SenseRobot Chess 🤖♟️ Tactic: Greek Gift in the Vienna Gambit!
#senserobot #viennagambit #greekgift
A few weeks ago, I received a SenseRobot Chess and made a quick “First Look” video. I’ve been using and reviewing the chess robot since then, and I have come to some strong impressions that can be described in three main themes:
- The hardware is excellent, though the piece movements are a tad slow.
- The on-device features are a bit limited but are well designed.
- The integration with online chess platforms is inadequate and unacceptable.
For online chess platforms, the SenseRobot Chess at present only works on Lichess, and even then, only for two time controls (15 min rapid, and 30 min classical). Over the past month, I’ve been in correspondence with SenseRobot and have put them in contact with Jörn Gehring (@joernupbde), the author of the amazing free Chessconnect software – available as an Android and iOS app, and as a Chrome browser extension. Chessconnect was first announced on Chess.com (and the forum thread is now at 86 pages, and 1703 messages at the time of this article!). I was an early adopter and described Chessconnect on my channel and blog a couple of years ago and it is my default way of using my Chessnut boards.
SenseRobot is actively working with Jörn, and I believe have or will be sending him a sample unit to help with development. I’m optimistic that together, they’ll be able to get the SenseRobot Chess to be compatible with Chessconnect. When that happens, SenseRobot Chess should work with Chess.com, Lichess, Noctie.ai and Chessiverse! The last two, Noctie.ai and Chessiverse, might pair especially well with SenseRobot Chess as it gives it access to a very wide range of AI chess bots designed to play more like a human.
If SenseRobot hadn’t demonstrated this active interest, I would have just recorded and published my review, and with the poor integration with online chess, it would have been difficult to recommend. However, as Chessconnect compatibility would be an AMAZING killer feature for the device, I’ve opted to defer the review for now given it is quite possible that my conclusion will be completely reversed.
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I thought that it was important to give an update as I’d promised to publish the review in a couple of weeks from the First Look video. Instead, today I’m going to demonstrate the game review feature on the SenseRobot Chess — it’s a basic feature: you can replay your previous games on the board, with the pieces moved by the robot. This game was the first game that I played, 15+10 rapid against a random opponent on Lichess. I played the Max Lange version of the Vienna Gambit, and this game is a good demonstration of some Vienna Game/Gambit tactical ideas, especially the opportunity of a Greek Gift Sacrifice type attack, which was ultimately the winning idea in the middlegame. Enjoy!
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