Chessbook

Chessbook is officially released on the App Store! apps.apple.com/us/app/chessbo…

It's been a year since we added streaks to Chessbook. There are 12 people that have never missed a day since then, with streaks of 365 days! We also have 230 users that have a streak of over 6 months 🔥 Cool to see the dedication. Must be a nightmare to prep against these guys!

Soft-fails and refutations ❓ A lot of people have asked for soft-fails. My thought was that soft-fails should just be fails – even if it's an objectively fine move, you're still exiting your repertoire, which you should aim to stay in. But Ollie had a great insight here: what if you're exiting your repertoire anyway? On the final move of a line, in a real game it doesn't really matter if you play your repertoire move, or an equally good alternative. So that's what we've added: If you make an equally valid move at the end of a line, we'll give you an "OK" and let you retry without counting it as a failure for spaced repetition. What I'm even more excited about, is showing refutations when you get a move wrong. In the video clip here, I tried Qa4. Usually that would just be an "X", but now it shows why it's a bad move – by having the knight capture it. This is an extreme example, but in playing with it I've found this really helpful. Anything that Stockfish evaluates as a mistake or a blunder, we'll show you your opponent's strongest response.

Massive local-Stockfish upgrade 🤖 Our local Stockfish, which runs on the browser, has historically been very weak. It's been very limited on memory, single-threaded, and didn't use the neural network (NNUE). Because of that, the number of nodes we evaluate for model games has had to be low, and local evals in deep opening lines could take forever to get to a good depth. With this update, we're now using the latest Stockfish 17 on the web – with NNUE, multi-threading support, and shared memory buffers for a bigger hash. On both my laptop and iPhone, I'm seeing speed-ups of **over 20x**. Note this does not affect the evals for opening moves, these are computed on the server with the latest Stockfish and go millions of nodes deep. This is only for model games, and when you go so deep in an opening line that we no longer have evaluations stored for those positions. Huge shout-out to Lichess for laying a bunch of groundwork here. They're a hugely valuable resource, and I'm sure we're not the only project that owes our existence to their open data. **Chessbook has just donated $500 to the Lichess foundation as a thank you, and I'd urge anyone that enjoys Lichess or Chessbook, to donate too**

Hey there 🚀 First off, congratulations on carving out a niche where others have stumbled! Here's a rundown of why Chessbook is shining while others are missing the mark: Chessable: Their approach, while innovative, often lacks depth. You've heard it before - they're great for quick learning but not for the deep dives chess enthusiasts crave. Plus, the absence of PGNs means users can't easily transfer their studies to other platforms or tools. Chessbook, on the other hand, keeps it real with detailed analysis and the flexibility of PGNs. 🎉 ChessBase: This stalwart of chess software has been around forever, but it's like an old library - vast but slow to navigate. The interface can be clunky, making it hard to manage games, especially when dealing with transpositions or sorting by relevance. Your platform's user-friendly design and speed are like a breath of fresh air. Also, ChessBase's move trainer? Let's just say it's not everyone's cup of tea. Chessbook's training tools are intuitive and actually help players improve. 🌟 ChessMood: Only offering selected openings can be limiting for those who love to explore or need variety in their game. Chessbook's broader approach gives players freedom to expand their repertoire as they see fit, not just follow a curated path. 🎁 Buying PGNs: Sure, you can buy databases, but then what? It's a lot of work to make them complete, relevant, and usable. Chessbook cuts through this hassle by providing well-curated, game-ready content that's easy to integrate into a player's study routine. You're doing the heavy lifting that players appreciate! 💪 Chessbook's growth is no surprise. You've managed to blend accessibility with depth, speed with quality, and choice with guidance. Keep up the excellent work, and here's to more chess players finding their way to your platform, where they can truly master the game without the headaches. Cheers to making chess learning a joy rather than a chore! 🥂🎊

For those irritated with the changes to @chessable for #chess openings - now is your time to check out @chessbookcom #chesspunks It’s awesome. Here’s a video showing its value. Chessbook - Fill In Gaps In Your Chess Openings youtu.be/0du7mrg7oZE

If Magnus studied his openings more on Chessbook, he wouldn't have had to split the title 👀

Congratulations to world champion Gukesh 🇮🇳 Incredible fortitude, solid play, a humble attitude, and of course great opening prep!

Chessbook has new ways to review! When you are reviewing your due moves, you can: - Skip the moves in-between - Play the moves in-between once per review session - Play all moves every time This gives a lot more flexibility. I like the "once per practice", personally!

@MatofKilburnia This is an excellent point

@chessbookcom Tbf, they could be. More than 30 million people have enjoyed the music of maroon 5

30 million reviews can’t be wrong. Chessbook is the opening software of the future.

Why don't chess streams use the Win-Draw-Loss output on their eval bars? Maybe because people would tune out on all the drawn positions 😅 Stockfish w/ WDL says Ding has a small chance, but most likely outcomes are a Gukesh win (40%), or a draw (45%)

@SSBMSnac Should be fixed now!

@SSBMSnac Huh yeah I'm seeing the same thing, thanks for calling it out! Looking into it now!

Congratulations on winning the Swedish Blitz Championship, Vidar! Glad we could play a part!

Until now, Chessbook has required your repertoires to cover all lines that you can expect at your level. But sometimes you just want a Sicilian repertoire, for example. You can now exclude moves, and Chessbook will stop asking you to fill them in!

@jacobmparis Cool idea! Will do this

@chessbookcom It’d be cool to see a plotted graph with the distribution (fuzzed if needed) For more fun include both lichess and chesscom on there too to get them fighting

How good is your repertoire? You can now tell! Chessbook will show you how your repertoire compares to people at your rating range. Our users have much better repertoires than their peers, averaging 1.5 standard deviations higher on both of these measures!

Anything else you'd want to know, about the opening stats from this tournament? Let me know! 5/5

What about for Black? Obviously no opening is going to have a 60% win-rate there, but the Sicilian shows why it's also the most popular of the tournament, where Black actually has a much higher win-rate than White! 4/

It's clear that the Sicilian is the favorite opening of the CrunchLabs Masters. With almost 50% more games than the second most popular opening. The top openings of the tournament are all the usual suspects, but what about the rare openings? And which ones have performed best? 1/