if he plays e4. And if he continues with Nf3 you would answer that move with d6.

You can advice the PlayChess server to make these conditional moves (c5 and d6) for you. But if your opponent deviates from your conditional move sequence (by not playing 1.e4 or not playing 2.Nf3), the PlayChess server will not do anything. Instead, you will have to enter your move yourself, just as you normally would do.

Read the complete description in the tutorial

Conditional moves - last orders, please!

An improved version of our conditional moves has just been uploaded. Now, you can enter several (even longer) variants that differ only some moves later.

For example, you (as Black) enter the move sequences
- e4 e5 Nf3 Nc6 Bb5 a6 Ba4 b5
- e4 e5 Nf3 Nc6 Bb5 a6 Bxc6 dxc6
- e4 e5 Nf3 Nc6 Bc4 Nf6

The game goes 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 (until here, all three variants are still possible). After 3.Bb5 a6, however, the third variant is deleted from the database, because this CM sequence is no longer possible. Only the variants
- Ba4 b5
- Bxc6 dxc6
are remaining. After White's 4th move no CM remain in the database for that game - until you or your opponent enter new CM sequences.

This is the last test phase. If everything goes well, I will activate CM for tournament games next weekend.

Alas - this is a member-only feature.

Server problems solved - for now

Today the server had been down for several hours. The administrators finally got it running again. But I still don't know what went wrong or how they repaired it. Hopefully, the server will be stable for the rest of its lifetime. Yes, we will get a new server. But I cannot say when (as quickly as possible).

Until then, let me remind you that the clock buffer (the time you get on your clock when the game is started) is meant to compensate server problems like that. Never, never let you clock drop below 1-2 days! Else, the next server crash might lead to losing games on time.

Blogs
As you can see, our web logs (blogs) are working again! Some of you have been waiting since long for this event. Now, at last, you can publish your articles. And the PlayChess community will soon enjoy reading them. I will send out emails to all authors. If I forget anyone, just drop me a note.