Try to connect to play against Chess com bot, first time after turning off the board often works fine but second or third game it will start the game and get stuck, with the bot icon and name and the status of “Starting Soon…”
Turning the board off and on again is the only way to get back to the board’s menu. I can then attempt to play against the chess com bots again with the above success rate, and I don’t have to refresh my chess com token, or log out and log in again.
I have also found that I can then connect the app to the board after it has hung up like this and start a bot match with the ChessUp bot. Board LEDs light up as expected, app shows the game, but the display is still stuck showing the chess com bot icon and “Starting Soon…”. (I connected the app in vain hope of getting the display to reset and cancel the bot match with chess com)
This has been an ongoing issue for me since April 2025. They really need to add a ‘cancel’ button to the ‘starting soon’ screen so you can abort and try again.
It has gotten better. I haven’t seen it crash during gameplay anymore. just when starting a game. it can fail on the first game or after playing 2 or 3 bot games, but it always is when starting the bot game. In my experience I have to reset the bd and wait 2-3 minutes before going to chess_com. if it happens multiple times in a row i usually just play a local bot game and get a connection after that game. Sorry you’re having problems, but i’m glad to see i’m not alone.
A cancel option that doesn’t involve a full reset would hugely improve the experience for me until they can hone in on what the underlying issue(s) with chess dot com actually is.
@Jeff Much appreciated, I know what a pain it can be working with a site’s API that you don’t control.
In case this is related, one of the bots that keeps failing to connect for me is the ‘Oliver’ beginner bot. It could be that there is something more generic like chess dot com requiring an extra call to clear/cancel a previous session with that bot when chess dot com thinks it has not finished (after a previous ‘Sterting Soon.,.’ miss for example)
The bot API always took second priority vs rated play (for understandable reasons) and we are still working out some final things with our partner there. Some on us, some on API fixes. But bot play is a valuable part of the platform so it will get ironed out.