Subject: Top 10 in playing time

Date: Sun Aug 5 10:55:05 2018
User: Denny
Message:
Every once in a blue moon I post the leaders in total playing time. Here's where you're at: 1. ddoss 1235 days 2. dipo 846 days 3. dickyboy 821 days 4. tinaberry 818 days 5. elk 791 days 6. tmal1206 782 days 7. huffy 774 days 8. boonje 755 days 9. achilles-for-fun 739 days 10. sevenguns 736 days Those are 24 hour days spent playing non-stop Freecell here. We're at a point where I need to start showing them in years, huh? 1. ddoss 3.38 years 2. dipo 2.32 years 3. dickyboy 2.25 years 4. tinaberry 2.24 years 5. elk 2.17 years 6. tmal1206 2.14 years 7. huffy 2.12 years 8. boonje 2.07 years 9. achilles-for-fun 2.02 years 10. sevenguns 2.02 years

Date: Sun Aug 5 10:58:24 2018
User: Denny
Message:
And looks like a total of about 2122 years of total playing time for everyone!

Link: 12 Steps

Date: Sun Aug 5 11:15:43 2018
User: ejchap
Message:
funny ejchap

Date: Sun Aug 5 11:39:36 2018
User: olblue
Message:
I didn't even make the list....there's hope for me still!

Date: Sun Aug 5 12:11:26 2018
User: SixIron
Message:
After playing here over 20 years, I'm somewhat surprised, and even pleasantly pleased that I'm not in the worst offenders list!

Date: Sun Aug 5 20:46:59 2018
User: prf622
Message:
Is that total minutes translated to years? Meaning someone has literally spent 3+ years playing Freecell.

Date: Sun Aug 5 21:24:04 2018
User: roo
Message:
It wouldn't include tournaments, where the title would go to a couple of players with the most wins.

Date: Mon Aug 6 03:23:02 2018
User: TitanicTony
Message:
@ prf622. Yep, the personal stats page for "ddoss" shows: "Total hours playing: 29638.38". The personal stats page shows "Last seen", but not "First seen", so I don't know for how many years he has been playing. If it is for 20 years, then that is (only) 4.06 hours/day. If it is for 10 years, then it is 8.12 hours/day. My personal stats page shows (only, lol): "Total hours playing: 10825.41", or 2.09 hours/day (for 14+ years). Usually it is better than watching TV, imo.

Date: Mon Aug 6 21:01:19 2018
User: prf622
Message:
@TitanicTony. Thanks for the explantion. I've been playing on this site for about 15 years and I'm afraid to look up my stats. I love Freecell, it's at least interactive vs sitting and watching TV.

Date: Mon Aug 6 22:52:15 2018
User: riverside
Message:
If you aren't playing but didn't log out - would that count in time total? Or is it only the time of your games totaled?

Date: Mon Aug 6 23:36:47 2018
User: sprucegoose
Message:
I mostly play tournaments, happily the time spent playing them is not tracked and therefore not wasted time, and I expect to never show up on this list. That's a relief.

Date: Tue Aug 7 02:52:34 2018
User: TitanicTony
Message:
@riverside. I'm pretty sure that it is only "playing time". I only log out of freecell about once every 2 weeks, when I shut down my Windows 10 PC in order to give it a "fresh start".

Date: Tue Aug 7 08:29:48 2018
User: joeygray
Message:
Riverside: it is the sum of your streak games' charged time. Generally speaking, there is a client timer of two minutes and a server timer of 15 minutes. The following is my observation, this might not be right at all and Denny can correct me if he feels like it. When you start a game, both timers are reset. The client then keeps the charged time, reporting the entire game state, including elapsed time, back to the server every so often, which updates the saved game on the server. But if you don't make a move in two minutes, the clientside timer expires, and elapsed time stops updating. Your session on the server remains open until the server timer expires, 15 minutes after the last report from the client. If you make a move after the client timer expires but before the server one does, that move doesn't count, and eventually the client, in reporting state, will cause the server to reload the saved game, including elapsed time. That is how you can get charged less time than you think you spent, if you stared at the game a while. If the server timer expires, then its 15 minutes is added to the saved game state as part of session wind-down. When you come back tomorrow and log in again, your saved game is going to have at least 17 minutes on it. You can prevent this when you go afk by hitting the save button. This will only add the current server timer value to the save game elapsed time, instead of the full 15 minutes, as the session is wound down. At game completion, if the game was a streak game the elapsed time is added to your overall time and your per-variant time. (I think there is a no-game-in-progress session state too, which you enter on game completion or if you log and no saved game exists for you. No total time additions result from this state.) So the simple answer to your log-out question is, you 'sort of' get charged for game time while you are logged in, but also you are auto-logged-out.

Date: Tue Aug 7 10:18:46 2018
User: jamesblackburn-lynch
Message:
I feel like the client time has to be more than two minutes. I stare at games a lot and rarely do I experience the phenomenon of making a move that then causes the game to reveal it was actually saved in the state I was staring at. James

Date: Tue Aug 7 10:29:37 2018
User: joeygray
Message:
.nod james I guess if I want to know better I'd have to experiment. I know I've seen the 17 minutes, the time I get charged if I start a game and make no move until much later, too many times to disbelieve it. So if there are two timers their sum has to be that. Maybe there are three?

Date: Tue Aug 7 18:44:59 2018
User: kabuterimon
Message:
James is right. There doesn't seem to be any timer short of the 15 minute session timer timeout that fires to stop elapsed time from, well, elapsing. I wonder where I got that idea? Or why when the session timeout happens at 15 minutes I always see at least 17 minutes of charged time. One more experiment....

Date: Tue Aug 7 18:46:07 2018
User: kabuterimon
Message:
(This be my experimenting nick.)

Date: Tue Aug 7 19:33:38 2018
User: joeygray
Message:
Nope. It was completely my imagination. Thanks James for straightening me out. 15 minutes after the last client game-sync to server, the server times out the session. That 15 minutes also includes, I *think*, the time since last move as reported by the client, so effectively 15 minutes from last move is charged unless you hit save. I must always take a couple minutes either winning it or deciding it's unwinnable. *Shrug*

Date: Sun Aug 26 22:53:52 2018
User: sprucegoose
Message:
DAB has a total of 7 hours of playing time and well over 2000 tournament wins. And that recent MotF about spending time with your family on Sunday evening made me recall that famous "if by whiskey" speech made by some politician decades ago when alcohol was being made more freely accessible.