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Chess.com Month In Review: September 2020
What happened at Chess.com in September?

Chess.com Month In Review: September 2020

CHESScom
| 45 | Chess.com News

Hey, chess lovers! October is upon us, and you know what that means: It's time to review all the things that happened around the site in September 2020—and what a month it was! Let's dive in.

Web

  • We released a new version of Lessons, putting our library of Courses (and our great team of Instructors) in a much better light! The core curriculum is always easy to find on the Guide tab—while the All Lessons tab emphasizes our newest Courses. Handy search features help you find the material you need. Check out the full announcement here.

New Lessons

  • Improved the chessboard and move-list in our interactive game diagrams—and also made it easier to navigate around the move-list (between the main line and variations) using your arrow keys.
  • Made several small improvements to the Key Moments feature in Analysis—for instance, showing the game's final position when you go to the Summary screen.
  • Added a Leaderboard for Live Club Matches.
  • Added support for Apple Sign In.
  • A new version of Vs Computer went into Beta, introducing human players to 60+ new friends who are ready to play anytime! 

  • We improved support for figurine notation everywhere, including Analysis
  • Updated some of the move-evaluation colors and icons in Analysis
  • Changed the 10 | 0 time control from Blitz to Rapid—and all players' Bullet ratings were increased by 150 points. Read the full story here.
  • You can now see Streamers you follow right on your home page when they are live.
  • You can now optionally unmask the password entry field while logging in.
  • Hitting "x" on your keyboard should now flip the board in Analysis, as elsewhere.
  • Not to be outdone by Lessons, our Puzzles features were brought together with a great new look and feel. (Check out the announcement here.)

  • Made some improvements to Awards
  • Added a link to the original game (if it was played on the site) on the Details tab of a saved analysis...

  • Made several improvements to ChessTV's Chat feature
  • Made Dark Mode the default UI for guests and new accounts 🕶
  • We're making great progress on a new games Library tool that will allow members to collect their games played on the site and elsewhere—and share their collections with other members. Stay tuned—it's going to be awesome!
  • Added orange bars to the Open Challenges grid in the new Play interface to show where your rating is relative to current challenges for that time control...

  • Tweaked the algorithm for serving rated Puzzles to favor easier problems if you start having a bad run of Incorrects
  • Tired of standard chess? Think Chess960 is a yawn? Well, head over to the new Chess Variants page and try something really different like a friendly game of Hoard chess... or a game where pawns can move sideways

Chess Variants


Android

September saw a HUGE new release for Android, including...

  • A brand-new Vs Computer feature with over 60 chess-bots (virtual opponents) from around the world, each with their own strength and play style
  • Key Moments comes to Android—making your post-game analysis more interactive and more effective
  • A major overhaul of the interface for both Lessons and Puzzles
  • With Chess Today, you always have the day's best chess news, videos, and articles (and more!) at your fingertips

iOS

  • The iOS app saw two updates in September—both fixed several annoying bugs and made general improvements.
  • A new version of Vs Computer (with bots!) is on the way—along with some other great new features.

Fair Play & Sportsmanship

  • 125,931,456 games reviewed for fair play.
  • 5,283,581 accounts reviewed for fair play.
  • 13,361 accounts closed for fair play (including 9 titled players).
  • 501,057 abuse reports received.
  • 45,334 mute actions taken.
  • 37,559 individual accounts muted.
  • 48,337 accounts closed for abuse.

Member Support

  • Average time to first response: 1 day, 6 hours.
  • Total support responses: 26,440.
  • Average quality by member rating: 90 / 100.
  • Total ratings: 3,104.
  • And hats off to the whole Support team for their recognition in Help Scout's 2020 Customer Service Awards! 👏  

Thank you so much for reading—and please let us know what you think in the comments. Until next time, be well and happy chess!

⏮ August 2020・ 🗓・October 2020 

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