December 13 2015

A new training targets feature has been released. Training targets allow you to set targets for tactics, endgames, guess the move and online playing and have feedback provided on progress to completion. Targets can be given fixed time periods (e.g. solve 100 problems by 10th July) or recurring targets such as solve 100 problems each week. Targets can be based on number correct (or won), number completed, rating or rank/percentile. This feature is available to both premium and free members. Coaches can also assign training targets to their students, and get a summary of training target progress across all their students. Training targets can be created/deleted on the Training Targets page, which can be reached via the Training Targets option on the Training menu. The Training Targets section of the user guide has more detailed instructions on how to use the new feature.

Chesstempo now has a large set of achievement badges that can be earnt by completing tasks on the site. The achievement badges are designed to provide training motivation beyond the simple measure of user rating. We believe this will be especially useful for younger chess players, although we hope adults will also enjoy the new achievements system. Your list of achievements can be found on the achievements tab on your stats page. A list of all available achievement badges can also be found there. You can also check your rank on the achievement points leaderboard. If you would prefer not to be bothered with achievement notifications while training or playing, they can be turned off in your preferences (on the "other" tab). The feature is available to all users, although some achievement types are restricted to premium members. Note that achievements are not retroactive, so achievements like all time highs or solving streaks are awarded based on future efforts made after the release of the achievement system, rather than achievements that may have been met before the system was in place. The Achievements section describes the new feature in more detail.

Many new features have been added to the online play feature since it was launched, some of which have been available for some time now. The major additions since launch have been:

• Abandoned game detection - If a user abandons a game by disconnecting, or ceasing to play moves you will be given the option to claim a win or abort the game if they do not return to playing in a reasonable period time.
• Create unrated games from arbitrary start positions - The advanced panel in the challenge create dialog can now create games with any start position you like.
• Visibility of think times and clock changes while moving through move list on completed games. After the game is over you can move through the move list and the clocks will update to show the time they had at that point in the game. Hovering over each move in the move list will display a tooltip with the think time used for that move.
• Guest play - Guests can now play without signing in to play, some restrictions apply such as not being able to chat, or create rated seeks (or see the rated seeks of other players).
• Seek Formula - You can now define who can send you direct seeks, and under what conditions, using a seek formula.
• Block list - Block users you do not want to play again, blocked users will not be able to send you seeks, answer your seeks or chat with you.
• Seek Favourites - If you have a favourite seek type that is not one of the defaults you can enter the seek details and then save the seek as a favourite which will create a new button in the seek dialog that can be clicked on in the future. Start positions, rating ranges, opponent names can all be saved in the favourite.
• Hide ratings mode - In your preferences you can turn on hide ratings mode which avoids display rating information in the game view while you are playing.
• Chat disabling - Toggle chat on and off using the cross/tick icon in the chat window.
• More diverse bot opening book. The bots now play a much wider range of openings due to using a much more diverse opening book compared to the original bots used when the site first launched.
• Improved handling of aborts when user does not play first move.
• Option to persistently turn on move confirmations in correspondence games.

January 14 2015

Chess Tempo is pleased to announce that the Play Chess Online feature has entered full public beta testing. All users can now play each other on Chess Tempo, with support for both correspondence and traditional online chess playing. During beta testing, all features will be available to all users. Playing will remain free after beta testing is complete, but some advanced features will be available only to premium members. The purpose of the public beta testing is to iron out any bugs not found during the closed beta testing, and to ask for feedback and improvement suggestions from a wider audience. Please provide any bug reports or improvement suggestions in the forum. The Play Online section of the user guide has instructions on how to use the new feature.

May 27 2014

An initial mobile version of the tactics solving is now available at Chesstempo mobile. This is an early test version, so please report any problems on the forum. It should work reasonably well in the latest IPhone and Android devices. If you have an older Android device, you can try installing a standalone Chrome or Firefox browser app, which should help work around bugs in the older Android browser.

A new "Mixed" rating type has been added, it uses a new rating adjustment method which acts like the completely untimed standard mode if you solve under 5 minutes, and after that reverts to a blitz-like mode where time is part of the rating adjustment. The new mode also includes new non-winning problem types where the best move may leave you in an even position, and other moves would lead to a losing or lost position. Premium members can also create custom sets that explicitly include or exclude these non-winning type problems.

