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Game Courier User's Guide. How to play games with the CV Play-by-Mail system.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Greg Strong wrote on Wed, Aug 24, 2022 05:05 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 02:09 PM:

You do not need to get too caught up in the details. As I understand it, you are simply looking to make sure the game makes some progress and the person will eventually lose if they quit playing. "Correspondence -- Leisurely" will meet those needs. If you want to make sure a general pace of at least a few moves a week, with the possibility of a week or two off for vacation, then use "Correspondence -- Tournament".


Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Wed, Aug 24, 2022 02:09 PM UTC in reply to Greg Strong from 12:55 AM:

The issue is that apparently you understand what you are doing whereas for me is like sitting in front of a Boeing cockpit control panel. Maybe this semantic is well known of people playing chess in competition, tournament, etc. but for occasional players without such experience is tough.

Otherwise I see the answers (thanks), some saying to use exclusively "grace time", others to set "grace time" to 0 and use "min time" only. My understanding is that there are different appreciations of these notions, so it is not so straightforward. OK OK, I will continue to try and find a setting which works for me.


Greg Strong wrote on Wed, Aug 24, 2022 12:55 AM UTC in reply to Ben Reiniger from Tue Aug 23 09:38 PM:

I don't see any issue here.

There is a drop-down with a selection of default time controls:

Real Time -- Blitz
Real Time -- Tournament
Real Time -- Leisurely
Correspondence -- Multiple Moves per Day
Correspondence -- Multiple Moves per Week
Correspondence -- Once a Day
Correspondence -- Tournament
Correspondence -- Leisurely

Personally, I always select "Correspondence -- Tournament"


Ben Reiniger wrote on Tue, Aug 23, 2022 09:38 PM UTC:

I don't play much on GC, so I'm hesitant to make edits to the instructions or provide defaults on time controls, but I suspect Fergus or Greg would be amenable. My uninformed suggestion for a default setting would be something like grace_time=3days, spare_time=2months. The idea is to almost exclusively use grace time, but given substantive difficulties in life, a couple months of reserve time for the game. No bonus times or anything else, to keep it clean.


Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Fri, Jul 1, 2022 06:38 AM UTC in reply to Samuel Trenholme from Wed Jun 29 09:45 PM:

Thank you Samuel for your explanations. I would recommend to the Editors to put your example in the explanation of those time notions. Not only it is complex to have “spare time”, “min time”, “extra time”, “bonus time”, etc. but the explanations, sorry to say, are themselves so complex that after reading the end it is impossible to remember. In other word, it is not understandable.

In my opinion, the way it is practiced in Lichess is largely quite enough and sufficient for chess variants play.

I would vote for simplifying our process.

Thanks again


Samuel Trenholme wrote on Wed, Jun 29, 2022 09:45 PM UTC:

To play games the way one plays correspondence games on lichess or chess.com, one simply has grace time without reserve time.

E.g.

If we have no (0) reserve time (Edit: In other words, no “spare time”, no “min time”, no “extra time”, and no “bonus time”), and we have a grace time of 24 hours, this means, as soon as one moves, the opponent has 24 hours to reply to your move. If they fail to reply within 24 hours, they lose the game.

Lichess makes things simple by having no reserve time whatsoever, and having only the following settings for grace time (which is simply the time needed to make a move before losing the game on Lichess) in correspondence games:

  • 1 day
  • 2 days
  • 3 days
  • 5 days
  • 7 days
  • 10 days
  • 14 days
  • Untimed

So, for dealing with “this guy never moves once they are losing”, having a grace time of 14 days ensures that both people have plenty of time to make moves (especially in today’s world with smart phones everywhere), but that forgotten games are won by the last person to make a move before forgetting the game exists.

Ignoring “Min Time”, “Bonus Time”, and “Bonus Period”, “Spare Time” is, using a Fischer (increment) chess clock the amount of time given for the game, “grace time” would be 0 (since a simple Fischer clock doesn’t have this), and “extra time” would be the increment (the amount of time given for each move).

Let me explain this with an example. We have a game with 5 days (120 hours) of spare time, a grace time of 24 hours (1 day), and an extra time of 1 hour.

The clock starts, and Alice (white) is playing Bob (black).

  • Alice makes her first move as soon as the game starts. She now has 121 hours spare time: 120 hours at game start, then 1 hour added after making her first move.

  • Bob replies 23 hours later. Since he replied within 24 hours, he loses no spare time, but gets one hour of extra time. So now Alice and Bob have 121 hours of spare time. Grace time is always the same for each move.

