Bitcoin Forum

btcchess.com

I just finished creating a simple website that allows two users to place a wager on a chess match, and play for the win. All transactions are automated and all accounts are secure. I'm looking to start beta testing, looking for any flaws in the transaction functionality and/or basic functionality of the entire site. All attempted transactions are logged in a database, so your bitcoins will never be lost. From the testing I have done myself, it is working perfectly. If, however, there is some unseen error on my part, and you do not receive your funds after a game is resolved, or after a game is withdrawn from the list by the user who issued the game; please post the error on this thread or pm me your user name and the time of the transaction, and I will take care of it.

There is also an affiliate program for potential advertisers. You can just put the affiliate link in your signature on this forum and earn 4% from all games won by players referred through your affiliate url. Check it out and post any errors you find on this thread. The official launch will take place after beta testing is complete.

btcchess.com

looks interesting, added to my list under pending.
Nice to see something different offered.

reminds me of cheating in online chess tournaments:
start chess prog, set your color to the one your opponents color and let the computer predict the moves for you.

I can't change the password.

Change password fixed, thank you for the warning. Keep'em coming.

Member superduperman just placed a wager on a game. I will sponsor anyone up to 0.15 BTC to accept his challenge.

How are you preventing people from using bots while playing?

Same question as sgtspike, but I'll play the challenge and take you up on the .15 btc sponsor? That means I only need to deposit .1 right?

ya, but you have to wait for the confirmation before your .15 is deposited. once you sign up, post your user name on this thread and i'll fund your account up to .15

good luck!

if i told you how, then all the botters would know how to work around my method silly!

Signed up, MasonIII is my username on your site also.

just sent .17 for good measure. after the confirmation, you'll receive the deposit

The game says your move but won't let me click on the game to make a move.

as far as monitoring potential botters, i'm open to suggestions. one method i had was to log every move a player makes, and determine if the moves are consistently played vs the opponents moves. if there is a pattern in their movements, i can determine if he/she is using a bot. also, adding a player history in the database so one can choose to accept a player who has never lost a game. i think this will deter most cheaters... but again, i'm open to suggestions.

Lol, my reading comprehension must be failing :(

the escrow account is still pending confirmation. after the initial invite, it sends the wager to an escrow account, and after someone accepts the invite, it must pend confirmation again. once it is confirmed, the game will allow you to continue. that's why it says "pending" and not "continue"

just give it another few minutes.

Just finished the game :) Now waiting for btc to be transferred from escrow to my account I assume. Its fun, but the problem is that its a bit slow (which is a must given that its an online game)

congrats, i hope you play again soon. it does take a while for the confirmations, but i checked the database and it was sent correctly. and btw, chess requires alot of patience. and i'm sure if a player was putting up a substantial amount of bitcoins, he would want the liberty to take his time with each move. anyways... congrats! ;D

there's a serious problem with the api transfer protocols. i sent the last game's winner the btc from the escrow account manually, but until i can sort this whole thing out, this whole thing is on hold. sorry for the pre-mature announcement. i'll keep you all posted.

turns out it wasn't as serious as i thought it was. just a simple coding over-sight when calling playering information from the database. beta-testing still on. the more it get's used, the closer i'll get to the official launch. i'm still willing to sponsor players, i'll post again when another game goes on the list.

I'm down to play again later. However, a question about fees? I only received .46 out of (2x.25) from the game I won. Should that happen? Also, you might want to look into a way so that it doesn't take an hour to receive funds.

8% overall commission. 4% to affiliates and 4% to the house. also, the games are actually meant to last for days. there's a 2 day expiration on all moves. if you read the welcome message in your inbox, you'll see that if you don't make a move after 2 days, you forfeit the match and lose your wager. as for how long it took for you to receive your winnings, i could possibly manage all the accounting via the website, but did it using escrow accounts at first, to make it easier on my part. maybe in the future...

http://i.imm.io/oTEQ.png

Wow, already blocked by my company's websense.