As already announced on the forum, new Endgame custom sets have been created for Premium members. Premium members have always been able to create their own endgame type specific sets, but now they have access to pre-created sets for each endgame type in the problem set selector. So endgame sets such as "KRPvKR" can be be quickly chosen without having to create a new custom set.

August 21 2013

A new 'Guess The Move' feature has been released. This allows you to play through selected master games from one side, trying to play the best moves possible. Each move is scored based on how closely your moves match either the master move, or the best engine move where you play a different move to the master. Similar to the tactics , both moves and players are rated, allowing more reward (or less punishment) on difficult moves, and harsher penalties for missing easy moves. The Guess The Move user guide has a full set of instructions on how to use the feature.

This new feature includes a modified tagging and commenting system, where tags and comments can be assigned to either the full game (by moving to the start of the game), or any move in the game (by moving to the board position after the move is played). The tags include a long list of new 'positional' tags, which will help categorise the types of positions and moves found throughout the games. I am hoping some of the stronger players on CT can help make this new feature even more useful, by providing some commentary at important points in the game ,but comments from all level of players are of course welcome.

You can optionally skip the opening of any GTM game by clicking on the skip opening button under the board, but this must be done before you play any moves. This is mostly a Gold member feature, Silver members have a small selection of games available, and free members have a very limited selection, but enough to allow them to sample the feature. Games accessible to Gold members will continue to be added over time, the rate of the addition will be partly dictated by how quickly the ratings of the existing games stabilise (it will likely take several weeks for the initial games to begin to approach stable move ratings).

Chess Tempo is now providing free Gold membership to players with either GM or IM FIDE titles. For those who qualify, please see the Free Membership section of the FAQ for details on how to receive your free Gold membership.

April 24 2013

A new version of the tactics solving page has entered into beta testing, you can access the beta interface via the Training menu, or directly at Tactics Beta Link. The new interface has the following improvements:

• After each problem is completed you can see a history of all your previous attempts on the problem (Gold members only).
• Engine variations shown to premium members can be expanded, collapsed or completely hidden.
• The opponent pre-move is now shown in the move list, and the move list is updated as each move is played while solving problems.
• Board setting changes are now handled by clicking the settings icon in the top left of the board. Several new options, including figurine notation and new board styles are now available.
• The board and move list can now both be resized by dragging the available drag handles.
• Board and move list settings are remembered via cookies, which means you can now use different settings on different machines without having to switch back and forth in the preference settings. This is especially useful if you solve problems on different machines, with different screen sizes.
• Premium users with access to the custom tagging feature (now called Personal Tags) have a tag management panel that allows personal tags to be both created and deleted. Personal tags also have a description associated with them, which allows a more detailed description of the tag to be added.
• The 'Start Solving' panel now allows you to change the current problem set before your solving session begins. There is also a 'Change Set' button below the board, so you can change your current problem set during any solving session without going to your preferences.
• There is a new analysis board which remembers the size of the analysis window. Click on the annotation icon, or press the 'a' key to add comments to your analysis. See the full list of keyboard commands available on the new boards in the PGN Viewer key bindings section of the user guide.
• Resuming problems after a disconnect is now supported in Blitz mode, note that your clock will show any time elapsed since you were first given the problem.
• Problem information sections (comments, tags, ratings etc) are now placed inside collapsible and expandable elements. This allows the comments to be moved closer to the board when required by collapsing the problem ratings details element.
• The 'Choose Best Move(s)' advice at the top of the page can now be permanently hidden.
• A 'Reset' session button has been added, which allows the current session stats to be cleared.
• The wrong move played is now added to the 'Last Problem Failed' message.

Please report any bugs in the new interface by posting in the Bug Reports.

Note that the premium feature set of the new UI is not 100% the same as the old UI, as such, existing premium members will be able to choose the old UI for 1 year from today, after which the old UI will no longer be available.

August 8 2012

Chess Tempo has begun non-public testing of a new feature that allows users to play games against each other. Both correspondence and traditional online chess playing will be supported. It is hoped this provides a fun way to test out your skills against other players without leaving the site. In the future, the playing feature will become more closely integrated into the training features of the site, and will provide a way of giving statistically valid feedback on how your training is impacting your actual playing strength. We will be expanding the non-public beta testing soon, if you would like to be added to the list of testers, please email testing@chesstempo.com.

