MindTheCheck has changed!

MindTheCheck, the web site to play chess online, is changed, features and layout has been revised. New features have been added while others have been removed temporary and will be included later in the roadmap.

What is changed and why?

Time control: not all chess web sites allow you to customize the time control such as those with two or three periods used in official competitions and that’s a pity because even though 90% of online chess players play usual time limit, trying new time control could be interesting. The new release classifies chess games in four categories: bullet, blitz, regular e turn games. News are:

• time compensation methods: time increment (Fischer delay) is used al lot in internet chess competition and was missed;
• composing time control in more periods (up to 3) as in the most important chess competitions;
• quantifying the lag during the online connection and using it to adapt the clock in order to have a fairer use of time between the players.

Turn based games  in the previous release were constrained to be 30 days per move, now they are allowed to be one day per move up to 30 days per move.

Rating: each game category has its own rating and it is always treated separately because of the different speed it requires. Players can monitor their statistics for each category.

Simultaneous games: it is understandable that more turn based games can be played simultaneously because of their slowness as the players have more time to focus on more battles; the new release allows users to play other game categories simultaneously that’s because it should be possible to play under stress condition for training or simply for fun.

Computer analysis: games can be analyzed by the strong chess engine Stockfish! You can submit to Stockfish analysis even positions loaded (FEN) or created or games loaded in PGN format.

Play computer: 8 levels are now available to challenge Stockfish chess engine. Now the availability of the engine opponent depends only on the browser version.

Sessions to share: played games can be shared using sessions among several users; you can share in real time games and positions. This feature is designed for those who want to do chess lessons remotely or for those who want to submit a game or a position to the attention and analysis of others.

The technology used for the new release is different in order to improve response time from the server. For this reason it is not available a mobile device version yet. Even the Big Game has been suspended for the moment waiting for the next new features in the roadmap.

So, MindTheCheck is a free chess service that is not still but moving continuously towards a new future.