| From | Message |
heinzkat
2/06/2008
08:52:31
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 Subject: Setting up team matches
Message:
I have been co-captaining my team for a short period of time now, and when searching for a match, it seems the system as it is now, does not particularly help you in finding suitable opponents for your available players. You will find matches, sure, but the system won't 'speed up' this process.
For example, when searching for a match for a 1600 rated player, you would have to go to other team's pages (randomly guessing they would have such a player available), skim the whole page looking for an available 1600 rated player - who is either not there (most of the time, of course), or somewhere in the middle of a bunch of other players with higher and lower team score (the players are sorted not on rating, but on team score), after which you find out there is no other player to complete the match. And when you finally find a possible match, your challenge gets declined 'sorry, randomname only plays 5 days per move' (while your player only wants 3 days/move games).
The process of finding a good match can take some time, and there should be some easier ways to find team matches.
A few ideas come to mind:
grandphish proposed quite a good feature a while ago; a searching system for your available players, which searches other teams that have players available that fit the only little criterion of +/- rating. This is the idea:
"The captain should be able to complete a two column table and find a compatible match. Column 1 is his player's rating. Column 2 is the over/under that is acceptable to the captain. For example, if your player is rated 1525 and you will accept anyone rated 1500 to 1550, then column 2 would be 25. If you have five players you want to match, you would fill out a 5 row by 2 column table and hit a "search" button. GameKnot would then search the teams and return all the teams that have available players matching your criteria and also indicate which teams have a manager online at the current time. Then, instead of searching through dozens of teams looking for a match, you would only have a few that match your criteria."
This could be refined by just selecting the players you want a match for, and from there the application would just take their rating for the search. The only thing you would have to do is selecting your players from a list and entering the +/- value (and maybe not even that, and a value of say 30 points can be taken as a standard). Note that only a little improvement of the 'advanced search' for players ( gameknot.com) would be required in order to implement this feature.
This is one idea that is very good; another idea that comes to mind, is the option to filter out a team's available players, sorted by rating. That would save you some time scrolling through unavailable players - and you could find out if there is a possible match more quickly.
Also, with the new 3/5/7 days per move matches limitation for some players, it might be an idea to display in a new column (behind player/rating/score/games), what amount of days is acceptable for that player. (just like the 'available green dot' - a green 3 would mean available for 3 days/move, a grey 3 would mean not available for 3 days/move)
At the moment, every team has a different way of displaying which players want a certain amount of days per move.
Another idea is 'dump page' of available team players, at which you can see ALL available players of any team (maybe too, partitioned in rating ranges). There, you could quickly find the team you are looking for to challenge...
Merging a few of these ideas would be possible too, at least, all these suggestions would improve the process of finding new team matches. I'm curious if there are more ideas among the team captains (and maybe Mike has some ideas too...)
Heinzkat
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eqj2
2/06/2008
14:01:48
[ report abuse ] |
Message:
Heinzkat great ideas have you sent this to Mike? I am behind you with this problem.
When I try to set up matches after going through the nightmare the team captain is off line so you have to wait. Some thing quicker would help alot. What gets me is after all of the hard work one of your team mates becomes not available so you have to start all over. Cheers Eddie
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tekoahbaer
2/06/2008
18:51:59
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Message:
Nice ideas
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heinzkat
2/07/2008
00:24:50
[ report abuse ] | No...
Message:
I haven't sent this as feedback (yet) - I have suggested a few things (like adding the online green dots on the team ladder for online team (co-)captains), but of course these haven't been taken into consideration (yet)...
I wonder if there are good ideas among the team captains how to find suitable matches without too much trouble... of course, at the moment we find our ways too, but a little bit of help would be appreciated.
Another simple idea is to add an option to filter out players that play in teams on the 'advanced player search' - gameknot.com - and are available for new team matches. That should not be too much work to program and would be a big help in finding matches. This could be taken one little step further for the idea I have already given in the first message. I think Mike could implement it in less than a day if he wants :-)
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eqj2
2/07/2008
07:43:51
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Message:
As for me in setting up team matches. I have many windows open one for the list of my team and the other window for a list of the challenging team. I switch back and forth till I have made my challenge. But still this takes time and I like to make the challenge when the the captain is online so I do not have to wait a day or two.
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maca
2/09/2008
06:26:26
[ report abuse ] | Good ideas
Message:
The search utility for finding player-by-player opponents for team matches wouldn't sound too difficult to install, and would be very useful, now that many captains are much more 'tight' in their challenges than they used to be (IMHO). The search utility should extend from a minimum of two players all the way down to 16 players, which I've understood is the maximum size of a single team match in terms of participating players. The movement time preference thing might take a bit more work, because it would effective require a whole new setting, a preferred time control for team games, for every team player. I personally think that teams should simply concentrate around one or two time controls in team games, not all three. If you're not OK with the time control, you can always find another team that is.
GK Team game features took major steps forward throughout last year, and I hope that this year will be at least as successful as the last one.
Regards,
MaCa,
Captain of TFIF.
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heinzkat
2/12/2008
07:56:23
[ report abuse ] | Feedback sent...
Message:
But as always, no feedback on the feedback. That's one of the main reasons I posted it here in the public forums.
"Message from GameKnot customer support:
Hello, heinzkat,
Thank you for your feedback and suggestions, they will be passed
on to our development team for further consideration.
Thank you for choosing GameKnot as your premier chess
battlefield!
Best regards,
GameKnot.com"
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heinzkat
3/28/2008
10:12:05
[ report abuse ] | Update!
Message:
Of course, nothing has been implemented yet.
In the meantime I'm wondering if a 'Team CO-captains currently online:' list would be appreciated. I would like it...
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skipwallace555
3/28/2008
17:56:04
[ report abuse ] | team page
Message:
shouldn't this discussion be on the team page? Just askin here. [tony saprano]
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chessnovice
3/28/2008
21:09:45
[ report abuse ] | skipwallace555
Message:
It could, but I think this is also compatible for the Gameknot discussion since it is a recommendation for updates to the site.
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lawarner
4/17/2008
05:09:23
[ report abuse ] | A suggestion when challenging
Message:
I normally find a captain on-lne then look for possible matches. This is very much hit and miss.
.
I would love to see a side by side list of available players for both teams where I could check both sides. Then the captain would only have to accept the player match. This would shorten it to a two step process. My challenge, their acceptance (or decline). It would also give a very visual listing of whether there are appropriate pairings.
.
I also really like the idea of co-captains on line being added to the on-line list.
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ironbutterfly
5/01/2008
11:12:25
[ report abuse ] | additions to help with team play
Message:
As a relatively recent co-captain in team play I'm enthusiastic about
your suggestions for improvement, heinzcat!! And yours too, lawarner.
As it is now it is a very cumbersome and awkward process, at least for
a relative newbie like me, and these suggestions would help a lot. Hope
that gk is listening -
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heinzkat
5/01/2008
12:03:22
[ report abuse ] | Perhaps they are
Message:
But still no sign of any improvement on this field... :-( although some of the improvements SEEM (!) very easy to achieve, and rewarding in the way that (co-)captains will profit very much from it, both in time and results.
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kh1066
7/11/2008
06:41:43
[ report abuse ] | On Line
Message:
It would be good if you could hid your status as being online for two reasons -
1 - I am not always online to captain the team sometimes I want to move in my games, i dont want challenges flying in under those circumstances as I may look rude in not replying.
2 - We have had a period of time where the co captain has been running things it would have been better for my status not to show up as I was not dealing with the matches.
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