Work on the playing feature has taken up the majority of recent development time, however a number of small, but hopefully useful features have been added:

• Spaced repetition custom sets have been added for gold members. Spaced repetition is a memory learning method that allows you to maximise recall, while minimising learning time. You can read about it at the Wikipedia Spaced Repetition Article. Instructions on how to use the feature can be found in the Spaced Repetition Section of the User Guide.
• Problem history filtering and summary stats allows Gold members to filter their problem attempt history table by a number of criteria such as date range, duplicate status, problem set, tag, solve time and rating range. Summary stats of the filtered results allow you to see stats for the filtered attempts such as performance rating, accuracy, average time taken, average problem rating, best and worst percentage rank, and others. Together the filter and summary stats allow you to answer questions such as how your performance has changed over time, not just in rating, but also in solve time and accuracy, and for specific tactical motifs or rating ranges, and for only those problems you have seen for the first time if desired.
• As already announced in the forum, a new version of the PGN viewer is currently in testing, the board used in the new PGN Viewer will eventually be used in all Chess Tempo boards, so please help test the new board at the PGN Viewer BETA page.
• A "Show Solution" button option now allows you to avoid seeing the solution immediately after a problem is complete, allowing you to continue to search for the best move after failing a problem, and eventually clicking the "Show Solution" button in order to see to answer. The option is off by default, and can be turned on in the "Other" tab in your preference settings.
• Merged custom sets allow Gold members to merge several existing custom sets into one merged set. You can select the weights of each subset to control how many problems from each subset will be served. For example you could create three subsets Fork, Pin and Discovered Attack, asking for 70% forks, 20% pins and 10% discovered attacks. Another example would be a merged subset of mate and non-mate sets with say 80% non-mates and 20% mates, you could also merge a larger number of sets, and control of mates versus non-mates based on mate length. Problem attempt based sets can also be merged, for example, two sets for problems you have seen before and problems you have not seen before could be merged with say a 90% weight on new problems and 10% on old problems, allowing you to review old problems on average 1 in every 10 attempts. Essentially any existing user created custom sets can be merged (assuming all subsets are of the same problem type, i.e. you cannot merge tactic and endgame sets).
• Custom sets with rated attempts (any custom set with attempts made after November 29th 2010) can now have graphs shown for rating history, problem rating distribution, and daily rating fluctuations. Gold members can access the graphs by clicking on the new view button shown on the custom set performance tables on the tactics and endgame stats tabs on each user's stats page.
• Solve time custom set/problem search now allows you to specify if you want to include all unsolved problems, as well as those you have already solved. You can now also choose to search based only on your most recent attempt, allowing you to focus on problems you solved slowly on your most recent attempt, even if you had solved them quickly in the past.
• Several new advanced problem search/custom set criteria have been added (for gold members only):
  • Number of Pieces - The number of pieces on the board at the start of the problem.
  • Colour to Move - The colour of the pieces controlled by the player solving the problem.
  • Game Move Number - The move number in the source game at which the problem starts.
  • Comment Search - Matches only problems with the supplied search string in one of their problem comments. For example "boden" would return problems where people had discussed Boden's mate (likely because the problem itself was of that type).
  • Tag Vote Threshold - The minimum aggregate votes on a tag before it is counted for tag searches. Setting a higher number means more users had voted for the tag, but will also reduce the total number of matching problems.

  The number of pieces, colour to move and game move number search criteria can be quite useful when used with the opening name/ECO code search criteria, allowing you to choose tactics from games that used your opening of choice, and concentrate on the tactics that actually appeared in the opening phase of the game, rather than middle game/endgame positions that happened to arise out of the opening you searched for.

• A beta release of a new student coaching feature has been added which allows users to nominate a coach, who then gets access to otherwise hidden stats, such as the students' per problem mistake moves, play versus computer stats, tagging stats and FIDE rating estimates. Coaches can also edit their students' preferences, including assigning custom problem sets to students. Coaches get a new tab on their stats page showing a list of their students, and summary of recent student accuracy. Coaches are also able to download problem history for their students, and can use the new problem history filtering on their students' problem attempts. To use the new coaching features, students must nominate their coach (or coaches) on the "Coaches" tab in their preference settings. To use these features, both the coach and the students must have active gold memberships.

