Subject: Denny: requests for the player stat page

Date: Mon Jan 7 15:36:06 2019
User: joeygray
Message:
I have two requests that would be easy if you feel like doing something easy. 1) Where it says game in progress, instead of yes or no, when it's yes you could easily put the variant (like 8x4) the player is stuck on, instead of yes. That would allow us to know WHICH of his streaks is probably dead. 2) In the recently played list, it would be great if the game stats (like 11/35) was listed next to the game. You do already look this up at game completion time. I know it would consume more storage but hey, disk space is dirt cheap, right? And a third, which ain't never gonna happen: when somebody's in-progress game reaches, say, a year old, you run the current position through a solver and if it's lost, lose it for him. C'mon, people. Stop with the useless self-deceit. But anyway I know you are never gonna get into the solver world on your end. :)

Date: Tue Jan 8 11:02:35 2019
User: Denny
Message:
1) Probably pretty easy, I'll plan on that once we get set up for revisions 2) I used to do that but at some point it slowed down so much looking up the game that now I just show the link. Maybe when I first rolled out the player history we just had so many folks banging on it that it was significant, I dunno. Should be well within the capability of a modern database to join that stuff quickly and efficiently but at the time it went into my bucket of "ok quit screwing with it". 3) I'm probably never going to run the solver on it because all the solver does is prove it's winnable, not detect unwinnable. But I could save after a year you lose regardless...

Date: Tue Jan 8 12:00:26 2019
User: TitanicTony
Message:
I agree with: "after a year you lose, regardless" (for a game "in progress")! I would even agree with: "after 6 months you lose, regardless"! Sometimes people are away, or in hospital, for long periods of time, but, ç'est la vie...

Date: Tue Jan 8 12:46:34 2019
User: joeygray
Message:
Denny, good point. Although there are some game states which CAN be proved lost (in solver terms, the entire search tree can be constructed), there are others for which solvers can't really determine it, they run out of resources before being able to decide. And boy would it be a lot of trouble to inject solver stuff knowing that it won't even always work. UGH! I'm afraid I would have to vote against timeout-losing, though. I don't like the idea of anybody else hitting the quit button for me unless my game was PROVED lost. It's not like it interferes that much with our stat-viewing enjoyment, anyway. After two weeks he's off the current list anyway. (If Denny gets around to fixing people being on the current list by playing the same variant in tournaments or from custom.) And on the all-time list, your all-time streak doesn't change just because you lose or refuse to lose. So it's only when viewing the all-time list but sorting on the current column that you see it at all. And even then you can see how old it is and whether it's a game-in-progress with a little fiddling. Without PROVEN lossness, I'd say just leave it.

Date: Wed Jan 9 13:33:55 2019
User: joeygray
Message:
Oh, and for #2, I wasn't asking for you to look up all the current game stats every time you generate a player page, I was asking you to store and show the stats as of game completion, the same as you store and show date and time. You already looked it up for his game completion popup, and I was assuming you added the row to the recent history at that same time. So it's just extra storage, not extra processing time.

Date: Thu Jan 10 11:34:56 2019
User: riverside
Message:
Hi Denny - Thanks for the great site. There are times when mindless activity is needed -- stuck in airports, spending time in hospital waiting rooms, listening to boring conference calls, or just killing time when others are invested in a tv sports game, etc. For these and other times -- this is usually my "go to." For those of us who have been on the site for years and have improved our "times" -- is it possible to have an average time score for recent games rather than - or in addition to - for every game we ever played? Maybe an average time for our current streak? Just a thought. Thanks again.