Hi there,

unfortunately there are not many players who vote for their game of the week. I personally have the impression, that there are always the same players/teams voting, which results in some players who are in the top 3 twice/three times a season, whilst other players who might have played a stunning game does not show up there.

At the moment, there are 56 games/week, so it is impossible for any player to look at all of these games. Nevertheless I really like the game of the week function, since it allows us players to have a look at the best and most stunning moves/games, if it works ideally.

Do you have any ideas/suggestions how the game of the week function can be improved?

Best regards,
schachbjm

Perhaps one issue is that the only people that are guaranteed to see a game are the players, and they cannot vote for themselves. There are often a few observers, but their first thought isn't usually to nominate for GotW (partly because you don't really KNOW after one game and might feel you don't want to waste your vote (and then you forget to vote at all).

Possible suggestions:

1.
Immediately after the game, the TeamleagueBot could post a link for people to vote for GotW in channel 101 (just as a reminder), which might lead to more votes from observers immediately.

2.
Don't "vote" for GotW. Instead the bot will post a link for people to Nominate a game for GotW after each game is played (including allowing players to nominate themselves). Subsequently, the top X nominations could be voted on at some later time. In this case there would be "fewer" candidates to vote for, so maybe people would be inspired to actually look at more of the games?

Don't know if either of these ideas would help. Just some thoughts.

I just want to stat that I like the "game of the week" option but that I'm most of the time disappointed by too few people voting. very often the outcome is that it's not the best game (and least in my humble and low rated player's opinion) that's voted to be game of the week. maybe this is due to the amount of games, maybe that it's due to the fact that "game of the week" is something that's not mentioned anywhere.

so maybe when the roll of honour is posted there could be the "games of the week" mentioned there too? this would at least maybe raise some more awareness - as would a regular reminder in channel 101.

another idea would be to make it an obligation for either the captain and/ or the deputy to vote for a game of the week (one week, one vote per team, no voting for your own team members) but only for their section so that the number of games to choose from are limited. and then there could be some points for being voted as game of the week? like an additional game point for the team that won game of the week and half a point for second and third place?

Additional points for the team that won game of the week would simply lead to corruption. Bad idea. Mentioning in the honor roll should be a good enough incentive.

Forcing captains or deputies to vote would most likely result in them picking a random game because they have to and not because they want to. And then you'll get quantity over quality, not exactly what you want here.

I do agree with the idea of limiting votes to your own section and also not allowing voting for your own team. Less games more chances to pick a better game.

Regarding the reminder, I think the better place for it would be the Game forum page. Something among the line: "We have noticed that you haven't voted for the game of the week in rounds 1, 2, etc. Please consider doing so here: Game of the Week"

Just my $0.02

Another option, on a reverse tack, is to not limit people to voting for one game. The only time I ever think about voting is directly AFTER a great game is played. But if I vote right then, I lose the chance to vote for a potentially better game later, and then I end up not voting at all most weeks. If I can just put some kind of Upvote Tally next to the games I like, then at the end of the week, although the people who watch a lot of games may have more votes, at least there's a better chance for people to see the games with lots of votes.

The downside being, of course, that one active team might always just vote for themselves all the time. But is that really much different than the same names we already see now?

One way to make the function more viable would be to allow favoriting / liking limitless times, so the most favorited games would appear on the top of the list. It would present rather what has been happening on favoriting and not some "absolute truth" about what is the "game of the week".

The forcing of voting is too harsh in my opinion.

I'd like to bump this one up.

I think it would be a good idea according to the number of games played if not only the first three but maybe fives games of the games of the week voting would be shown. don't know if this would come with a lot of work but I sometimes vote for a game and it's not shown due to the fact that there are three other games with one vote.

I am doing currently the browsing through all games to vote. Is there anywhere where the votes are stored and results available after the season?

not only the first three but maybe fives games of the games of the week

Good idea.

Another idea, send an automated email/message to both players upon every upvote:

"Hello, Your Teamleague game was nominated as Game of the Week candidate: /gotw.php"

This could raise their interest in the feature; perhaps they "return the favour" on occasion.