  • Alice is busy the next day and needs 26 hours to reply to Bob’s move. The first 24 hours were against her grace time, so only the final two hours of her delay moving went against her spare time. She lost two hours of spare time (119 hours now), but gained one hour after making her move (so she now has 120 hours of spare time again; with grace time, if she doesn’t move within 144 hours, she loses).

  • Alice created a lot of tactical complications for Bob, so Bob needs 72 hours to reply to Alice’s move. 24 hours is grace time, so we only look at the remaining 48 hours when calculating spare time lost. Bob lost 48 hours spare time taking so long to make his move, but gains one hour after making his move. 121 hours - 48 hours (delay moving after grace time) + 1 hour (extra time) = 74 hours left (with the 24 hour grace time, Bob needs to make his next move within 98 hours or lose the game)

  • And so on.

(The time control that works best for me is 2 days: 48 hours to make a move or I lose. The problem with one day time controls without reserve time is that every day I have to make my move earlier in the day, but, with two days, if I make a move every day, it doesn’t matter what time of day I make the move. There are ways to have one-move-a-day without the issue of having to make my moves earlier and earlier each day, but our time controls are probably already too complicated).


Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Mon, Jun 27, 2022 09:07 PM UTC:

I don't know if it is me, or if it happens to others too, but I confess: I don't catch nothing at all in the explanations of Time Controls. It is not a problem of English, I'm used to read complex scientific stuff in English. Maybe it is because I never played chess in official competitions and I'm lacking some notions.

I wanted to put a time limit because I've been frustrated in some recent games to see opponents stopping to play after being in a difficult situation. Doing so, they never loose. An unfair behaviour certainly, I wanted to avoid this.

So I set a time limit but frankly I don't understand at all what I have selected and the effect it may have. I just guess there is a limit somehow.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Apr 21, 2014 08:13 PM UTC:
To prevent your opponent from seeing your hand, you can see your cards only when you are signed in with your password. One drawback to this is that you cannot see cards in solitaire mode. To test a game with cards, you will have to play a logged game where you enter your userid and password for each side.

I have just fixed some problems with the discard command and with displaying cards, but I'm not sure if my fixes addressed the same problems you were having. $hand1 and $hand2 are global variables for each player's hand. I'll think about your suggestions. Let me know if you come up with a game that requires certain features.

(zzo38) A. Black wrote on Mon, Mar 17, 2014 10:02 AM UTC:
The cards feature doesn't seem to work very well. I get a display of the backs of cards, and when I try to discard a card that is in my hand (just guessing, based on what remains in the deck; I tried with both players and ), I get an error message where the name of the card is missing. If it is not in my hand, the error message includes the name of the card. Also, what is the name of the PHP global variable that stores the contents of your hand? (I have already figured out $deck, $cards, and $discardpile) Also, a suggestion, it may be useful to display how many cards in opponent's hand and how many cards remain in the draw pile, and the ability to use setsystem with the $deck and $discardpile variables as well as whatever array stores the cards in each player's hand.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Mar 3, 2012 02:20 PM UTC:
I've now added a custom Tweet button for sharing game invitations on Twitter. Also, I now have a Twitter account, and if you care to, you can follow it at @fduniho. I don't know how much I'll use it yet, since I created it mainly to create the custom Tweet button, but maybe I will use it sometimes.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Mar 1, 2012 05:21 PM UTC:
I've now added a custom Facebook Share button to Game Courier invitations. You can use this to share Game Courier invitations with your Facebook friends. If you have your game rendered as a graphic image, it can be used for a thumbnail that shows up with your invitation.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Jan 30, 2012 01:56 AM UTC:

Here's a new way to send Game Courier invitations to people. You can share them on Facebook. After you have created an invitation, click the Share widget and select Facebook. Game Courier is now programmed to fill in the title and description fields with suitable values, and if you have chosen to render your game board as an image, a smaller version of that image should be available as a thumbnail.

You can probably use the Share widget to share invitations on Twitter or other social networking sites too. But I have only tested it and customized to work with Facebook.


(zzo38) A. Black wrote on Tue, Feb 22, 2011 06:46 AM UTC:

I do not see description of Maximum Time and Minimum Time fields.

