ChessJam 4.1 released

ChessJam 4.1 is now available as a required update. If you use the web version or Facebook version, you don't need to do anything. If you use the desktop version of ChessJam, you will be prompted to complete a quick upgrade.

Changes in 4.1:

• A once rare timeout bug has been recently exploited by a few users to become a real nuisance on ChessJam. The bug allowed someone to force a timeout of a game to avoid having the rating calculated for the winner and loser. This problem has now been fixed.
  
  
• There have been several complaints about some players utilizing computer programs to help them win games on ChessJam. We have added "application switch detection" into the ChessJam application to help identify users that are switching from ChessJam to another app after every move. We realize that it's common to switch to other applications during a game so we ignore it unless the number of application switches is very close to the number of moves. For now, we're collecting the information only for analysis. During the next few days, we'll add automatic messages to the chat window to notify the opponent that the player is switching between moves.
  
  
• Some players are registering with multiple usernames to help boost their rating on ChessJam. They play themselves to pump up their rating. We are starting to compare the IP address of both players to try and reduce this practice. There are valid cases where both players will be on the same network and can be sharing an IP address (for example, if someone plays someone in their own home, they will have the same address) so we'll only use this data when we see other patterns that suggest that someone is pumping up their rating.
  

We're working on some cool new features including new tournament types and even mobile device support, so stay tuned!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Faster load times for ChessJam worldwide (16 locations!)

Earlier today, we made a change that will result in faster downloads of ChessJam, especially if you are located in Europe or Asia. Before today, when you downloaded ChessJam or loaded the web or Facebook version, the files were served from Tampa, Florida. Starting today, the files will be served by one of sixteen locations depending on your location. You will hopefully notice faster download times and application load times. Below is a list of server locations. The closest server to you will automatically be selected so you don't have to do anything different.
More improvements are already in progress. Stay tuned!

ChessJam 4.0! Now 3 ways to play online chess including in Facebook and your web browser!

Today we released ChessJam 4.0! During the past few months, we've seen our growth accelerate and now we're starting to attract several grand masters! We think this latest release will put ChessJam up a few notches and spur even more growth.

ChessJam can now be played in three different ways:

• You can now play ChessJam in your web browser! Simply go to http://chessjam.com/play and you're in!
  
• You can also now play ChessJam within Facebook by going to http://apps.facebook.com/chessjam
  
• The ChessJam desktop application is also improved. It's now smaller and faster!
  

Bug fixes and other improvements:

• We have rewritten the way clocks are handled. They are now much more reliable and consistent. This should address the occasional premature timeouts that some players reported.
  
• Multiple memory optimizations
  

Let us know if you find any problems with the new software. You can always email us at support@chessjam.com

ChessJam 3.3.0 Posted - NEW ROOMS!

The picture below says most of what's new!
If you are running ChessJam on a Netbook, you'll be pleased to hear that 3.3 has full netbook support and will auto-reduce the resolution to fit as needed. AIR 2.0 is required for netbook resolution support and can be downloaded from http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/air2.html (download and install the runtime).

ChessJam 3.2.2 now available - Improved reliability

We have had a few reports of games getting out of sync and have gone through the logs with a fine-tooth comb to learn how to improve reliability. We think you will find 3.2.2 more reliable with smoother graphics animations.

We also made some minor changes to the registration screen behavior.

More features are coming soon but we prioritize reliability over everything else. If you run into issues with games, please email us immediately with any details you can provide. Email to chessjam@gmail.com

Coming soon... new rooms, new tournaments and more!

New Big Dog Weekly Tournament starting tomorrow!

Everyone seems to be enjoying the Turbo Tournaments so we have decided to try something new with a bit of a twist called the Big Dog Weekly Tournament.
Here's the scoop:

• The 60 minute room is being replaced with the new Big Dog Tournament room. (We will be expanding to 12 rooms very soon and will bring back the 60 minute room).
  
• The new Big Dog room will have an in-room leader board similar to the Survivor Sunday room.
  
• The new tournament runs for a week from Sunday morning at 12:00am (0400Z) to Saturday night at 11:59pm (Sunday 0359Z).
  
• The tournament is point-based. Here's how it works:
  • Each time you win a game, you get a point
    
  • If your opponent has a higher rating than you, you get bonus points (1 bonus point for every 100 higher rating)
    
  • Example 1: If PlayerA (1500) defeats PlayerB (1850), PlayerA wins 4 points (1 for the win and 3 bonus points for the rating spread of 350)
    
  • Example 2: If PlayerA (1310) defeats PlayerB (1950), PlayerA wins 7 points (1 for the win and 6 bonus points for the rating spread of 640)
    
  • The loser's points remain the same. You never lose points.
• You can play as many games as you want. Obviously we're encouraging people to play the "big dogs" on ChessJam.
  

New Turbo Tournaments for players rated below 1700

Due to popular demand, we have added new Turbo Tournaments for players rated less than 1700.

