Categories
analyzethis ios

‘Analyze This’ iOS with Auto Analysis!

After a long wait, iOS users of Analyze This app can now finally use the Auto Analysis feature!

With Auto Analysis, the Engine will run through the complete game and give you feedback on the mistakes and great moves played in the game! Not only that, if you want, you can even get verbose comments like ‘Good job‘, ‘Missed a shorter mate. Better is Qxh4‘ or some cheeky ones like ‘Perfect! Tal would have been impressed‘.

An actual classic game analyzed by the Auto Analysis feature!

HOW TO USE AUTO ANALYSIS?

  1. Load a game or simply enter moves.
  2. Tap Menu – Auto Analysis
  3. Choose the time per move for the Engine to think. Premium users can choose upto 30 seconds per move while others can only choose upto 5 seconds.

Please note, this is only the first version of this feature on iOS and we will be improving it further as we go along and receive more feedback from you.

Categories
analyzethis android

Android 10 security and installing new Engine files

Google and Android are increasing the security with Android 10.0 and there are implications for our Android users who install external Chess engines from downloaded files.

Background

Earlier, one could download binary/executable files of Android chess engines. Analyze This app allowed installing these binary files and you could use these Chess engines in the app.

But Google/Android has now made this impossible with new security restrictions on Android. Basically Apps can no longer allow user to locate a binary/executable file and then make it run.

For the tech savvy:

https://developer.android.com/about/versions/10/behavior-changes-10

And starting November 2020, all Apps will be forced to target the new API 29 (i.e. Android 10), which means our new upcoming App update on Analyze This will no longer support installation of external chess engine files.

From Nov 2020, all app updates need to target API 29+ (Android 10)

BUT, this does not affect Chess engines which are bundled into separate apps and support the OEX (Open Exchange Chess protocol)

What should you do next?

If your favorite Chess engine is already bundled in another app, then thats the only way forward. Analyze This comes with the Stockfish 12 binary. Other engines like Leela/Komodo etc can be installed via their respective apps.

Or you can search the Android Play Store for chess engine apps (there are few out there). Once installed, fire up the Analyze This app – Manage Engines and the new engines should get installed.

Categories
chessmoves yourmove

Correspondence Chess

What is correspondence chess?

Correspondence chess is a very-slow form of chess where a player can take anywhere from minutes to days to ponder over his move!! Yes, you read it right. So a game can go for months and years.

Back in the old days, the moves were sent via postal service. Not many do that anymore. Now instead, correspondence chess is played online on various servers, but the basic idea remains the same: its SLOW, and you can take a LOT of time to ponder and think over the current position and make the best move (provided you really used your time well!)

Dont the players cheat?

Given the slow nature of the game, that is a possibility. However, many servers officially allow using/consulting an Engine (AI) or books. After all, the main aim is to make your best move and improve your analytical skills!

Where can I play?

ChessMoves app allows you to login to various chess servers and make your moves. But before that you need to create an account with the online servers. We list down the ones that the App supports:

ICCF – International Correspondence Chess Federation

site: https://www.iccf.com/

“ICCF was founded in 1951 as a new appearance of the ICCA (International Correspondence Chess Association), which was founded in 1945, as successor of the IFSB (Internationaler Fernschachbund), founded in 1928.”

  • No yearly fee
  • Official Ratings? – Yes
  • You can get official ICCF Norms and Titles like Grandmaster & International Master etc
  • You can play some free games. But official events are paid

AICCF – All India Correspondence Chess Federation

site: http://www.aiccf-chess.com/

It is affiliated to the aforementioned ICCF. This is the official body for correspondence chess in India.

  • Annual membership fee
  • Official Ratings? – Yes
  • Unlimited tournaments with no additional fees

Other private servers

SchemingMind

mychess.de

ChessMoon

So create an account on one or more of these servers and then open the ChessMoves app, login and start making your moves!

Categories
analyzethis

LeelaChessZero in Analyze This

Thanks to the Leela team, it is now even more easier than before to integrate the LC0 engine in Analyze This app!

STEPS

1. Download the LeelaChessZero APK file from the official site and install the App on your Android device. At the time of writing, the official apk was lc0-v0.26.3-android.apk. Note this is NOT an app with built-in GUI. Instead, it just supports the Open Exchange Engine format. It needs a compatible App like Analyze This.

