Hilarious chess.com advertisement

[John Upham]

Has anyone observed this hilarious advert on chess.com:

502 Error
Database Overloaded

We are sorry, but our database is currently maxed out due to the unprecedented growth of chess over the last few weeks. We have doubled in traffic in a very short time and are working hard to add more capacity.


Please be patient as our database recovers. We suggest returning to Chess.com in approximately:

Some might even believe that this is true!

[jholyhead]

The infrastructure team at chess.com probably haven't had a good night's sleep in a month. Not a good time at all

[Joey Stewart]

I'm surprised that they are struggling with server capacity due to player overload now rather then two years ago, it almost feels like they were happy to get all that extra revenue over lockdown but failed to reinvest any of it into improving site performance.

[John Upham]

Once I had had time to see the advert I then clicked refresh and all was working fine so perhaps one only gets to see it once per session rather like a splash page?

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi John,

I blame endgames for cluttering and filling up the websites. As soon as an endgame appears the notation stops with 'White/Black won the ending' if the result was a draw then no moves at all are recorded just the word; 'Drawn.'

If I remember my Newton correctly, is there not a push/pull thing going on and every time something is placed on the internet something else on the net has to disappear. Or is the internet infinite which conflicts with a law from one of Newton's buddies whose name escapes me.

[John Upham]

Hi John,

I blame endgames for cluttering and filling up the websites. As soon as an endgame appears the notation stops with 'White/Black won the ending' if the result was a draw then no moves at all are recorded just the word; 'Drawn.'

If I remember my Newton correctly, is there not a push/pull thing going on and every time something is placed on the internet something else on the net has to disappear. Or is the internet infinite which conflicts with a law from one of Newton's buddies whose name escapes me.

Your views are entirely coincident with those of the ultimate voice of reason, David Icke, and he would welcome you as one of his followers.

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi John,

David Icke follows me. All the world's nutcases read my blog to get their ideas.

Jesting aside. Due to the ease of playing on the net does anyone still use a dedicated chess machine? (does anyone still play v a computer?) I do, (use a dedicated machine - a Mephisto Kasparov set on a lower level.) I transfer the moves to a normal board. I think it helps keep my 3d vision intact.

Whether or not playing consistently online shatters your 3d view is a moot debate but if one believes it does (and I do ) then so be it. Possibly more of a superstition than a fact.

Transferring ideas seen on a screen to an OTB game maybe difficult. (I'm thinking about solving tactical puzzles.) The patterns do not stick. The trouble being if you believe that (and I do) then they won't!

[jholyhead]

I'm surprised that they are struggling with server capacity due to player overload now rather then two years ago, it almost feels like they were happy to get all that extra revenue over lockdown but failed to reinvest any of it into improving site performance.

I don't think it's as simple as a lack of investment - the fact the site has continued to function through the last couple of years of big growth without major issues is impressive. I don't know exactly what their issue is, but the fact that it has been going on for weeks at this point tells me that they've almost likely hit some inherent limitation in their backend architecture that means they can't just spin up a new DB cluster or add compute capacity. You often don't know that limitation even exists until you hit it. Depending on the issue, we could be talking about months before they can deploy a fix for the underlying cause, but I expect they'll try to ease the symptoms by throttling requests to non-essential (non-playing chess) parts of the site.

[Joey Stewart]

They could do mass bannings from the site - get rid of all casual players and everyone that plays the London system or Scandinavian regularly and that should free up a nice about of space.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Surprised you didn't also mention the 2c3 Sicilian, ngl

[Joey Stewart]

Yeah actually that makes it onto the ban list, and the f4 Sicilian too. Probably ought to throw french, Caro Kahn and English on there as well for fairness (I don't always hate these but I know they have a generally detested reputation and it would keep them people happy to know they were gone).