My kids and I have been playing a lot of over the board chess together since the last update (we play about 2-3 games a day now). We love the meter showing who is winning and we love the hints and hint limit. Some feedback:
Take backs do not work when the timer is running. I believe this is most likley due to the timer logic not being solid enough to reset time back to what it was or something along those lines. We’ve resorted to using a phone timer to play to on the board and still allow take backs. Would be awesome if we could do this on the board in the future.
One hint means one hint per turn. This works out great for the kids and they have to think about which piece to touch for hints. My son even thinks about the recommendations and asks himself why its recommending a particular move. However, even with just one hint per turn, my son started destroying me. It’d be nice if we could dial it back even a bit more. Maybe allow choosing between one “Number of hints per turn” or “Number of hints per game”. UI for this might be tricky, maybe a “use hint” button is offered on the screen or something.
Sometimes the hints light a square green that looks like a blunder to me. We’ve been playing with my kid getting assistance level Novice. Perhaps the moves were being categorized at inaccuracy (they seemed like free piece blunders to me). I’ll take a photo next time this happens.
The assistant names are confusing to me. The lowest setting “Beginner” gives you the least amount of assistance and makes almost everything green (implying good move), while the highest level “Master” makes everything red except the very best move. Maybe I’m thinking about this wrong?
Regarding point 4, I had the same feeling as yours and I think you should maybe figure it out the other way around (at least this made sense for me). Imagine yourself setting the level of assistant in regard of your opponent, if you’re opponent is a master, you want the assistance to be set as master to be able to beat him/her. Or maybe I’m still understanding this wrong but I got your point
I believe the reason beginner level assistance shows more greens is because when you are beginning chess you will NEVER understand what is wrong with many of those moves and you will SELDOM understand why the best move is better than many of the others.
So the board is guiding you to avoid blunders and mistakes. But as you get better and can see these for yourself, you increase the assistance. And when it shows you a move that you didn’t understand previously, hopefully you see it with better eyes and understand more why it is suggested. The better you are the more likely you will appreciate the best move or at least the more likely you will be able to figure it out.
This can happen when the engine recognizes you’re in a bad position and it’s trying to find moves to extend the game. Do you recall if that might have been the case?
My 10 yr old destroyed me last time at our local chess club training evening and we were not even playing on the Chessup 2. So he had not any assistance at all besides me underestimating him.
This is intentional by us. Timed games are meant to adhere by more competitive rules.
You can also change the assistance level down to the lowest (where only blunders are red and the rest is green).
If that plus 1 hint per turn still makes an unbalanced match, then they might be ready to play without hints on either side?
In the future we may have a direct hint button, which would function more like you are wanting. Where you can hit it explicitly and count the uses.
Thanks - if you have the actual position with the bad hints, please share.
Beginner → Master is intended as this:
A beginner needs to learn not to blunder.
A master needs to learn the best move among many good moves.
So the assistance is actually stronger with a master, because they are at that level where anything less is not helpful.
A beginner should still be learning not to make mistakes and blunders.
If a beginner was using master assistance, they are not really thinking for themselves as much. They don’t understand why a move is green vs blue, they just start green hunting. A beginner should still be playing their own game and use the lower assistance.
The assistance is meant to progress a player to the next step. Not to make a a beginner play like a master.
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Now where it is confusing.. if a beginner wants to balance a match with a master. They will need master assistance.
Think of it as the level it will make you play at. But that is not the appropriate level of coaching necessarily.