Several updates to the tags and tag descriptions have also been made since the last major update, including new tags for Avoiding Perpetual, Avoiding Stalemate, Coercion (Required to clarify Attraction), Counting, Defensive Move, Desperado, Mate Threat, Quiet Move and Unpinning. Please see the descriptions on Tactical Motifs page before applying these new tags. Some of definitions of the older tags have also been refined and clarified.

The forum has also recently added support for embedding PGN Viewers directly into forum posts by enclosing a PGN game description with [pgn][/pgn] tags.

29th November 2010

Chess Tempo now provides the ability to use chess engines running on your own machine to analyse positions and games on Chess Tempo. Any UCI engine such as Rybka, Stockfish etc can be used to supply analysis which is displayed directly in the Chess Database or Analysis board pages. Full access to this feature is available to Gold members only, you can view screen shots of the new analysis interface in action on the Membership descriptions page. The Engine Analysis section of the FAQ should be read before using the engine. There is also a new Engine Analysis Chapter in the user guide.

Other changes already introduced since the last major update include:

• A new option to avoid problems with ALTS was added.
• Performance graphs for play vs computer made available to gold members.
• An Explore button was added to Play vs Computer page. This allows viewing games in the database page where opening explorer stats can be examined for the lines you played, and engine analysis and game annotation performed.
• Custom problem sets now have personal ratings, allowing gold members to track future progress on previously unrated custom problem sets. For example you can get a personal rating for "Pin" or "Fork" sets.
• Personal tagging stats have been added to help users understand the degree to which other users agree or disagree with their tags.
• Alpha and "Good Companion" board piece styles now available.

Another thanks to the volunteer translators and beta testers who have again helped greatly with this release. User "anti" is now kindly helping with the French translation. If you would like to help out with either an existing or new translation, please send an email to translation@chesstempo.com

6th September 2010

Chess Tempo now has a new Chess Game Database. The database includes over 2 million games, including all the source games for the tactics and endgame problems. There is an opening explorer, to view statistics on the popularity and performance of opening moves. A player and openings search page are also available. The database can be searched via either a quick search or advanced search interface. Advanced search includes a material search and convenient endgame finder. Tactic and Endgame problems have convenient links to the source games the problems were extracted from. Custom problem sets can now include criteria based on matching the source game header information, such as player, player rating, opening name etc. The database is documented in a new user guide that covers most of the Chess Tempo features in detail. Many of the database features are available for all users, while some of the features such as material search, source game links and custom set integration are available only to Premium members, and some of those, only to Gold members. Please see the Membership descriptions page for details. This feature is still considered to be a public BETA release, please report any bugs you find in the Bug Report Forum.

The ability to play rated games against a computer has also been added. Several computer opponents have been created, each with a different strength setting. The computer opponents are given ratings and the user is matched against the computer opponent closest to their rating. In unrated mode, users can choose the target rating of their computer opponent and the closest matching opponent will be chosen. Premium users can launch the play vs computer feature from database and problem pages in order to play positions against the computer. More details can be found in the Chess Tempo User Guide. The Play versus Computer feature is also still in public BETA stage, bug reports are welcome. You need to have Java installed on your machine to be able to use this feature.

In order to fit more items into the navigation menu, a new navigation menu has been added to the top of all pages. Other changes introduced recently or as part of this release include:

• Changes to tag votes providing more visibility of voting patterns, and more convenient voting on existing tags.
• A Chess Tempo puzzle widget.
• A warning message is now shown to those users who are still using older browsers that may not work well on Chess Tempo. Logged in users can hide the warning permanently if desired.
• Click and Click piece movement support has been enabled. It can be used simultaneously with Drag and Drop, but either Click and Click or Drag and Drop can be disabled in the preferences.
• Piece movement sounds have been added to boards, they are turned off by default, but can be turned on in the preferences. The sounds are only available on the latest versions of Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari browsers.

A final thank you to the volunteer translators and beta testers who helped with this release. If you would like to help out with either an existing or new translation, please send an email to translation@chesstempo.com

10th May 2010

An analysis board is now available, it allows exploring different lines in a position after a problem is complete. The analysis board also allows your analysis to be copied directly to a new problem comment. The analysis moves (and annotations) are shown in problem comments, accompanied by a mini-board on which the position is displayed, and the moves can be played. Your own comments can now be deleted or edited (as long as they are the most recent comment to be made on a problem). Comments can also be voted up or down, comments with several down votes will be hidden from the default comment view, and users will need to click the "show all" button to see these comments. Please read the comment voting section of the Problem Comment Guidelines before using the voting system. For further details on these changes, and how to use them, please see the Analysis Board and Problem Commenting Questions section of the FAQ.

