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CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.30 Beta: MOVE NOW without waiting, new games announced at once

2026-10-11

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.30 Beta. MOVE NOW on an emulated chess computer asks its plugin for the key at once and asks again every few seconds until the computer moves; the earlier versions estimated how long the moves took to enter and held the key back that long, up to a minute on a game opened from a PGN. A new game, an opened game and a set-up position are announced to the computer at once, so its reset runs while you think about your first move. The displays of the Fidelity Elite Avant Garde, Elite A-S, Prestige and Excel 68000 showed nonsense and now show nothing until they are read properly. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.29 Beta: MOVE NOW answers sooner on the first move

2026-10-08

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.29 Beta. MOVE NOW on an emulated chess computer presses its key sooner on the first move of a game: the console used to wait a flat twenty seconds for the machine's reset, now three, and twenty only for the Saitek Renaissance family, whose reset takes that long. The waits were measured on all thirteen computers of THORSTEN'S CHOICE, and every one answered within about four seconds of the key. A MOVE NOW pressed in the first moment after your move is kept instead of dropped. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.28 Beta: MOVE NOW presses each computer's key once

2026-10-08

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.28 Beta. On the Mephisto Milano and the Fidelity Designer 2265 and 2325, MOVE NOW presses the machine's key once instead of twice: their plugin interfaces press it already, which 0.9.27 had overlooked. Every one of CB-Emu's computer interfaces presses a key on MOVE NOW, so every imported computer gets its own move key; the thirteen of THORSTEN'S CHOICE and the bundled engines are checked by the console move by move, every other computer runs as its interface provides it. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.27 Beta: MOVE NOW for the chess computers, one start per machine

2026-10-08

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.27 Beta. An emulated chess computer starts once instead of twice, which halves the wait for every MessChess machine. MOVE NOW on an emulated computer now presses the machine's own move key once its moves are entered on its board and waits for its answer, instead of restarting the emulator: all thirteen computers of THORSTEN'S CHOICE answer it, each through the key its own plugin interface knows. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.26 Beta: the level list of THORSTEN'S CHOICE is back

2026-10-08

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.26 Beta. The FORMS key beside the Level field in UCI OPTIONS lists the levels of every computer of THORSTEN'S CHOICE again, the Saitek Analyst D++'s e1 to e8 and its tournament and game-in controls among them, as it already did for computers started from your own CB-Emu folder. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.25 Beta: the Saitek Analyst D++ shows its search

2026-10-07

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.25 Beta. The Saitek Analyst D++ now shows its search properly: its evaluation with the decimal point in place, and its search depth and the move it thinks best so far, read from the machine's own memory through the console's plugin, so SCORE, DEPTH and the line are the machine's own figures while it thinks. Its row on the LCD reads in the LCD's own order meanwhile, 3:g8f6 -0.43, as Franz Huber suggested. The other Renaissance modules show the LCD's right field with the evaluation; what earlier versions printed from the rest of that line was noise and is gone. A move made within seconds of the machine's first reply keeps the SCROLL presses that select its evaluation display. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.24 Beta: THORSTEN'S CHOICE and CHESS COMPUTERS side by side, the Victoria's lights on while you think

2026-10-07

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.24 Beta. The ENGINE chooser has two keys side by side, neither under the other: THORSTEN'S CHOICE, the thirteen classics Thorsten Czub picked, and CHESS COMPUTERS, every computer of your CB-Emu with the makers as keys. The Conchess Plymate Victoria's lights now stay on while you think: the machine ponders on your time and its evaluation, depth and expected line go on changing on the display until you move; a depth is read only where the display really shows one, and a reply from the machine's own opening library shows BOOK. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.23 Beta: CHESS COMPUTERS opens Thorsten's Choice, the move times wait for the first move, the promotion dialog only when a pawn can promote

2026-10-07

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.23 Beta. The key in the ENGINE chooser reads CHESS COMPUTERS again, the words one looks for; Thorsten's Choice, the thirteen classics with his portrait and the History Module's facts, is the headline inside it, and every other computer of your CB-Emu is there too through IMPORT MESSCHESS. The emulator in use stands on a line of its own in the dialog. Without a game clock the move times no longer run from the moment the program starts: nothing counts before the first move, as with the game clock. The promotion dialog opens only for a pawn that can really promote there; a pawn clicked onto a piece on the first rank no longer opens it. Everything of 0.9.22 from this morning is in it as well.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.22 Beta: Thorsten's Choice, the Saitek Renaissance family's info line, and HINT with the emulated computers

2026-10-07

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.22 Beta. The ENGINE chooser has THORSTEN'S CHOICE: the thirteen emulated chess computers Thorsten Czub picked, with his portrait, the year and programmer of each machine from the History Module, what each tells the console about its search, and the Module's words on its playing character. The saved engines are one list now, and IMPORT MESSCHESS has the makers as keys, one press narrowing five hundred machines to a brand. The Saitek Renaissance and its modules (Analyst, Maestro, Sparc, Brute Force) show their evaluation and the move under consideration on the LCD's first row while they think, read from their own info line. HINT and ANALYZE now refuse with an emulated computer, which cannot be asked to think for your side, and HINT with an engine no longer freezes the window. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.21 Beta: the engine control remembered, CB-Emu's own level forms, and the Conchess Victoria's evaluation on the display