Sounds good. Thanks, I just wanted to know where they go. I'm happy with my winnings for playing a strategy game :)

that's probably because it's a .tk domain... which will be resolved soon. Someone was kind enough to help me with purchasing a valid .com domain (btcchess.com) and it will be moved to that location within the next few days. please don't let this scare you guys, i'm still trying to take care this. but please, i encourage you to find as many flaws as you can, so i can fix them post haste. kthxbai^^

another wager has been entered. i am offering a sponsor of .1 btc for someone to accept superduperman's wager (me). win and your account will be credited to the amount of the opponents wager. sign up and receive sponsorship now!

I'll play again :) but i'll have to postpone for 12 hours. GOt  a final in 6

i'd rather not sponsor the same player twice, but i tell you what, put the affiliate link and a small comment in your sig and i will. :)

My account doesn't' show as having an affiliate link, only a reference code. So... not sure if thats a problem.

How good are you drknow?  I'm not terribly inclined to play, as I'd probably end up somewhere in the 1100 range in a competitive tournament.

I signed on. Garr255

i'm acctually pretty good, but i'm not amazing. i think it's kind of hard to tell what's going on with a "birds-eye-view" but that's just me. i'd prefer a physical board then the computer. sign on and give it a try though


umm, that's odd, let me see if i can figure that out for you... h/o

welcome garr, if you want you can take mason's place and accept the wager from superduperman. also, add your affiliate code to your sig and i'll send 0.01 btc to your account. ;D

I'll take his place. I won't have access to my wallet until tonight though.

ya, you were right. that was my fault. it should be working now though. :)

fantastic. let me know when your ready. the wager is set at 0.25 btc.

Sorry if it's already been answered in this thread, but is there any chance you'll be allowing spectator bets? I'm awful at chess, but I'd love to bet on it.

+1

Edit: For those of you signing up now, my ref number: rt3bn4w0xf6goeqo3y8qi9

as of yet, the engine i'm using doesn't allow for spec'ing games, but i could arrange it for the future. this is what beta is for ;D

I just sent over a few coins.

You should (if you haven't already) fund the account right when payment is sent, or if you feel unsafe with that wait for one confirmation.

I haven't looked in to Bitcoin payment tracking at all, and I'm not sure what's out there in terms of customization.

the problem with that is, what if the game finishes early, and the escrow account hasn't been properly funded. it would attempt the transfer with an unconfirmed account, and no one would receive their monies. i'm sure there are ways around that problem, such as queing the transactions on a list...

two more wagers have been placed on the list at .78 btc

i will sponsor someone up to .2 btc to accept his challenge. sign up and post your user name on this thread to receive sponsorship.

I"ll take up one of them :) (at a time at least)

sure thing, but my limit is 2 for sponsorships, after this you gotta play on your own :P

your account has been credited

Unfortunately I fear that your site is doomed to failure.  There is no technical mechanism available to prevent someone from running a grand master chess program and entering their opponent's moves into the program and then playing the same moves as the program does in the game.  This method of cheating is out-of-band, and is the same reason that I don't play scrabble with people online; you can cheat in exactly the same manner using scrabble solvers.

All you'll end up with is a bunch of players pitting chess programs against each other.

Yep, doomed. I sincerely hope it works out but human nature and all that.

maybe it's not a complete loss. what if two players are doing the same thing. odds are still even...

retitle it to human controlled robot chess and I think you have a winner on your hands.

meh, i'lll let the players figure that out for themselves. there are loop holes, as with any gaming site.

also, i am considering designing other gaming sites, as i've discussed in another thread. it's another gaming site for server based q3 engine based games, such as soldier of fortune and counter strike... players could play games like ctf and tdm, and the website would gather server statistics to determine the winning team and player id's and accounts. all players would have to enter into the tournaments same as with chess... i would need to purchase the servers though. if anyone wants to consider becoming a partner in this project, i encourage you to contact me. but please post all discussion on this idea on another thread. this is an [ANNOUNCE] thread for human vs human chess.

