Changelog
A chronological history of features and improvements.
- Why You Lose: A report of your lost games, read by Stockfish move by move. Each one says the move that cost it — and the first serious mistake before it, when your opponent let it go — what kind of mistake it was (material left hanging, a reply you did not see, a move that gave the position away, mate allowed), whether the clock had a part and whose time trouble it was, and the openings where it keeps happening. White and Black can be read apart. Importing games stays free; your last 100 lost or drawn games are analysed for free
- A Front Page That Is the Gym: The home page used to deal a line onto a board, which answered “what is this?” with one of the four tools and hid the other three. Now it says what the gym is, shows the four machines, and asks for an account twice. The board it used to deal is still one click away, on any opening page and in the study
- Your Sparring Can Be Real Moves Again: Play a sparring no longer means Stockfish and only Stockfish. A game starts from the first move or from any opening in the catalog, and your partner answers with what players of that level really played there — from the opening’s own book, which needs no account at all, or from your Lichess explorer. When the book runs out you are told, on the board and in a notice, and the engine takes over at the same level
- A Level You Slide, Not a List You Read: How hard, how much of the board you keep, which band of players answers — all of them are now one horizontal scale with a line under it explaining the stop you are on, in the sparring game, the memory games and blindfold alike. Three setups that were a page of lists each are a card you can see the Start button from
- Move the Piece: A second blindfold exercise, and a one-minute one: a piece, a square to start on, a square to reach, and you say the squares it goes through. It is scored against the fewest moves there are, worked out move by move, and when the round ends the board shows you the way
- A Board Nobody Has Ever Played: “Put the pieces back” can now be played from a position made up on the spot instead of from an opening. An opening is half recognised; a board with no sense in it is all memory
- Your Records, and Your Weeks: Progress keeps the best you have ever done at each thing — sharpest practice, deepest line, longest game held in your head — and ranks this week against every week you have trained. A week you did nothing in is not a week you were beaten in, so it is not ranked
- Walk Your Own Opening Tree: Explore is your own games, position by position: the record of the one on the board, every branch played from it with its score and points, and one click to study any of them. A name is not a branch — three different third moves can all be called the same opening, and this is where you see which of them is costing you
- The Openings That Cost You Points: The study opens with Needs work from your own games, worst first and split by colour, with Going well under it. Every row now says what can be done to it: Play practises exactly the branch it names, Explore opens it in the tree, and a little board shows the position behind the name. How each line has gone month by month is kept too
- Where You Play: A new account is asked once where it plays, on Lichess, on chess.com or both, and its last year of games comes down in the background. Everything else on the site is about those games
- Two Marks on the Board: The verdict badge says what the engine thought of your move; the second one, in the opposite corner, says whether it was the move you had prepared. They answer different questions and both are usually worth knowing
- Deleting an Import No Longer Jams: Removing a few thousand imported games used to take one enormous transaction, which blocked everything else and looked like it had hung. It goes a hundred at a time now, in the background, and the page waits for it
- Four Tools, One Gym: The site is no longer one board with a dropdown. Tools holds four of them, sharing the same board, the same engine and the same progress: the line study, memory games, a whole game against a sparring partner, and a game played without seeing the board
- Play a Sparring: A full game against Stockfish held down to the level you choose, from Beginner to full strength. Before it starts you are told exactly who you are playing, and at any point on your own move you can stop the game and see where the position stands, the moves you play there in your own games, and the moves everyone plays there. Stopping costs nothing
- Blindfold: The same game with the board all but empty and the moves typed, with a ladder of help — the last move, your own pieces, everything — that decides how much of the position stays up and what that costs in experience. A peek shows everything for three seconds, at a price
- Memory Games: Three rounds of putting back the pieces a position lost, or of repeating the moves it was made of, taken from the catalog lines
- Opening lines: The study is not "play against real moves", it is finding the openings where your own games drop most points. Opening it now leads with Needs work, ranked from your imported games and split by colour; the catalog, your own lines and the openings that are going well are what it falls back on
- A Day at a Time: Your home page hands out a plan for the day instead of two buttons: one line studied three times (the worst one you were not given this week), two blindfold games, two memory rounds and the puzzle of the day. The days you meet it are kept
- The Daily Puzzle Counts Itself: The daily plan reads your Lichess puzzle history, so solving their puzzle of the day ticks the box on its own. Reconnect your Lichess account from the user menu to let it — a link made before today cannot answer, and until it can, the puzzle is shown but does not hold the day up
- Points and Medals per Tool: 37 medals, each belonging to the tool it is about: lines and stars in the study, perfect rounds in memory, a game won by checkmate, twenty moves of your own held in your head. Every tool also keeps its own experience, sessions and time, while the belt still spans all of them
- Every Practice Says What It Was: Which tool it was played in and how long it took, on the progress page, the last practices and each day of your timeline
- See the Position Behind the Name: Every line in a list carries a little board with the position it reaches, on hover or pinned open with the button beside it. A name is not a position