2. After installing the above apk, open up Analyze This PRO app -> Menu – Manage Engines. And as soon as you open, the App will detect and install the LeelaChessZero engine!

Now you are ready to analyze with Leela or even play some games using the ‘Play this Side’ option!

Categories
chessmoves

Chess Moves accessibility improvements!

In the last couple of weeks, we improved Chess Moves app on Android and iOS to make it even more blind-friendly. Its now even more faster for blind users to make their moves in the App!

This release has two important changes:
* AICFB users can login to the App with their AICFB usernames and play official tournaments!
* An edit/command box has been added under the Chess board (for accessible users only).
This way, one does not need to scan the board to make the move. Instead can simply type the next move or any command, and it will just work! Faster way to make moves, especially when in time trouble!

Commands supported:

  • To make moves, enter: e4 or d4 or nf3 etc (lowercase). For castling both 00 or kg1 works. For long castling 000 or kc1. Likewise kg8/kc8 for black. For piece capture, both nxg5 or ng5 work. For pawn promotion g8q
  • Resign: r
  • Offer draw: d
  • Abort AI game: a
  • Announce Last move: l
  • All white pieces: w
  • All black pieces: b
  • Undo/Takeback move: u

Download on the Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pereira.moves&hl=en_IN
Download on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/in/app/chess-moves/id1230863103

Categories
analyzethis ios

Engine vs Engine & Threats on Analyze This iOS!

Analyze This v3.2 with improved ‘Engine vs Engine’ is now available on the Apple App store! Most of these features were already in our Android version since a while. So it was about time the iOS version also got them!

Whats New

  • Improved Engine vs Engine – The earlier update could only play one side at a time. Now its easier to ask the Engine to play both sides. Just select ‘Play this Side’ once. Then after the Engine makes its move, choose the option again. The Engine will then continue to play both sides till the game finishes!
  • Share game link – With the kind of changes iOS and Android platform makes, sometimes it becomes difficult to share a pgn or text with friends. Or a pgn on WhatsApp may look fine on Android but show some weird format on WhatsApp in iOS. We cannot control that, but we can surely try and improve the experience for our users. Not if you want to share a single game, just tap the Menu – Share – Game link. This will create a link to this game. And your friends can tap on the link and it will open right in their Analyze This app! A great way for Students to exchange their game with their coach. Ofcourse, we will improve this feature to make it easier to import and share a collection of games.
  • Show threat – Say you want to understand the threats in the current position or basically understand what would happen if you are not careful, the ‘Show threat’ feature comes in handy. Just tap the engine name and Show threat.
  • iPad layout issues – In this release we also fixed layout issues on the iPad, especially in the Position Setup and Share screen.
Categories
android ios

Free 1 month Follow Chess subscription to ALL users!

Its been a difficult time for every one around the world!
Some people, especially in China, Italy, Iran, Spain have suffered more.

We received an email from one such user from Iran.

Although most of the App’s major features are free and available for all, it makes sense that people get to use ALL the features, especially when there is so much time now at hand.

Hence, with immediate effect, ALL Follow Chess users get a 1 month complimentary PRO subscription valid till April 26th 2020!

If you have already signed-in to the App, it should unlock all the features automatically (both Android and iOS). If not, please login to the App from the side drawer menu.

Stay safe, enjoy Chess!
Chess 1-0 Corona

Categories
android followchess

What’s new in Follow Chess Android v3.6


Follow Chess Android v3.6 was released yesterday.

WHATS NEW

* Remember when you would open the App and sometimes find that the status of the event is showing LIVE even if the event is NOT or the event may have started but it shows the next round time instead of LIVE? Some very important changes under the hood to provide accurate status of tournaments.
Well thats fixed.

* Sometime back, one Twitter user had mentioned this:


https://twitter.com/zeverzak90/status/1172136358565031936

And this was always a dilemma for us. Whether to have quick access to standings as soon as you open the app, or only from within the Event stream. Why not both?
Now its easy to view standings and all games from the multi-board screen. Just swipe right-to-left!


* Other improvements to the Chat to make it more social.

These changes will soon be coming over to iOS.

