British Championships

[Carl Hibbard]

The figure for distinct hosts served was 2,112 not that it clarifies the number of visitors at all

That physical number cannot be correctly guessed

353.12 megabytes was the bandwidth used yesterday that is for sure

[John Upham]

The figure for distinct hosts served was 2,112 not that it clarifies the number of visitors at all

This suggest a lower bound on the number of visitors.

There could have been 10,000 from the University of Liverpool!

J.

[Carl Hibbard]

The figure for distinct hosts served was 2,112 not that it clarifies the number of visitors at all

This suggest a lower bound on the number of visitors.

There could have been 10,000 from the University of Liverpool!

J.

Only if they all accessed from home of course otherwise it is more likely that the University would report a single address isn't it?

[John Upham]

Only if they all accessed from home of course otherwise it is more likely that the University would report a single address isn't it?

Indeed. All requests will probably be masked with the same IP. To seperate one could drop a cookie to establish a non-authenticated session and then count the unique server side cookies.

It is ever more challenging to evaluate web metrics these days.

I expect GCHQ could tell us!

J.

[Carl Hibbard]

However you "count" it's reasonably busy!

Mon, Tue & Wed added up to:-

Successful requests: 3,874,217
Distinct hosts served: 4,415
Data transferred: 869.07 megabytes

[David Robertson]

Some of us have been up and down this discussion before on the Atticus forum. Opinion varies, even among the technical experts, on the real meaning of website 'hits' ie. converting them into 'real people'. From memory of past discussions, a 'hit' occurs with every 'refresh'. Or a 'hit' occurs each time an icon loads, so that a heavily badged up website will generate dozens of 'hits' from a single visit. Or many of the 'hits' and IP addresses are Googlebots and kindred search spiders that crawl across the web.

My favorite example of 'interpretation' comes from FIDE which trumpeted that, during the Kramnik-Topalov world championship match, its website was receiving an impressive 300 million visitors a day. I don't think so. 'Hits' maybe, but not 'visitors'. I calculate as follows: assume a global population of 6bn, of which a third are asleep, and a third have no access to the internet. Of the remaining 2bn, assume 50% are too young, or don't play chess, or are out shopping/down the pub. That means FIDE believes 30% of the available global population was watching a chess game that day! Unlikely

But according to Bob Jones, ECF's event publicity officer, Stewart Reuben reckons maybe 3% of the world's available population, or 30,000,000 people, were online. See the 'Reuben formula' here:

Defining the word “hit” in relation to a website is notoriously difficult, especially in relation to this event’s website. This is partly due to the fact that people can follow some games live on-line, and every time a move is made a new hit is recorded. Stewart Reuben’s rule of thumb is that one should divide this figure by 10 to get a figure for “unique hits”. So Dave Clayton’s recorded 750,000 hits yesterday on the live games section of the website for which he is responsible, could/should perhaps be toned down to something like 75,000

http://www.britishchess08.com/reports/reports.htm

My question, therefore: is there any substance to Reuben's 'rule of thumb'? And why a divisor of 10? Furthermore, the report goes on to imply that the 165,000 'hits' to the 'Britishchess08' website are 'unique'; is that likely?

There is a wider significance to all this. In Liverpool, to get money over the past three years, I've needed to compete with much more 'popular' activities. One fact I've used to impress local people is to show the huge level of internet traffic our chess events generate. In a sense, I've redefined 'spectator' for those who judge events by the volume of footfall they generate. Hence, the Tall Ships generated 500,000 visitors to the city for a day. But an EU Individual Open generates 2.5 million 'hits' a day for ten days. I simply leverage these impressive numbers into a 'pitch' for the cash. But it would be nice to know what's really going on

David
Atticus CC

[John Upham]

When providing training to Blue Chip clients on the added value or otherwise from their public web presence I often trawl through some dull access and error logs from an http server and then show them how metrics packages can be tuned properly to interpret the logs.

Very simply, a session can be spotted as a bunch of hits (individual htpp GETs or POSTs) most accurately identified by SessionID or a cookie type identifier. IP addreess is not reliable.

On average a visit / session to say the BBC web site might score 10**3 hits whilst a visit to an old style static site mights score 10**1 at most once the user has become bored.

The home page of the ECF web site scores around 20 hits.

So, please attach no significance to hits. They are used by ignorant marketing types or spotty youths who have just published their first static web site.

The next useful stat is going to be unique visitors. This is whole new hornets nest of intepretation.

See http://www.webtrends.com/ who is my main metrics partner.