Open Tournaments now run at 12AM/9AM/12PM/3PM/6PM/9PM EDT (0100Z/0400Z/1300Z/1600Z/1900Z/2200Z)

Below 1700 Tournaments run at 12AM/12PM/6PM EDT (0400Z/1600Z/2200Z)

Every other tournament is for players rated less than 1700 only!

ChessJam 3.2.0 now available

For this release, we focused solely on improving the memory consumption and CPU utilization and we think you will notice the results! Memory consumption was cut in half! CPU utilization is equally improved.

Your existing ChessJam application should auto-update. If not, simply uninstall and re-install.

Online Chess Turbo Tournaments now every 8 hours!

Last week, we announced Turbo Tournaments. The live online chess tournaments seem to be drawing a crowd! Starting today, we run them every 8 hours at 7AM, 3PM and 11PM EST (1200Z, 2000Z and 0400Z). The Tournament room has a countdown timer on it as a reminder.

Below is a screenshot from the 11PM tournament Saturday night. The entire thing played out in under an hour! The winner was "Undefined", our #1 player. Congrats!

Introducing Turbo Tournaments (Beta) - Live Online Chess Tournaments

Today we launched Turbo Tournaments, a fully automatic 8-bracket bracket live tournament. Here's how it works:

The room is a traditional 8-player bracket:


You enter a tournament by sitting down at any round 1 table. Once someone joins you at the table, the game will start. The winners of the round 1 games are automatically seated at the round 2 table. The winners of the two round 2 games advance to the final round where an overall tournament winner is crowned!

Once a tournament is in progress, the room highlights the completed games as shown in this sample screen shot:


Notes:

• You can only sit at a round 1 table. The system will auto-seat the round one winners at round 2 tables.
  
• IMPORTANT: Once the system seats you at a round 2 or round 3 table, do NOT unseat yourself. If you do, you forfeit the game and your opponent advances.
  
• If a draw is declared, the person with the most remaining time on the clock advances to the next round.
  
• Anyone can observe any game in the tournament.
  
• All tournament games are rated like any other game.
  
• Once a tournament ends, the tables are cleared and a new one starts.
  
• The winner of each tournament is recorded and will be displayed on the Turbo Tournament leader board.
  
• Coming soon: Turbo Tournament wins will be included in your user stats.
  

We have labeled this as "beta" for the next few days. Although we have done a lot of testing, there may be scenarios that we have not thought of. If you run into any issues or have suggestions on how to improve Turbo Tournaments, please drop us a note on the ChessJam forums or email us.

Enjoy!

Introducing Crazy Games on ChessJam!

Today we opened a new room on ChessJam called Crazy Games and as the name implies, this room has some crazy online chess variations. You'll find 14 tables, each with a unique starting position. Each table has a name that gives a hint as to what you can expect.

Crazy Tables:

• Queens
  
• 5+5
  
• Triple Knights
  
• Pawnless
  
• 15 Pointer
  
• Mirror Mirror
  
• Mind the Gap
  
• Double Double
  
• Totem Pole
  

We've also included five tables with positions from the middle of some famous historical games. Each link below takes you to a page where you can see the entire game.

• Byrne vs. Fischer 1956
  
• Fischer vs. Spassky 1972
  
• Kramnik vs. Kasparov 1994
  
• Anderrsen vs. Kiesenitzky 1851
  
• Polgar vs. Chiburdanidze 2004
  

Games in this room do not impact your rating or stats so there is no risk in going crazy! Below are some screen shots to entice you to come play.

The Crazy Games Room:



Mind the Gap:


Triple Knights:


Fischer vs. Spassky 1972:


We plan to mix things up in this room often. If you have a crazy idea for a fun starting position, send us the FEN and proposed name either in the ChessJam forums or via email. There are a lot of online FEN editors. Our favorite one is at ChessVideos.tv.

ChessJam 2.4.1 now available

ChessJam 2.4.1 is now available. Your existing version should auto-update.

Changes:

• Challenge dialog now has the rating and wins/losses/draws of the challenger
  
• When deleting messages, you are no longer prompted "Are you sure"
  
• Minor cosmetic improvements throughout
  
• BUG: Abandoned games sometimes didn't award the win to the remaining player - now fixed
  
• BUG: Observing games between a human and robot didn't work correctly - now fixed
  
• BUG: Players sometimes saw double-moves and clock errors, especially when playing someone with a lot of network lag - now fixed
  
• BUG: The buddy list in the courtyard didn't scroll correctly - now fixed
  
• BUG: After logging out, an old informational dialog appeared - now fixed
  
• Overall improved performance and game play
  

This is a required update. You will no longer be able to login using anything prior to version 2.4.1.

If you find bugs, please report them in the forums - thanks!

Survivor Sunday Tournament was a Success!

Our first Survivor Sunday tournament was a success! During the 24 hour duration, there were 203 total games played by 100 participants.

The tournament came down to 3 players: xicuc, SlyBrain and jwilber. Jwilber was shut out after winning an impressive 12 games with only 1 loss. Later in the evening, there was a showdown between xicuc and SlyBrain that drew a good crowd of observers. It was an intense game! In the end, xicuc prevailed and took the #1 spot.