Categories
analyzethis android

What’s new in Analyze This Android app v5.3.x

This release took a really long time to be made public due to various other high priority things. But glad this is out and brings in some interesting changes as well as important fixes.
These changes are currently only on Android but we will bring them over to the iOS app in due course of time.

Whats New

Dark theme

Every other app is riding on the dark theme frenzy. It does help save battery as well as your eyes. Some say it even improves readability. This was requested many moons ago but its finally here!

To enable dark theme, please see Menu – Settings -> Dark Theme.

Evaluation bar

Evaluation bar helps you keep an eye on the game’s evaluation without having to keep looking down at the centi-pawn numeric evaluation suggested by the Engine. Each segment of the evaluation bar is worth 1 pawn (so the full bar extends 4 pawns/sections up and 4 pawns/sections down).
When white is winning, you will see the white bar extending upwards toward the black side and similarly when black is winning, you will see the black bar coming down to the white side.
At 0.0 evaluation, both white and black colors will be in equal size. If white is winning, say 1 pawn and engine evaluates the position at 1.0, then you will see the White color of the bar extend up 1 section up)

Improved Chess 960/ Fischer Random support

During the World Fischer Random championship we noticed that Analyze This engine analysis was misbehaving, especially after a O-O (castling) move. This has been fixed.

Syzygy Tablebase support

Syzygy Tablebases help the engine in evaluating certain endgame positions, without really having to spend time searching and analyzing. You can download Syzygy tablebase files for the most commonly occuring endgames (say KP v P, KRP vs KR etc) and store them on your Device.
Then choose this path from inside the Analyze This app – Settings – Engine Options – Syzygy Path.
So whenever a matching endgame position occurs on the board, the engine will automatically start using the endgame tablebases. You will know this works when the engine starts giving very high evaluation and does not deviate much from its analysis. However, we will improve this in the near future and make this even more easier to understand.
You can download Syzygy tablebases from here. But please note these are HUGE. So only download what you need!

Bug fixes & Other Improvements

  • Bugs fixed in Auto Analysis feature. That notorious volume key behavior is now gone. Earlier it was useful for people to use the app and go through it single handedly by using the volume key. But the behavior probably was more annoying for those who just wanted to turn down the volume. 
  • Adding new line at the end of the game is now easy. This is used in cases where a game has ended, but you want to try out some moves, without changing the main line. In this case, just take back the last move, and reenter the same move on the board. This move will now be added as a sub variation!
  • Improved position setup. We think setting up a position is now faster. Say you choose a White Rook and set it on the board. Now to set up the Black Rook, you dont have to explicitly choose the Black Rook from the tray. Instead, just tap the square where you wish to place the Black Rook (it will be shown as White Rook), and then tap the square again. This will turn the Knight to Black! So the toggling works White – Black – Empty – White – Black – Empty and so on.
  • EPD support. Now along side pgn file, you can even see .epd files listed in the App’s game file browser. These are position files you may have received from other chess apps or sources.
  • Lots of other bugs were fixes and subtle improvements made under the hood.
Enjoy and please don’t forget to rate the Apps in the Play Store!

Special thanks to Al Sirutis, Atul Desai, Elaine, Henri Raben, Igor, Lucas Foreest, Miguel Gonzalez, Rahmat Ullah, Roger Davies, Tom Amlin, and others

PS. We have a brand new Forum! Be among the first ones to join and share your ideas to improve the Apps, feature suggestions, bugs or just interact with other fellow chess lovers!
https://forum.mychessapps.com

Categories
android chessmoves ios

Chess Moves – Resume your game and with Spanish translations especially for the blind!


Chess Moves v2.6 was released and with this we bring two important changes to enhance your App experience while playing against the AI.

WHATS NEW


♟ Resume AI Game

Earlier, you could not resume an AI game and had to either abandon it or resign. Now you can simply leave the game. The App is smart to know and will present the same game the next time you choose to play vs AI so you can continue where you left off!
We have also added the ability to abort an AI game, provided you do so in the first few moves.

♟ Translations

Our aim is for everybody to play chess and have fun, irrespective of language and whether you can see the App or not. Thats why our Apps (the only Chess apps?) are 100% blind friendly.
A blind user from Spain requested us that the App be available in Spanish. And thanks to my good old friend Carlos Granados, the App is now translated to Spanish!
As always, your feedback is most welcome. (You can do so via the App – Menu – About – Feedback)