Also, are any of the time controls allowed to be negative? I would suggest the following:

  • Pace time and and pace moves should not be negative.
  • If spare time is negative, then your initial reserve time is negative (which requires you to accumulate more bonus/extra before you actually have any spare time), and the grace time must be set positive (otherwise you will lose immediately).
  • Grace time should not be negative.
  • If extra time is negative, then there is a time penalty after every move.
  • If bonus time is negative, then there is a penalty for moving too quickly.
  • Bonus period should not be negative.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Nov 24, 2010 04:22 AM UTC:
Game Courier now has a composition mode for creating fairy chess problems. It lets you create a new position without any knowledge of FEN code by updating the FEN code for you when you move pieces around the board with either moves or commands. It also lets you enter a solution, which remains hidden in a form until the person trying to do the problem chooses to view it. Details are provided at the end of this page. Here are some possible uses for this: (1) Publicize your games by creating problems for them. (2) Illustrate how new pieces move by creating problems that use them. This may be useful for enhancing Piececlopedia pages. (3) Increase your skill at a game by creating problems for it, and publish them with solutions to show off.

Anonymous wrote on Sat, Nov 6, 2010 10:52 PM UTC:
my son & I tried playing seirawan chess ...... the whole experience was a pain ..... pieces disappeared, suddenly the game would jump forward ...... trying to take moves back was an exercise in futility ........ fix this, it is way way too much hassle

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Dec 9, 2008 06:20 PM UTC:
That feature is broken right now, probably due to changes I had to make to the forms for accommodating point-and-click movement. I haven't had the time to fix it yet.

pallab basu wrote on Tue, Dec 9, 2008 10:12 AM UTC:

It seems that I can not take back moves in my games.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Nov 10, 2008 12:31 PM UTC:
Castling should be handled by an individual preset, because different games have different castling rules, and the point-and-click interface has to remain generic enough to handle nearly any game. When a preset is programmed to handle castling as the move of a single piece, it will handle castling appropriately. The point-and-click interface does not know any rules and has to farm out all rule-enforcement to GAME Code. So if you want a preset to handle castling correctly, you need to program that preset.

M Winther wrote on Mon, Nov 10, 2008 05:48 AM UTC:
Fergus, thanks for your work on the point-and-click movement. I have
tested it for my Mastodon Chess, and it is splendid.
I discoverd a bug(?), however. I moved the Mastodon like a knight, and
'Illegal move!' was displayed, which is correct. However, then I
moved it correctly (a two square jump), and it still said 'Illegal move!'.
So I had to click on the origin square again (to remove the from-
square) and then click on it again, and then click on the correct
destination square. Then it worked. So, if an erroneous move has been
made you must de-click the origin square. This could cause some
confusion.

Moreover, would it be possible for you to always automatically move
the rook and place it beside the king if the latter is point-and-clicked
more than one square horisontally (regardless on which rank it is
placed)? This would solve the castle problem in almost all variants,
because the rook nearly always ends up beside the king.
/Mats

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Nov 10, 2008 02:51 AM UTC:
I have now added point-and-click movement for custom boards.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Nov 9, 2008 06:27 PM UTC:
Point-and-click movement for the PNG, GIF, and JPG rendering methods will now work in Internet Explorer, and between Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux, I have successfully tested it in Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, and Konqueror. So it should work in any modern browser that uses Gecko, Trident, WebKit, Presto or KHTML.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Nov 7, 2008 07:29 PM UTC:
It turns out that point-and-click movement for the PNG, GIF and JPG rendering methods is not yet working for Internet Explorer. It's working fine on Firefox 2 & 3. I'll test it on Opera and Konqueror later. Anyway, it looks like I'm going to have to work out the incompatibilities between Firefox and IE before it is working on all modern W3C-DOM browsers.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Nov 7, 2008 02:55 AM UTC:
I have completed the point-and-click movement capability for the PNG, GIF and JPG rendering methods for square, hexagonal and other grid boards. It will now place a border around the piece you click on to move. This is done by positioning a transparent gif over the piece and turning on its border.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Nov 6, 2008 12:54 AM UTC:
I have now added point-and-click movement for the CSS rendering method for square, hexagonal, and other grid boards. JavaScript needs to be enabled for it to work. Click on a piece, and a border will appear around it. Click on another space, and it will submit your move to the next form, where you can review your move and send it. If you change your mind about which piece you want to move, click the same piece again to make the border go away, then click another piece.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Nov 5, 2008 04:41 AM UTC:
I have partially added point-and-click movement to the PNG, GIF, and JPG rendering methods for square and hexagonal boards. It will let you move a piece by clicking on it and then its destination with your mouse. But when you first click on a piece, it will not give you any visual indication of what piece you clicked on. These rendering methods create a single graphic image and overlay it with an imagemap. The problem is with trying to highlight an AREA. This HTML element does not seem to use the CSS border style properties, and I have found no way with CSS or HTML to highlight the AREA element clicked on. I would like to do this without having to draw a new board image. One idea I have is to blanket the image with transparent images whose borders can be turned on when needed. But it is too late to try this tonight.

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