reference: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=79730.0

I like the background image on http://fantasypublishings.com/ but the board is clearly faked, if black moved his queen to b5 he just lost it to the bishop who will put black in check.  They meant to put the queen on c5 which would pretty much be the d00m of white.

i'm not sure i completely understand you. are you saying there's something wrong with the functionality of the site? or are you just talking about strategy? as far as my understanding of chess goes, queen get's her color... but i don't think that's what you're talking about... :-\

lol, ya, he's definitely struggling. :D

if anybody is interested in a sponsorship, sign up at fantasypublishings.com (soon to be btcchess.com). i'm willing to sponsor anybody willing to put a game up on the site up to .1 bitcoins. just post your username in this thread an you will receive .1 btc for submitting a game.

I thought the same, but white could have advanced their king side bishop prior to the queen move by black.  Then white counters the queen move by bringing the bishop back home.  If it's now black's move, there's still a decent number of options open.

I just stumbled on this thread. Very interesting. My first thought was: what about cheating?
It would be cool to have chess games done online with measure in place to prevent cheating. I don't know of any fool proof method but there could be some things that you could do. Maybe.

-set up multiple chess engines running that play out the games with what they would do under different default settings. If a user keeps matching the engines they become flagged

The more I think of it though, the only way to prevent MOST simple cheating would be to have some type of game where two players play while a web cam records what they do. Each player sets a web cam from behind so each user can see the other person sitting at a desk from behind looking at the computer and see what is displayed on the computer. It wouldn't prevent cheating for high stakes games but it would work for most who just want to play real people for fun for a little bit of BTC. You could tell if they were looking at a different computer or having someone coach what to do from another computer. Plus they can chat while they play...

all very good ideas. i could implement a "webcam required" option when a player posts a game. but people can still fake it, so i'm not too sure about it. i like the engine matching idea though. here's a thought, what if i were to change the rules of the game, just a little bit. it would allow players to simply adapt to the new rules and continue to compete. Chess bots would be completely useless if knights move 3 and 1 instead of 2 and 1... just a thought.

Changing the rules is always fun. Go for it.

hey garr, how are your games going?

i think i have a solution to the cheating issue. i could switch the knight's position with the bishops position at the start of the game. any master chess program would be completely useless as official chess board setup's require the knight to be positioned next to the castle. with my variation, the bishop would be next to the castle. i could implement it right away, but i would have to but the site on hold. can i get some feedback on this please?

I don't think it would work.  Lots of chess programs can let you set up "custom" board positions to experiment with moves and such.  Someone could just set up a "custom" board position that includes a swap of the knight and bishop.

Also, I don't think a custom solution for changing how a piece moves would work either.  Lots of smart guys here... and the incentive to cheat, with wagers being placed on the games, is high.  Someone would just program a bot to calculate the best move using the new custom rules you create.  Or, some chess bots might already be modifiable in that aspect.

do you have any constructive solutions?

Haven't been able to think of anything so far.  :(  I did like the changing rules of the pieces idea at first, but then realized it really wouldn't be hard to program a simple piece of software that calculates out the best move to make.

The only solution I can think of is to do super fast games (< 3 minutes).  But that only works as long as a bot cannot directly interact with the game itself, and I would imagine it would be only a matter of time before that happened as well.  I don't know if the incentive to cheat would ever be high enough for someone to go through that much trouble though, so it might be safe.

but isnt' that kinda the point? if a player can write a strategy to play with my "variations", then so be it. but if a player decides to go and download any random chess bot, and use that to play against other players, then the variations would stop most of that. i don't think it's a total waste.