The full leader board is available in ChessJam on the STATS view.

Based on the popularity of this tournament, we will continue to do Survivor Sunday tournaments every Sunday!

We're already working on a totally different tournament (and other enhancements) so stay tuned for announcements.

Announcing "Survivor Sundays" Tournaments and version 2.4!

On Sundays, the Stats page will also display a leader board for Survivor Sunday, an all day tournament that ChessJam is excited to start THIS WEEKEND! Every Sunday (GMT-5), we will open a room specifically for the tournament. Players are challenged to win as many games as possible during the day but if a player loses two games, he or she is blocked from playing in the Survivor room for the remainder of the day (you can still observe other tournament players and you can still play in normal rooms). You can track your progress directly in the room. Good luck!

Version 2.4!

Be sure to upgrade to the 2.4 release (just posted!). Your existing installation should upgrade itself. Version 2.4 includes new features to support the new Sunday Survivor tournament (and other soon-to-be-announced tournament types) as well as several bug fixes and minor enhancements:

• Challenge notifications now remain longer and only require one click to accept/decline.
  
• After a game, your opponent and any observers are notified when you leave the room.
  
• New themes! We have some fun surprises in store. Go login now and you'll see what we're talking about (be sure you are using v2.4 or higher).
  
• If you haven't looked at the STATS view lately, be sure to notice the new game history tab, rating chart, leader board for your country and other stats.
  

As many of you have noticed, we are seeing some VERY good chess players joining ChessJam lately. The leader board has been very dynamic and we have a few users quickly approaching a rating of 2000+. We are now auto-tweeting the top 5 users and top 5 countries each evening at 9PM EST (GMT-5). Follow us at http://twitter.com/chessjam.

Big milestone approaching:

We are quickly approaching 1,000,000 moves on ChessJam so watch the blog and twitter over the next few days. We'll be announcing who made the 1,000,000th move!

v2.3.2 and we're starting to get some good activity!

The challenge with any new multi-player gaming application is finding enough players to make it fun. Until the application reaches a certain "critical mass", it's a bit boring! During the past few days, we've seen some good accelerated growth and now it's getting easier and easier to find someone to play! Yesterday we had over 700 games played.

We just added a few cosmetic enhancements throughout the application and fixed a few bugs and performance issues. Version 2.3.2 is now available.

New improved rating system implemented!

During the past few weeks, we have been analyzing game data and trying to determine the best rating system for ChessJam. Although there are a few standard algorithms out there, there is not a consistent way of implementing them. As you can probably tell from our recent leader board enhancements, we are all about making ChessJam competitive and fun so it's important that we implement a rating system that works well.

This morning, we recalculated everyone's rating based on our new system. The recalculation went through the entire game history of every player from day 1.

Here are a few facts:

• Everyone's rating starts at 1500. Some other sites use 1200, some modify it based on age and other factors, others use 1500 or more. We decided to go with 1500.
  
• During a player's first 20 games, their rating changes more dramatically from game to game (higher kfactor). The intent is to get them into the right range within the first 20 games. This algorithm replaces the averaging we were using before which was resulting in some confusion.
  
• Rapid/Blitz/Bullet games get a slightly higher kfactor which results in the game counting slightly more than a longer game.
  

Everything is based on the ELO rating system.

If you go to the STATS view and click GAME HISTORY, you can see how your rating has changed since your first game. If you see anything odd, let us know in the forums.

Stay tuned for some major new features this week!

Visualizing 24 hours of ChessJammin'

We are playing with some new data visualization for ChessJam that you will see in the app soon but we couldn't wait to give you a sneak peek.

Below is a heat map representing 24 hours of ChessJam user activity. The darker the red, the higher concentration of activity.



Stay tuned!

ChessJam Stats!

In our recent 2.2 release, we added a new view called STATS that takes you to a collection of statistics including top ranked users, top countries, a list of all countries and game history.
Below are a few screenshots showing TOP USERS, TOP COUNTRIES and ALL COUNTRIES.


Every game you have played on ChessJam is listed in the game history report. You can click on the REVIEW link to review any previous game move by move.


The notation on the left side is Portable Game Notation (PGN) and can be copy/pasted if needed.


We are already working on additional stats including some cool data visualization so check back often!

World Chess News - Chess TV recommends trying ChessJam!

World Chess news is a half-hour long TV-show about chess, aired weekly on local channels in Sweden and on the Internet. At approx 17:53 into the program, the reporter introduces ChessJam.com and says, "ChessJam has incredible graphics and a wonderful castle environment which is different for this type of chess site" - http://www.worldchessnews.com

ChessJam 2.2 Available

We just released ChessJam 2.2. Your existing version will auto-update to the new release. Here's what's new:

• New STATS view - now contains the global leader board. If you are a frequent player, you might be on it! We will be adding new stats to this page shortly including the ability to view your personal game history, review previous games move-by-move, and more.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused issues when playing multiple games at once.
  
• Minor bug fixes throughout.