However, note that we have had many complaints of *slowness* over the past week.

It's a drastic measure, but the reason should be obvious.

There is a disheartening fraction of people who sign-up to Chessgames, are unable to see games due to their lack of Java. Then they leave, since without the game diagrams, the site becomes little more than giant tables of statistics. The "Wow, this is great!" effect that we had on people in 2001 is lost on a huge percentage of people in 2012, simply because Java is no longer as ubiquitous as it was a decade ago.

You use javascript in your code right? There is an object, called navigator, and you can use navigator.javaEnabled()

On the EVENT page for the TOURNAMENT itself ... (or maybe a new page?)

How about picking the top three (top five? top ten?) games???

You could do this in several ways. One obvious way is allowing the general membership to do it. I.e., the top games - by the amount of kibitzing - could be noted. For example, at Tata Steel (2012), the game A Giri vs Aronian, 2012 was easily one of the more brilliant of recent times. I don't know if the amount of kibitzing really translates into "Most Brilliant," but it might be a place for the serious researcher to start looking...

There were several changes I made on my end, (using a less complicated browser like Google Chrome, and experimenting with which plug-ins and add-ons to allow - for some reason, some tool-bars will also slow down your browser!); that helped a little, however, <in the final analysis> ... it still seemed terribly slow.

The last few days the pages load almost instantly, even with MSIE.

I submitted at least three new games in the Sicilian today. (None of them are games that I played. One was <I think> a correspondence game, and the other two were by strong masters. In one, a GM played White ...)

I TRY (note the word, "try" here ...) not to submit games that have already been submitted.

I use the Openings Explorer and also use Search Kibitzing (searching kibitzes) using the players names ... to see if anything pops up.

I also used to use a "back search" ... (find the games in CB, and then search for the game here - by name); but sometimes I get thrown a monkey wrench by how the name is spelled ... (The "Americanized or "Germanized" version?).

See Opening Explorer. This leads to http://www.chessgames.com/perl/ches.... And even though the above game is in there, I missed it and almost re-submitted the above game anyway. I see that SOME transpositions are covered in the OE, but apparently not all? Is this correct, or am I missing something?

I also had a couple of other criteria that I used for searching (this site) for <new> games, but now I do not remember exactly what they were ... (In this matter, I am open to suggestions!).

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Having said all this - it all shows how difficult it can be to submit a (new) game. Have you ever though about a PGN search tool? You could list just the first 15 or 20 moves of the game, and it would come back with a list of all the games on the website? Or is this too difficult a technical challenge? (Would it be too time consuming to justify the amount of work that it would take to develop such a feature?)

This is the same thing you seek in the "PGN search tool?" request section of your post.

There are five GMs, about another 15 titled players, in a field of sixty-something. Relatively strong -- so strong-looking that I decided to play in the Challengers event, which is more like my current level.

I'm just going to buy a cheap laptop and a "How to use a computer for dummies" book!!

WannaBe explained it perfectly, and in fact with the new feature you can do it straight from the homepage using the search at the top ("the EZ Search").

I'll walk you through it. Suppose you had this PGN and wondered if it was new to our database.

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Bg5 e6 7. f4 Qb6 8. Qd2 Qxb2 9. Rb1 Qa3 10. e5 dxe5 11. fxe5 Nfd7 12. Bc4 Bb4 13. Rb3 Qa5 14. O-O O-O 15. Nxe6 fxe6 16. Bxe6+ Kh8 17. Rxf8+ Bxf8 18. Qf4 Nc6 19. Qf7 Qc5+ 20. Kh1 Nf6 21. Bxc8 Nxe5 22. Qe6 Neg4 0-1

Like you say, just take the first 15 or 20 moves, now plug them into "EZ Search":

search "1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Bg5 e6 7. f4 Qb6 8. Qd2 Qxb2 9. Rb1 Qa3 10. e5 dxe5 11. fxe5 Nfd7 12. Bc4 Bb4 13. Rb3 Qa5 14. O-O O-O 15. Nxe6"

It sends you to the Opening Explorer, where you can see that 15.Nxe6 was, according to our database, only played in Tringov vs Fischer, 1965. Now it's up to you to examine that game, compare with your original PGN, and see if it is indeed the same game (and it is).

It does one thing that is a little bit unexpected: it stops at move 14 even though you gave 15 moves. That behavior is intentional: we want to back up a level and show you a small set of games rather than take you to a "stub page" (an Opening Explorer page that only has one game.) We think it's a little more useful that way.

By the way, another small unsung improvement: if you use the Advanced Search for a head-to-head comparison, you now get the same excellent head-to-head statistics that you get when you use the EZ Search. E.g.

<Classical games: Viswanathan Anand beat Boris Gelfand 7 to 5, with 26 draws.

Including rapid/exhibition games: Viswanathan Anand beat Boris Gelfand 16 to 6, with 44 draws.

Only rapid/exhibition games: Viswanathan Anand beat Boris Gelfand 9 to 1, with 18 draws.

*The figures above are based only on games present in our database which may be incomplete.>