Feedback after 1 month of use

General
1

Hi,

This is a post with feedback after 1 month of regular use of the chessup 2 chessboard.

I am 2150 elo chess . com chessplayer, 40-years old dad, french speaker. I bought this board as a gift for my 7 years old son.

Overall, i am pretty happy with my purchase. My son is playing more chess thanks to this board (he really likes the assisted move features). That is great, but there is more : my wife started playing chess. And that is HUGE (i mean, i wouldn’t have bet a dime on that !). Again, the assisted aid is the main reason. Wife and son play together. She even played with me, and that was fun.

Bringing the wife and the son around a chessboard makes already that board totally worth the money, imo.

For the opportunities for improvement :

  1. Piece design (King vs Queen)

    • The king’s shape is too similar to the queen’s (a notched/serrated crown, even though it has a cross).

    • Suggestion: the king’s crown should not be notched/serrated, and should have a clear cross, so it’s immediately distinguishable from the queen.

  2. Chess . com bots don’t start
    • Sometimes chess . com bots never begin a game: the status stays on “Waiting” for more than 10 minutes.
  3. iPhone app: “Activities” screen not loading
    • The Activities page sometimes doesn’t load at all.
  4. iPhone app: repeated “New board detected” message
    • The popup “New board detected” keeps appearing repeatedly.
  5. iPhone app: continuous vibration during game analysis

    • When analyzing a game (progress going from 0% to 100%), the phone vibrates.

    • Since the analysis takes ~30 seconds, the phone vibrates continuously for ~30 seconds, which is not ideal.

  6. Lessons in french
    • Your board is great for children. But they’are too young to have learned english yet. Having the lessons in french would be great. If you need a beta tester for that feature, i’m vwilling to help.
  7. Disable the checkers button in the menu on the board via the settings
    • I haven’t bought the checkers pieces. Yet that option is there on the board screen, big, staring at me, reminding my mistake. I would love to make it disappear.

Have a nice day,

4 Likes
2

Funny! Recognize it :smiley:

40 years old, bought it for myself but my son of 8 also likes it. My wife also completely gets in the game!

Agree with the lessons, would be great to have this with local language (in my case Dutch).

3

I second this request. Seems like a marketing thing, and I’d love a way to disable it.

4

I agree 100% with this point. In fact, I would be willing to pay for new queens and kings if you guys ever release new piece designs.

2 Likes
5

@ 1 (king design) - unlikely to change soon for us as the mold that makes the part will still be operating for years to come. But we have heard this feedback and will consider it with the next mold

@2 (bots not starting) - @oridota still some reports of bot launch issues, please address. Note - we are working with Chess.com on some API improvements here. The bots are a bit trickier than random play and we will get it fixed.

@3 (iPhone activities screen) - @oridota any idea why that would not pull up?
@4 (new board detected) repeating - @oridota will put in the iOS to do list
@5 (vibration on each move of analysis) - @oridota

@6 (french lessons) - this is coming this month

@7 (disable menu items) - so far we are not planning on customizing the menu, but it is a request that users have made and it will be in the consideration list.

Thanks for the feedback

2 Likes