Hey, chess lovers! By now, most of us have stopped saying "Happy New Year," but it's not too late to take a look back at the first month of '21 - and shine a light on some cool things that have been happening around the site. Let's take a closer look at January...

Web

• Now in Beta, an entertaining and instructive Game of the Day for the sidebar of your Home page!
• We opened up the creation of new Clubs to all members!
• The precision of our move-time calculation during Live games had been enhanced.
• Made some visual fixes to the move percentage bar graphs in Explorer.
• Many interface improvements to the Events feature!

• Effected some style and format improvements for the Chess Today page.
• Added a "Lesson & Practice Reminders" option to members' Notification settings.
• Visual/UI improvements on Master Games pages, including Dark UI tweaks.
• We're putting the final touches on the new Library feature, which should be in Beta any day now!
• In Focus Mode, new chat messages will be indicated in a red badge at upper right.
• Added support for figurine notation in Analysis.
• Showing upcoming Club events at the top of Club pages. Admins now see all upcoming events for their Club, regardless of rating eligibility.
• Your color-to-play preference will now be remembered from session to session when playing vs the Computer...
• Made it easier/faster to set up custom positions in Analysis, for instance, allowing players to simply click on a square to add the same piece again, etc.
• Dark UI improvements for Openings pages.
• Chessboard improvements and bug-fixes
• Guess the Move has been added to the new Play interface!
• Visual improvements to bar graphs in Analysis (below the board).
• Added a toaster-style pop-up when a game ends in stalemate, to clarify things for new players.
• We also added a pop-up for Timeouts with insufficient material to mate!
• Last but not least!... For players rated <1000, we added an explanatory pop-up when one of their pawns is taken en passant!
• See a cool Course in Lessons that you want to remember to check out later? Bookmark it! You'll then see it on a brand-new Bookmarks tab on the Lessons home page.

• After a game, you can easily initiate a site Chat request if someone exits too quickly. Just click on their handle in the message, "______ has left the chat room."
• Added Club Leaderboards for Puzzle Rush!
• Improved efficiency of approving new "provisional" Puzzles for rated training!
• In Play, disabled the Draw button if you already have an active Draw offer pending.
• Now you can switch from current games to a view of your pending/outgoing Daily challenges in Play...

Android

In January, the Android app got some cool new features, including...

• Play features for unregistered users ("guests")
• You can now optionally save games vs the Bots to your Archive!
• Arrows show threats in Analysis

Plus there were some minor cosmetic updates and improvements along the way!

iOS

Last month, as a result of ongoing efforts to reduce traffic between the app and the Live Chess server, we released several new versions aimed at cutting down on back-and-forth. We also had to combat some bugs with frozen clocks and server reconnections. We also fixed a crash that sometimes affected members when observing games.

We're now working on new features, including the ability to archive Bot games, an updated interface for Lessons and Puzzles, and basic play features for unregistered "guest" players. Coming soon!

Fair Play & Sportsmanship

• 230,524,668 games reviewed for fair play.
• 10,359,219 accounts reviewed for fair play.
• 33,238 accounts closed for fair play (including 8 titled players).
• 1,469,113 abuse reports received.
• 118,766 mute actions taken.
• 93,820 individual accounts muted.
• 63,911 accounts closed for abuse.

Member Support

• Average time to first response:  5 days, 23 hours.
• Total support responses: 44,839.
• Average quality by member rating: 92% "Great" or better.
• Total ratings: 6,101.

Ok! That's January! Thank you so much for reading and sharing your thoughts below. We'll see you next time as we check out the news for February. Until then, stay safe and happy chess!

⏮ December 2020・ 🗓・February 2021 ⏭