Bug in analysis board?

It may be me, but all of a sudden the analysis board doesn't seem to enforce the rules of chess anymore - it will accept moves like placing a pawn three squares ahead, or backwards, or moving a knight along a diagonal.

Did the last maintainance cause a bug? or is there anyother explanation?

This is a new "feature" so you can really setup any position you want and "analyze" it. :)

How do I activate this feature?

For me the analysis board still enforces the nature laws of chess.

Erm, íf you're serious I don't like it one bit. It will allow me to make moves where I ignore a check (which I might have overlooked altogether and won't notice till my entire game is down the sink), or think I have a great plan which is in fact illegal (misplacing a piece, for example).

I use the analysis board to analyse my ongoing games, not a random position. If this is a new feature, please revert the analysis boards of the games to what they were, and an a new option for a 'free' analysis board under the 'learn' button, or where-ever.
Or make a box we can check saying 'enforce the rules of chess'.

But please, not this. It's only a matter of time before I, and presumably many others, will loose games because of it.

Well, picture an analysis board as a board sitting on your desk next to your computer. It SHOULD allow you to move the pieces wherever you want. It SHOULDNT help you figure out the right moves by saying, "nope, cant do that!" the current behavior is the CORRECT way that a TRUE analysis board SHOULD work.

waitaka, try doing a ctrl-r to refresh the javascript files, or clear your cache.

Then one should go the full mile and have people forfeit the game when they accidentally move a pawn 3 pieces ahead, and not have the game (the real one, not the analysis board) enforce that rule either.

Sorry to ruin your pride on the latest 'feature', but this stinks. A misclick on a compterscreen is much, much easier than on a real board.

It doesn't stink; it's brilliant, it's how the analysis boards work in other sites (and OTB or true correspondence), and it's how they should work.

If I'm planning a sequence of moves in which my second or third move is a Knight move, and if I fail to calculate that - at that point - the Knight is in fact pinned to my King and immobile, where do I get off consulting a 'smart board' that shows me the error of my ways?  How is that *not* information from an outside source?

There's also an additional benefit to consider here:  Now we can move pieces backwards to rethink or demonstrate what might have been from a previous position, which has never been possible before.

Great enhancement, guys.

Proper moves are and should be enforced in a real game of chess. Proper moves shouldnt be enforced on your own analysis board. Simple as that. :)

It is a great improvement!  Surely chess.com should help improve your chess!  Think:

If you're in a real game and you think forward, say, 5 moves, not realising that one of those moves is illegal, there is not going to be a big bubble coming out of the board saying, "Sorry, the move you were thinking about is illegal", is there?  And Jay's point is a valid one; if you have a 'real' analysis board, it's not going to stop you from playing it on it, is it?

Also DrPhil, you are being quite rude about it.  If you want something changed, be nice about it and it might happen!

But maybe it would be a good idea to get an option.

But it's definitely much better that it was before.

Great improvement; congratulations to the chess.com staff!

OG

DeepGreene:

Then the game shouldn't give you that exact same info when you make that move and try to press the submit button. Then it should let you make that move, and allow your opponent to claim the game because of an illegal move.

Also, going back can easily be implemented in another way.

Furthermore:
- rude? excuse me, I'm not the one using all caps.... And this not being announced, I genuinely considered this a bug.
- people focus only on the missed check. I think most mistakes here will actually come from misclicks. That's not outside info.

Last but not least: if this change sticks, I'll actually have to use a real board as my analysis board, cause it is overly easy to misclick on a 2D computer-board and not know it. It's definately not progress. It takes away the one feature which makes playing on chess.com pleasant as opposed to simply emailing a friend the moves in notation as we did before we joined up here, namely that you don't need a real 3D board.

First, I think the difference between showing you that a future/planned move is illegal and disallowing a current illegal move is pretty straightforward.

Second, what's with all the chronic mis-clicking already?

Third, the only reason Jay is using all-caps is because he's the real cheater_1.

The difference between clicking wrongly on the real board and clicking wrongly on the analysis is pretty obvious.  But since you seem to lack in understanding, I'll go throught it with you:

It would be harsh, and stupid, to do as you suggested in mock.  The difference between that and the improvement is stark; and you can always take it back on the analysis board.

There's nothing stopping you just using e-mail, as you said you used to do.  You just miss out on the tons of extras chess.com provides.  Could you possibly live without all that?

You're a Premium Member; surely you should see how great chess.com is...surely...

I think it is clear now.  You are just being obtuse, frankly.  Sorry if that came across rudely, but it's the plain truth.

OG

To come to the core of it: the analysis board looses a lot of its merit this way. I misclick all the time, or leave a position not remembering who's turn it was, etc. etc. Can you play without an analysis board? Surely. Is it better? More fun? No. It was a feature I greatly appreciated, and one of the reasons I became a paying member. I did actually use a real board as analysis board for a while - it was extremely inconvenient. The new analysis board is scarsely any better.

I signed up for a site which indeed has great merit. Yet one of those defining features is now gone. Hence my enormous disappointment at this move. Call me obtuse all you want, I maintain it is not an improvement at all.

sorry for the caps, I was merely using them to put emphasis on key words since you didn't seem to understand the point of why the changes were made.

I have sympathy and have begun to be convinced by your arguments...maybe chess.com they could give you the option between both things?

THAT, none of us could argue would NOT be an improvement.  It would be a "great leap" forwards for chess.com.

OG

But...  apart from the added convenience of not having to set up a physical board, it shouldn't be "any better" - it should be just the same.  We're probably going to have to agree to disagree here. 

You say the "smartboard" was a hallmark of chess.com's value proposition, whereas I complained about it within weeks of joining the site.  We now have a free-form analysis tool that I've seen requested many times in the forums, and all we've lost is a crutch that was tantamount to cheating anyway. 

If people start losing games (as you suggest above) because they are playing out nonsense on the analysis board, then so be it.  It's a visualization aid (as analysis boards are meant to be), not a move legality pre-checker.  Clicker beware.

ya, we should have a choice on our online chess settings .

LOL, I respectfully & totally disagree.  Unless of course you mean that *I* will have the option to allow or disallow my opponents using a "smartboard." 

Here's a thought. Make it an optional feature, give people the choice whether to activate the chess-rules-unenforced analysis board. There's clearly a difference of opinion about its merits. Since this is a community-based site, it only makes sense to leave available as many options as possible.

As for me, I'm not such a big fan of it, either.