What’s new

Changes to the site, newest first.

• 27 Aug 2026The reveal says which line it is playing. Above the moves under the board it now names the line the board is stepping through and how far into it you are — the solution, what happened at the board, your own analysis — and the move the board has reached is marked clearly enough to find at a glance. Your analysis sits on its own panel under the solution, the way it did while you were writing it, and its heading stays in view while you read it. Stepping through the moves after the verdict no longer scrolls the board away.
• 26 Aug 2026Fixed: the board could stop taking moves. After you solved one position and pressed Next, every move on the position after it was refused as illegal — the second position of a sitting onwards, until you reloaded the page. Your moves were being checked against the board you had just left.
• 26 Aug 2026The threat printed beside a key move reads as a threat. It is what the move plays next if the defence does nothing, and it was set in the solution’s own bold, so it looked like the line’s second move; it sits a step back now, the way a bracket does. And while the symbols are still being spelled out for you, the words go round the move they belong to instead of in front of it.
• 24 Aug 2026Entering a move is instant. Your moves, undo, your glyphs, your assessments and your notes are all worked out in your own browser now rather than sent away and waited for — so a line goes in as fast as you can play it, and it keeps going on a bad connection. Your analysis is still graded on the server the moment you commit, and nothing about what the board shows you has changed.
• 24 Aug 2026Fixed: moves that went missing. Writing a note and then playing your next move would refuse that move as illegal, and a move played in the moment just after Undo, Clear, an assessment or a glyph could vanish without a word — both only ever on a real connection, which is why they were hard to catch. Entering a move by dragging the piece was never affected.
• 24 Aug 2026A bigger board on a phone, and the analysis box is bigger too. The diagram gains between 6% and 17% depending on the handset — a 390-wide phone goes from 37px squares to 40 — and the room to write grew with it, because the space came from the chrome around them: a toolbar that had been quietly wrapping onto a second row, the padding round the diagram, and the gaps of a screen that does not scroll.
• 24 Aug 2026The board no longer scrolls away while the solution plays. On a phone the reveal now keeps the board fixed where you are looking and moves the printed line underneath it, so you can watch the moves happen; the page returns when the verdict lands. The band picker and the analysis room also stopped making the page wider than the screen at the verdict, which is what was shrinking everything a moment after you committed.
• 23 Aug 2026Playing the right idea in the wrong order is now graded as the error it is, with the refutation shown, instead of being accepted as the solution — on some positions a natural-looking move order that only reaches the key move a move too late was being paid in full, and the reveal's quiz would accept it too.
• 22 Aug 2026More room to write on a phone. The week strip has come off the top bar and the game's details sit on one line above the board, which gives the analysis about a quarter more of the screen — the board is unchanged. The note field also brings itself into view when it would otherwise sit below the fold, so there is always somewhere to start writing.
• 22 Aug 2026How findable a move is now reads in words — hard to find, most players miss this, the natural move — under the board and in the verdict, instead of a bare percentage. Hover it and you still get the number, now with what it is a number of: a model of human play across a range of club strengths, not a count of anyone who solved the position. Fixed with it: a move the card pays a point for can no longer be described as an easy one, and one it never asked you for is no longer described as hard.
• 22 Aug 2026A defence you cover in a bracket now counts towards what the card is out of, not just towards your score. A card that read 4 / 6 +1 reads 5 / 7 — the same work, one fraction, and no trailing number to account for. Covering a defence can only ever raise your score: the point is added to both halves, and a bracket that does not earn adds to neither.
• 22 Aug 2026Fixed: writing in the analysis room used to deal you the next position the moment you typed an n — the shortcut was reaching the page from inside the box, and it took the verdict and the half-written sentence with it. The keyboard shortcuts now stop at whatever you are typing in.
• 22 Aug 2026Fixed: on any position where the verdict pointed at the move your line broke at — or after you clicked one of your own moves to annotate it — Next did nothing. The button was there, the press went nowhere, and the only way on was to reload. It deals the following position again.
• 22 Aug 2026The solution now plays out on the board after you commit, with the printed line writing itself beneath it move by move — and where your analysis missed a move, the reveal stops and asks you for it before it goes on. The verdict lands when the line is complete; to the verdict → takes you straight there.
• 21 Aug 2026Lighter pages. The chess pieces are now a single small file your browser keeps, instead of being re-sent with every board — so a position, a playout and a verdict all arrive with less to download (a verdict’s boards by about a sixth), and a position is dealt with fewer questions to the database behind it.
• 21 Aug 2026The tougher defence is now part of the test. Where the opponent has a second defence as strong as the printed one and the answer to it is a move most players miss, the solution marks it “more resilient”, it counts towards the maximum, and covering it — in a bracket, or by taking it as your main line — pays the point. Miss it and the verdict names it. Where the answer is obvious, nobody would play the defence, or the position is already lost, nothing changes.
• 21 Aug 2026The solution no longer shows you a second defence “just as good” when it is a move nobody would consider playing. Half of them were: the brackets that remain are the ones you might actually meet over the board.
• 21 Aug 2026If you answer a defence the grader accepts, and the printed solution then goes somewhere your line never does, the points on those moves are no longer marked against your own moves as if you had missed them there. They stay on the solution, where they were on offer, and the verdict now says which move of the solution your line parted from.
• 21 Aug 2026The card now asks for the whole combination, not just the first move. It used to stop demanding as soon as the position went quiet — which on two positions in three meant one move, and often stopped one move before the quiet move that was the whole point. Harder positions are worth more as a result, and the moves you were not being asked for now carry points. Nothing you have already solved has changed.
• 21 Aug 2026A move you rejected is worth something for the first time. Write the move you were tempted by in a bracket, with the reply that refutes it, and it scores — the same as anticipating a defence. Showing what you looked at and turned down is calculation, and it now counts as it.