Yeah, I agree with you there.  Just don't try to misguide anyone by telling them that it is 100% bot free, and you should do fine.

oh ya, i'm not trying to misguide anyone. that's why i posted this thread. anyone can read it :P

also, announcement: i am offering 100% commission to players willing to keep games posted on the game list at all times. this is so when new members join, they see an active site. if your game is a loss, you still lose the wager, but you get all of the commission i would have taken from the game back to your wallet. this offer will last until i announce otherwise. just join, and post your username in this thread, or pm me.

just added spectate option for all games.

also, i'm considering adding a "betting" option for spectated games.

Do it

so i changed the knight's movement protocols in the chess engine i use for the site, it now moves 3 and 1 instead of 2 and 1. does anyone here have any thoughts on the subject?

I got really busy and forgot about this site and lost 1.7btc because I didn't move for two days...

you gotta stay on top of it garr, it clearly says after 2 days your match will be a forfeit. sorry about your luck though  :-\

Yeah the site states the two day rule very clearly, and I think its good to have as well, to avoid keeping your coins tied up in the game for like a week or something :P

Good game, nonetheless!

Use Tor to get around your companies server.

torproject.org

I think that the movement of pieces idea would work. The best way, in my opinion, would be to have the board change configuration with each game.

if you join up, you'll see the welcome message i added. basically is says that i changed the knight so it moves 3 and 1 instead of 2 and 1. i'm pretty sure it will piss alot of people off, but in the long run, it will prevent cheating in a big way. you can't just go out and download chessmaster 3000 and use it in a tournament. i this is the best possible solution. it's was simple to implement it, and it's easy for players to adapt.

Awesome, I don't see this on the site though, it's def implemented? I must be missing it on the site.

I sent coin, how long does it take?

it has to confirm, usually about 10 minutes or so. if you want an opponent to play you, you'll have to search for one yourself. I need to launch an ad capaign before people can find other players. i do have a friend who wants to buy some bitcoins from me and play though, so maybe tomarrow i can talk to him and he can play you.

ps: I also need people to check the site for sql injection vulnerabilities. I think i stopped them all, but i know people have been trying.

Oh, people can't see my game? Why not make the default to challenge everyone?

I like the idea of kicking back full commission to the person who puts out a challenge to everyone.

oh people can see your game, but the site doesn't have many active members as of yet. i still have to launch an advertisement campaign to get the ball rolling.

You want to test with me now? I want to play this crazy new 3-1 night chess.

sure, but you should expect the game to last a few days, unless we catch each other at the same time again. :)

No problem. I'll be here a while tonight anyway.

I am goisbetter1 btw

i figured that much, i accepted your challenge as superduperman, good luck :P

Really? It is still in my pending section and nothing in active.

edit: ah, it logged me out, but didn't tell me until I clicked reload. Longer sessions is probably fine until there is big money flying around. And clicking anything that one would want to be up-to-date ought also do the same check the reload does.

PS your move

Ok, I'll try a game or two as well.  ;)

Waiting on funds to hit...

EDIT:  This is definitely a service that should take advantage of 0-conf transactions.

I made another game.

0-conf probably good for this, especially for now.

I won a game!

If anyone wants to try this but doesn't want to bet I'll front the .25 and you can just send me the winnings if by some miracle you beat me.

Or we can play for real.

I've got challenges up.

I totally forgot about this while waiting for my funds to confirm...

*hint hint*

EDIT:  Ok, I'm confused now... I accepted two games, and now they're both "pending" in the active status.  How do we actually start playing?

In active games I have three and can click "continue" on any of them to go to the game board.

Yeah, I eventually got there.  No idea why they sat in "pending" or what it means.

This is because the bitcoins must be confirmed in an escrow account for each game.

Good luck in your games btw.

Why do they need to be confirmed in an escrow account?  If you already have the coins, don't you act as the escrow?

Well, when making the site, it was just easier to create a new wallet and transfer funds from the player's account to this new wallet and call it an escrow account. I could edit the code so it would keep track of the escrow strictly on the site, and there would be no pending required, and I still might.

I am goisbetter1. I put up a few free challenges and a 0.1BTC. If you think you've got an edge on me (and you probably do) please hustle me, I'll accept any reasonable wager.