YLCET is no more!

[Gary Internet]

Of course we have the right to comment on his decision, just as he has the right to ignore whatever we say.

It would be great if all the PGNs could be transferred to this site somehow so the record of all those games is not lost.

[yorkman]

@ulysses

Of course it matters. It matters to me. The site was originally created for chess fans, not for me. That is its main purpose. But I don't find it fun to spend money when not many people are watching/using it. Thirty was on good days, often it was 20 and with the work myself and arun put into it I don't find that very motivational nor rewarding, and I don't mean financially.

And fifty to sixty is not a must but it would at least make me feel appreciated and that the work we put in was worth it. Of course people will always have different reasons and expectations. These are mine and I think I have the right to make decisions based on those expectations.

[arunsoorya1309]

We are keeping it alive for one more tournament and possibly finals, if you go to archive you can download all the PGN's for all seasons there, if you want to

[menniepals]

I like the page

[Ovyron]

And fifty to sixty is not a must but it would at least make me feel appreciated and that the work we put in was worth it.

No, it wouldn't.

Imagine that magically you get a hundred more people interested, and they show up to watch it.

It wouldn't change anything, your messages would look like this:

I hosted the YLCET (Yorkman's Live Chess Engine Tournament) website for the purpose of entertaining a wide audience of chess players however the user base is usually only about 130 on average and without even a small increase after each tournament. Needless to say this didn't bring any tingling sensations. I was hoping to sustain at least 150-160 on most days. This is the main reason why I've lost motivation to keep running the site 24/7. I feel myself and arun have given it the old college try to attract more users with constant improvements to the user interface. Sure, these things take time. But I don't always have the time to keep spreading the word. After all I'm just one guy. I'm a little surprised that someone hasn't volunteered to help keep the hype up but I suppose nobody else has the time either. And I was prepared to eat my monthly operating costs to keep the tournament running 24/7/365 in exchange for a decent audience. I guess I'm not a very patient man.

Hundred thirty was on good days, often it was 120 and with the work myself and arun put into it I don't find that very motivational nor rewarding, and I don't mean financially.

And hundred fifty to hundred sixty is not a must but it would at least make me feel appreciated and that the work we put in was worth it.

What's the difference?

The problem is you're not seeing the people that come and gather to watch YLCET, you just see numbers, and they're not high enough.

The problem is that you're not feeling the appreciation that they are giving you, and you claim that if they were 20 or 30 more people, you'd feel the appreciation. But it doesn't work that way. If you're feeling 0 appreciation, 2*0 means you'd feel the same with twice the people. If you felt any appreciation, it would be enough by whoever shows up to appreciate you.

Believe me, I've been very successful at other sites, and managed to get 40-50 daily subscribers with what I was doing. What I learned is numbers don't matter, but the people, so I quit that.

If something is worth doing, it's worth doing for a single person.

If something isn't worth doing, it's not worth doing it for 30 or 130 people.

[yorkman]

You're changing the facts. Anyway, I'm not going to argue. I think what I said was pretty clear.

I intend to run YLCET for as long as possible, as was my goal from the beginning. But I'm not a rich man, and far from it actually, so there needs to be a balance. When that balance comes I'll be happy. Until then YLCET will likely always be on the edge.

[BrendanJNorman]

I think what you're doing is very nice, but you need to build into your site a mechanism for building your traffic organically over time.

Whether this is by SEO (blog posts that contain keywords people search for in Google - "chess engines tournament" might be one), YouTube videos (of perhaps a single tournament and with links in description back to the site) or a dedicated Facebook page.

"If you build it, they will come" is the quote that sends many websites to the graveyard, because without some form of marketing, nobody will find it.

My website gets hundreds of people each day (with about 12% joining my "VIP Mailing List") with only minor promotion, some decent SEO and patience.

You could do the same.

I also think it's important to monetize your site so that it at least pays for itself, because no man should be expected to create high quality content, spend his precious few hours of life, and pay for servers costs, domain registration and so on - all with nothing in return.

When money comes in you'll be able to invest much more heavily in creating even better content/materials/computers and so on.

Nothing ever worth building was built for free.

These are reasons why so many awesome computer chess (and other sites) have died over the years.

If you only treat it as a hobby (and never see a return), your energy will eventually run out and you'll give it up.

Much to the whining of those who benefited from your (completely free) work over the years.

In fact, the work isn't even free - you LOSE money every year.

This is just my perspective, as a person who has a popular website, a marketing background and a big interest in computer chess.

Treat it as a business, and it'll sustain.

[yorkman]

Thanks Brendan. You could be right. I've just no time for that. I have to work everyday and whenever I have free time it's either with the fam or renos, or updating the site. The monetize part, I'm not sure how other than mess it up with ads. We do have Donations button but asides from that I don't think there's much else I can do especially with such low turn out which has me consistently thinking if shutting it down..like you said, it's depressing when you're averaging only 20 viewers for what most say is an excellent site with best design yet nobody hangs around long enough. This is why I'm often thinking of just folding tent. I think this is partly because we don't have mods that keep the chat busy with dialogue. Seems harder to find then you'd expect.

[lkaufman]

Sorry to hear of your plan to close shop, but I certainly understand. Frankly I feel that it is really our fault (komodochess) for failing to keep up with Stockfish in the last year or so. If everyone takes it for granted that Stockfish will win a tournament, there is not so much incentive to follow it. If we were fully competitive with Stockfish, as we used to be and as I hope we will again be in the future, I think you would get a lot more visitors. Perhaps if you see a close race for number 1 spot you will be motivated to try again.

[yorkman]

While this isn't your fault I do partly agree with you. We've discussed this before and if everyone knows who's going to win and often by a big margin it's not as fun to follow on a regular basis. I am sure K will return to form again. It's just a matter of time. As for YLCET, I really don't want to shut it down. We didn't spend so much time redesigning the web site just to shut it down a few months later. But again I have to justify cost as well. I was willing to eat that until more regular users come but that hasn't happened and we've actually had less users for the past week. To me it shows there isn't much interest from many to watch our product. The twitch idea of live video streaming did nothing. As a matter of fact viewers went down ever since I started it although I'm sure that is just a coincidence.