- Take Your Game With You: A finished game can be downloaded as a PGN, its position copied as a FEN, and opened straight on Lichess’ analysis board. Your history keeps the game itself, with the same two ways out of it
- Your Dashboard: Your home page when you are logged in: the plan of the day, your tools with what each one has come to, half a year of practice day by day, and where your own games go best and worst
- A Header That Fits a Phone: The header is built for a phone first and widened from there. The sections live behind one button until there is room for them, the account menu stops being pushed off the side of the screen, and every row of both is big enough to tap
- Practice Straight Away: Open the site and a line is already on the board, with your side at the bottom. No account and no setup: just play your move
- A Verdict on Every Move: Best, good, inaccuracy, mistake or blunder the moment you play, plus one sentence of context: how club players score with that move, or how it has gone in your own games
- 20 Openings to Practice: Sicilian, French, Caro-Kann, Italian, Ruy Lopez, London, Queen’s Gambit, King’s Indian and more, each with its own page under Openings. Your sparring partner plays what club players (1600-2000) really play
- Accuracy, Stars and a Scoresheet: Every practice ends with an accuracy, up to three stars and your biggest slip, with a button to retry from there
- Belts, Streaks and Achievements: Earn experience with every solid move, keep a daily streak, collect stars per line and work your way from white belt to black
- Hints and Take-backs: Ask which piece to move, or take a move back and try again. Keyboard shortcuts: Enter, N, H and T
- Your Progress Comes With You: Practices made before creating an account are moved into it when you sign up, and verifying your email now logs you in
- Privacy and Terms: Plain-language pages on what is stored and why
- Stockfish 19: The browser engine jumps from Stockfish 17.1 to Stockfish 19 — two major releases of playing strength, including the new SFNNv16 network architecture
- Lite Engine by Default: Analysis now starts from a ~2MB engine instead of a 78MB download, so the first evaluation arrives in seconds rather than minutes
- Choose Your Engine Build: The Engine source selector lets you switch between the lite build and the full ~95MB build, and switching takes effect immediately
- Visible Engine Version: The exact version the engine reports for itself is now shown next to the Engine source selector
- Robust PGN Parsing: Repertoires with NAG annotations (
!, ?, !!, ?!), accented comments and nested variations now upload cleanly — the previous chesslib crash on tokens like d3! inside variations is fixed
- PGN Comments: Comments embedded in your PGN are now stored per move and surfaced in the repertoire panel
- PGN Board Annotations: Lichess-style
[%csl] coloured squares and [%cal] coloured arrows embedded in your PGN comments are rendered on the board when the hint is active
- Transposition-Aware Repertoire: Repertoire matching now compares positions (FENs) instead of move order, so transpositions are recognised and PGNs that start from an advanced
[FEN] work correctly once you reach that position
- Advanced Start Repertoires: PGN uploads that use
[SetUp "1"] [FEN "..."] to start from a deeper position are parsed and suggested correctly
- Button-Driven Panels: Quick-status cards no longer toggle expand when you click anywhere inside them. Each card now has a dedicated footer button: Show Moves & Comments, Show Sparring Moves, Show My Moves
- Engine Footer Consistency: Show/Hide eval and Lines buttons in the Engine card now use the same style and right-aligned layout as the other quick-status buttons
- Renamed "Show Move" → "Best Move" in the repertoire footer for clarity
- Repertoire Hints: New Hint and Show Move buttons in the repertoire status bar — get a piece highlight or a full arrow on the board when you're stuck
- Sparring Results Fix: Win/draw/loss percentages now display correctly when studying lines as Black
- Flexible PGN Upload: Repertoire upload now accepts .txt and .png files in addition to .pgn
- Lichess Streaming Import: Game downloads now use streaming NDJSON with OAuth token support for higher rate limits
- Game Position Analysis: Every imported game is now analyzed move-by-move, building a personal positions database
- Next Moves from Your Games: See what you played in any position with win/draw/loss stats
- Multi-Move Plans: Discover your most played 2-5 move sequences and their win rates
- Performance Comparison: Compare your results per move against the sparring database to find lines you need to study
- Expandable Quick Status: Click on My Games or Sparrings to expand detailed move breakdowns inline
- Board Navigation: Back/forward buttons and keyboard arrows to replay moves, with line score indicators
- Line Score in Store: Line score evaluations are now reactive and accessible from any module
- Lichess OAuth Connection: Link your Lichess account for seamless game access
- Line Color: Lines now remember which color you play, auto-flipping the board when loaded
- Mobile Improvements: Header hidden on mobile for more board space, auto-scroll after selecting a line
- Edit Dropdown: Quick access to change line or configure sparring from the collapsed study card
- Line Score: Track move quality across engine, sparring, repertoire, and personal games with color-coded ratings
- Redux-like Store: New reactive state management for all UI modules
- Multi-Page Architecture: Separate pages for lines, games, repertoire, and settings
- Redesigned UI: Simplified study flow with collapsible study line card and quick status bar
- Onboarding Wizard: Guided setup for new users
- Asset Optimization: Compressed and minified CSS/JS for faster loading
- Local Authentication: Email/password login with verification and password reset
- Engine Integration: Stockfish in-browser analysis with multi-PV support
- Repertoire Management: Upload PGN repertoires with board arrows and multiple repertoire support
- Game Import: Download and analyze your Lichess/Chess.com games by color
- Resizable Board: Drag to resize the chess board to your preferred size
- Global Status Card: See opening book, your games, and repertoire status at a glance
- Initial Release: Sparring Chess goes live!
- Opening Book: Practice against real moves from the Lichess opening explorer
- Filters: Rating range, time control, and date filters to match your level
- Autoplay: Automatic opponent moves from the book
- Google Authentication: Secure login with your Google account
