AbigailII: Such a single datum isn't really an improvement over an average. Consider our chess player with a 30-days chess game but who loves a quick game of backgammon.

I do think a time per match metric is better than a time per move one. Those 5 anti-backgammons with the friend would only be 5 matches rather than 500 moves and would therefore distort the average much less.

All: One think I'm not clear on, where is the information to be displayed and how and when is it to be used?

No offense to everybody, but this will never happen. Fencer does what he wants and he'd never take the time to study the math to do all that's involved here. I'm not speaking for him, of course, I've just been here long enough to know how he operates.

A better strategy would be to ask Fencer to give us access to player statistics (but no personal information) and then someone could program up any stats we want. You could have any or all of the ideas mentioned below. Since all the info relating to past moves and current games and such is already public (except for private games), Fencer would not be giving anyone access to information that isn't already available, so it shouldn't be a problem.

That's my $.02.