John

[John Upham]

The current live game is rendered as :

x|T[oÓ0~‰ÿ`<ñ¶Ô-kËZšI£‰Ëåöèا‰Á‰3ÛMZ!þ;ÇN›Á¨HÙ9þŽÏåûìÅã«÷ËÕ·›kRøR“›O/Þ¼^š0öålÉØÕêŠ|}µzû†ŒC²²¼rÊ+SqÍØõ;Jhá}=g¬mÛA{606g«löçý4ñx¤—ôâÑÃEŒ¸-uåÒ#ûŒf³YçN ‚æšWyJ¡¢¤ŸÅM€Ë0–à9Öàën7ªIéÒT*Ÿ¬v5P"º¿”zØz"?'¢àցO•3Éùùd–Œ(aa/¯¼† ¿– ÖMÑæüm>ÈŒÜâ÷ ãâGnͦ’‰0ÚØ99yŸçauA“5/•ÞÍ?ƒ•¼â§äÒ*®OÉ+Ð x%Ðâ°«‰«ÖÑ+d˜p­òjNV6˜áw¢U9/ÁáOŒß*é‹9™‡õ6: òÂÏÉdr°dÆJÀÄFõ–8£•$™Æ¬#ºæRª*Gxçƒ`݇íÿã‹Ð;4eÁŠ= ¡;¡…R5DÉ”öGÆMö„'BsçªÐ8ÌåÓgBfSH8Le2‰u2›fçÉx<žLÎ&ã!>A wÐke]KÓVÚp9(¹°¦©ø@˜’Õ›Œ¹Âˆ-o€ ž9¶Æsmh:iÀ:Tr:=†—’ØË”Ž†Ã'”t}<ü…\±-”DZpnêXOÍ-/I…Œ¤”kmڏªÚ_ ÎQÒp½Á‡ëW¦ä µõõ§[i…úÜC1È“<†ƒjÓÃÖ\;túg³Û &èw=®@1¹XFÒþFB£÷8o7Ç‚fy”~; |ÆbzPf ‰³"v°+®ÄZRº/bŸ3Ò“írCá`Ü»Ð9ßÇJiä?¬u¼Üç 9¼GÔß y¼/ÍºÖx8Ã]ǶI/¦$ꇒZorU¹šçwz wà=!æ†åà£O­ùì¾)¬;á 0<)q<œœx9¡å7ÿÿ

I think White has a small edge in this position....

The feed from the DGT boards appears to be OK since PlayChess is showing the games correctly

[Carl Hibbard]

Some of the other feeds like PlayChess just pickup the .pgn and process off that - the problem you were seeing is another issue which is under investigation but is fixed for now

[Greg Breed]

The current live game is rendered as :

x|T[oÓ0~‰ÿ`<ñ¶Ô-kËZšI£‰Ëåöèا‰Á‰3ÛMZ!þ;ÇN›Á¨HÙ9þŽÏåûìÅã«÷ËÕ·›kRøR“›O/Þ¼^š0öålÉØÕêŠ|}µzû†ŒC²²¼rÊ+SqÍØõ;Jhá}=g¬mÛA{606g«löçý4ñx¤—ôâÑÃEŒ¸-uåÒ#ûŒf³YçN ‚æšWyJ¡¢¤ŸÅM€Ë0–à9Öàën7ªIéÒT*Ÿ¬v5P"º¿”zØz"?'¢àցO•3Éùùd–Œ(aa/¯¼† ¿– ÖMÑæüm>ÈŒÜâ÷ ãâGnͦ’‰0ÚØ99yŸçauA“5/•ÞÍ?ƒ•¼â§äÒ*®OÉ+Ð x%Ðâ°«‰«ÖÑ+d˜p­òjNV6˜áw¢U9/ÁáOŒß*é‹9™‡õ6: òÂÏÉdr°dÆJÀÄFõ–8£•$™Æ¬#ºæRª*Gxçƒ`݇íÿã‹Ð;4eÁŠ= ¡;¡…R5DÉ”öGÆMö„'BsçªÐ8ÌåÓgBfSH8Le2‰u2›fçÉx<žLÎ&ã!>A wÐke]KÓVÚp9(¹°¦©ø@˜’Õ›Œ¹Âˆ-o€ ž9¶Æsmh:iÀ:Tr:=†—’ØË”Ž†Ã'”t}<ü…\±-”DZpnêXOÍ-/I…Œ¤”kmڏªÚ_ ÎQÒp½Á‡ëW¦ä µõõ§[i…úÜC1È“<†ƒjÓÃÖ\;túg³Û &èw=®@1¹XFÒþFB£÷8o7Ç‚fy”~; |ÆbzPf ‰³"v°+®ÄZRº/bŸ3Ò“írCá`Ü»Ð9ßÇJiä?¬u¼Üç 9¼GÔß y¼/ÍºÖx8Ã]ǶI/¦$ꇒZorU¹šçwz wà=!æ†åà£O­ùì¾)¬;á 0<)q<œœx9¡å7ÿÿ

I think White has a small edge in this position....

The feed from the DGT boards appears to be OK since PlayChess is showing the games correctly

Does one need a special font to interpret that gobbledegook?

[Phil Neatherway]

Regarding the game Davies-Jones currently underway in Round 7, I'd be grateful if thes tonger players who visit this forum could explain why White played Bh1 rather than submit to the exchange of white-squared bishops? Is there anything more to it apart from a possibly unnatural attachment to the bishop?

[Roger de Coverly]

I'd be grateful if the stonger players who visit this forum could explain why White played Bh1 rather than submit to the exchange of white-squared bishops? Is there anything more to it apart from a possibly unnatural attachment to the bishop?

It's a normal sort of idea in those positions to preserve the effect of the bishop along the diagonal.

If you look at the position at move 27, Black would have Nf4 check winning the Qd5 if the king was on g2. Bh1 was a far sighted move.