Several new custom problem set filtering options have been added. The ability to control the order problems are served from custom sets has also been added, allowing for the creation of custom problem sets that progress in difficulty as you go through the set. You can read more about these in the Advanced Custom Set Filters and Custom Problem Set Sorting sections of the membership description page. The advanced filtering and sorting features are only available to Gold members.

24th November 2009

Several new translations have been added to the site.

• Dutch (by phdevos)
• French (by arna, antoyo and najull)
• Italian (by andreacoda and igrino)
• Polish (by alefzero and szarlej)
• Portuguese (by alvarofrota and dahora)
• Spanish (by tornado)
• Turkish (by philiposi)

A big thank you to those who dedicated many hours to help with the translations, including those who helped with testing.

You can access language specific pages via nl.chesstempo.com, fr.chesstempo.com, it.chesstempo.com, pl.chesstempo.com, pt.chesstempo.com, es.chesstempo.com and tr.chesstempo.com. In most cases these URLs will not be required as the site should choose the correct language automatically.

If you find a bug in a translation, or if you would like to help translate ChessTempo into your language, either send an e-mail to translation@chesstempo.com or post in the appropriate thread in the translation forum. The preferred language of problem comments and forum posts is still English, however new non-English forums have been added for users who would like to post in their native language.

A new problem generator has also been completed. Improvements include:

• Computer analysis is now shown for the best opponent moves, this makes it easier to understand unexpected opponent moves.
• All longer mates will now be considered as alternatives.
• More human like responses for some opponent moves.
• Improved Pruning - Less tactics finishing too early.
• Deeper computer analysis on moves close to the alternative threshold to help clarify their status.
• Tactics with moves just under the alternative threshold are rejected.
• Many computer lines truncated to avoid showing silly moves at the edge of the search horizon.
• Many other small improvements.

Initially these improvements will only be apparent on new problems, however the generator will update existing problems over the next few weeks.

These changes will not eliminate all "needs more moves" or "needs different opponent move" situations. Please continue to use those tags where appropriate.

Several changes have been made to the stats graphs:

• A new candlestick graph shows rating fluctuations over each day in the last month, thick vertical lines show the start and end ratings for the day, and thin vertical lines show the high and low ratings for the day. Available to gold members only.
• Rating and Percentile rank graphs are now zoomable by selecting the area to be zoomed with the mouse.
• Axis labels now use more regular intervals.
• Rating distribution graphs have been merged into one graph and so the correct/incorrect distribution is now available to both silver and gold members.

For premium members, non auto-renewing membership subscriptions are now available. You can now pay for a single month or year without having to worry about your subscription auto-renewing after you have stopped using the site. Read more about the different membership options and their benefits.

10th September 2009

The first of hopefully many translations of the site has been released today. The initial languages available are German and Swedish. Thanks to c.h.andas and msiipola who have both put in a huge amount of time translating into those languages. People who have their browser default language set to one of the supported languages will have the language selected by default, all users can select any language they like with the language selector in the top right of all (non-forum) pages. Please note that the preferred language of problem comments and forum posts is still English. If you would like to donate your time to helping with translations to your language, please email translation@chesstempo.com. If you notice errors in the translation, you can also send translation bug reports to that address. The language specific pages can also be reached via de.chesstempo.com and sv.chesstempo.com, although accessing the site via chesstempo.com and using the language selector is the preferred option.

The main focus of development work over the last few months has been on features not yet ready for release, however a number of other minor changes were made without news announcements, these include:

• A "Start Dialog" was added to the tactics and endgame pages which prompts the user before the first tactic is shown.
• A new confirmation dialog warns users when they attempt to leave a page while a problem is still active (previously this would automatically fail the problem).
• A bug in en-passant checking was fixed, previously users were not punished if they played en-passant in a problem where en-passant was not the correct answer.
• Some bugs in endgames have been fixed, there are still a few more (relatively infrequent) bugs to resolve before endgames can be considered a non-BETA release.
• Username tooltips where added to usernames displayed in comments. These show the rating details for each user when the mouse pointer is held over the commentorr's username.
• Minor FAQ updates.
• Several other small UI bug fixes and improvements.