• 21 Aug 2026A bracket that holds for six moves and goes wrong at the seventh keeps its point. It used to be thrown out whole, so a long line with one wishful reply in it scored less than a two-move sketch — which was exactly backwards. Answering a move that had only one legal reply now pays nothing: there was nothing there to calculate.
• 21 Aug 2026The printed solution shows a new kind of branch: the move your opponent will really make, and the answer to it — “if 43.♔f3 then 43…♖xd3”. Until now it showed the engine’s best defence and, sometimes, one just as good — and on many positions the move most players actually choose appeared nowhere at all.
• 21 Aug 2026Every bracket in the printed solution now says in words what it is — the move that fails, the defence your opponent will really make, the defence that is just as good — instead of leaving you to work out which kind you were looking at. The moves are the same; the reading is not.
• 21 Aug 2026Where a solution stops early — the point is proved and the rest is routine — its difficulty was still being set by moves the card never shows you. Forty positions were priced too high because of it, and are worth fewer points and rated easier from today. Nothing you have already solved has changed.
• 21 Aug 2026Where the defence had a second move just as good, the printed solution now shows it: the defence, and the answer to it. It carries no price tag — it is there to be understood, not something you were asked to find.
• 21 Aug 2026The printed solution now shows a tempting move that fails — the one the model expects players to try — in a bracket beside the move it replaces, with the refutation played out.
• 20 Aug 2026Every page opens faster, and the second one you open faster still: the site’s stylesheet and its board code are now files your browser keeps rather than something re-sent with every page. Opening the day’s position moves about a quarter of what it used to.
• 20 Aug 2026The verdict comes back faster, and on a long line noticeably so — the engine behind the grader is a newer and quicker one. Nothing about how a line is judged has changed.
• 20 Aug 2026The solution now says what a move does, where it can say it plainly: the piece that has nowhere to go, the two things a move threatens, the reply that was the only legal one. Where there is nothing certain to say about a move, it says nothing.
• 20 Aug 2026If you had chosen the Merida, Leipzig, Chessnut or Celtic pieces, every board drew them as broken images — and the little piece beside a shared line in the analysis room was missing for everyone. Both are back.
• 19 Aug 2026The privacy notice caught up with the site and lost some weight: it now says that shared lines appear on a position’s public solution page once its review is out, what publish as a solver withholds, and it describes Google sign-in only while the button exists. The promises themselves are unchanged.
• 19 Aug 2026A tidier account page: controls first, a short note on each, and rows with nothing to press are gone. Your run still greets you at the verdict, and your piece still sits beside your shared lines.
• 19 Aug 2026The quiz walks to its question at reading speed now — each move sits on the board long enough to follow, and a click still skips straight to the question.
• 19 Aug 2026The solution now says what the key move is for: quiet key moves carry their threat — △ and the move that lands if the defence does nothing — on the review, the solution page and in your PGN.
• 19 Aug 2026A small bell in the header: your medal, your completed week and a new rank in the analysis room land there — a quiet dot, told to you alone, never a number and never anyone else's news.
• 19 Aug 2026The kibitzers are now the analysis room — it sits right under the verdict, counts its shared lines, and you can publish a line as a solver, with your name, rating and rank kept off it.
• 19 Aug 2026A rank in the analysis room: everyone starts a pawn, and sharing analysis — with the votes it earns — climbs knight, bishop, rook, queen. Your piece sits beside your shared lines and on your account page; there is no rank table, and there never will be. Monday's letter now also tells you what happened to what you shared.
• 19 Aug 2026The daily can no longer be a position you already met in the archive — the calendar now books around every member's history, so the shared position arrives fresh for everybody.
• 18 Aug 2026After Sunday's verdict — and in Monday's letter — your week is ready to paste or post: the days you showed up as a row of squares, your minutes, how you did against the field, your sharpest category — and never a score.
• 18 Aug 2026Send a position to WhatsApp, Telegram, Reddit, X, Facebook or Discord straight from the verdict — the diagram travels with the link — plus ready-made images for an Instagram post or story. And every position in the weekly letter now opens for anyone you forward it to.
• 18 Aug 2026Download any position you have solved as a PGN — the diagram, the verified line and your own analysis with its marks and notes, in one file for your database, Anki or Chessable.
• 18 Aug 2026A move the position does not allow is now refused the moment you click it, without waiting for the server — and dragging a piece writes the same move two clicks do.
• 17 Aug 2026Every card now says what the rest of the room did with the same position, once enough people have committed a line on it.
• 17 Aug 2026Commit a clean line on the day’s position and you are told where it placed — privately, with the number of lines it was measured against.
• 17 Aug 2026Reviewed positions get their own page, and the library lists them: the solution, the game’s continuation and the room’s notes, open to anyone.
• 16 Aug 2026On a phone the solve is one fixed screen — the board stays put and only the line you are writing scrolls.
• 16 Aug 2026The morning letter and the share card draw the real pieces instead of typeset ones.
• 15 Aug 2026The weekly review moved from Wednesday to Monday morning.
• 14 Aug 2026A link to a single position now opens that position for anybody, with no account.
• 14 Aug 2026The run: days trained, with rest days skipped and two away days a month absorbed. Missing a day costs nothing else.
• 13 Aug 2026The app opens on the day’s position instead of a random one. Difficulty is now an override after the verdict, not a menu you have to answer first.
• 13 Aug 2026The day’s position is chosen as the best in its band rather than at random within it.
• 13 Aug 2026First, second and third each week for the best-received notes shared with the room.
• 13 Aug 2026Write a note inside the line, under the move it belongs to.
• 11 Aug 2026Renamed to Calculation Training.