2026-10-05

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.21 Beta. The engine control is remembered across starts: fixed depth, time per move or the game clock, and Pioneer's level, as you left them. The FORMS key beside an emulated computer's level now lists what CB-Emu itself knows for that machine, from Franz Huber's Levels.txt; UCI OPTIONS grows with its content; IMPORT MESSCHESS starts the computer you choose with USE or a double-click. The Conchess Plymate Victoria tells its evaluation, search depth and expected line: after its move the console presses its ? key for you and reads the LEDs the way its 1990 user's guide describes; the Plymate Amsterdam and Glasgow show depth and line. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.20 Beta: the levels of the emulated computers, alphanumeric displays, and three points from Franz

2026-10-05

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.20 Beta. The level of an emulated chess computer gets a FORMS key and a hint under the field in UCI OPTIONS: the emulator's plugin keeps the old level when the text does not fit its grammar, which is why an Academy stayed at ten seconds a move whatever was typed. IMPORT MESSCHESS moved to CHESS COMPUTERS, where one expects it, and finds the MessChess.lst of your CB-Emu folder by itself; UCI OPTIONS is wider. A computer with an alphanumeric display, such as the ACI Boris, is read on the LCD instead of showing hieroglyphs. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

ChessGate Explorer: now a level everywhere, rated, and on your electronic board

2026-10-02

ChessGate Explorer began two weeks ago as a page of its own and became popular enough to earn a place in the ladder. Explorer is now a difficulty level wherever you choose one: the first card on the Play page, and new on Connect your board, so the legends play at around 1000 Elo on your ChessNut, DGT or other electronic board through Chess Connect.

Explorer games are rated now, like every other level. The opponent counts as roughly 950 Elo, so a win barely moves a strong player's rating, while a player near 1000 gains and loses the way they would at the club. Wins and draws earn the new Wooden Pawn trophy on the leaderboard, the gentlest rung below the Bronze Pawn. The Explorer page keeps its own collection exactly as before — meeting a legend, reaching move 30, a first draw, a first win, an era completed — each counted once, nothing to grind.

The calibration is unchanged, and so is our request: if Explorer plays too hard or too easy for you, please tell us.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.17 Beta: the coach's better move, takeback against emulated computers, and three points from Franz

2026-10-01

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.17 Beta follows 0.9.16 the same day. The coach never names a move the board does not allow any more: a personality engine such as Zukertort sometimes plays a move other than the first move of its best line, and the coach took its "better" move from a line that was never played. TAKEBACK against an emulated chess computer works again: the emulation cannot un-press a move, so the computer is reset and the whole game entered again before it thinks about your new move. From Franz Huber's report: the grip between the engine display and MOVE HISTORY is back between them, a Fidelity's nine in the move time no longer reads as a q, and IMPORT MESSCHESS finds your CB-Emu folder wherever the MessChess.lst sits inside it. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.16 Beta: the right-hand panel on tablets and small windows

2026-10-01

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.16 Beta fixes the right-hand panel on a short screen. On a tablet in the maximized board view the engine display's keys could vanish at one window size and the display itself at another; now the display and its six keys are always on screen, and a short panel gives way in a fixed order: the clock shrinks first, then the display comes down to three LCD rows, then the move list to a line, and only then the text. The + and - keys of the move list change the text of the two lists only; the display's box has a height of its own, set by its grip, so the LCD no longer grows or shrinks with the move list. A new RESET LAYOUT button behind OPTIONS puts the panel width, the text size, the display's height and the window back to the defaults of the current view, and a remembered layout that would hide the display's keys is reset by itself at start. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.15 Beta: the chess computer museum, a board view for tablets, and the MM V's evaluation live

2026-09-30

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.15 Beta is out. A new HISTORY key opens the chess computer museum: while an emulated computer plays, a reading screen beside the board tells its story from a researched database of 273 historical computer families and 17 manufacturers, with the maker's history and every other computer a click away; it works offline and changes nothing in the machine. BOARD VIEW in OPTIONS has a MAXIMIZED setting for tablets and small screens: the board fills the height, the product strip and the keys move to the right-hand panel, and nothing is lost. Key captions are clear white, the board's LEDs are bigger and fluorescent, and the coach's better move lights its whole way. For CB-Emu users: the emulated computers get ninety seconds to boot, loading an engine no longer freezes the console, an emulator ends when its engine is closed, and with Franz Huber's plugin update of 30 September the Mephisto MM V shows its evaluation live while it thinks. Engines get forty-five seconds for their UCI handshake, so Zukertort starts on a slow tablet too. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.14 Beta: a fix for CB-Emu users, the Milano's search information, and the clock as in the club

2026-09-27

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.14 Beta is out, and if you run emulated chess computers from your own CB-Emu, please update: 0.9.13's batch files let the emulator save their options into your machines' ini files, so your own MessChess lost its window and could later fail to start. 0.9.14 tells the emulator not to save (-nowc), puts back the ini lines 0.9.13 rewrote the first time it starts with your CB-Emu folder, and leaves the folder as it finds it, checked file by file. MessNew machines now get CZUBATRONIC's display plugin too, the IMPORT MESSCHESS list is alphabetical, and the Mephisto Milano tells its search information: after its move CZUBATRONIC presses its INFO key for it, and evaluation, depth, expected line and positions searched appear as the engine display's numbers. No clock runs before White's first move, as in the club. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.13 Beta: saved engines, the emulated chess computers, and the readers' fixes

2026-09-27

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.13 Beta is out. SAVED ENGINES (behind OPTIONS and in the ENGINE chooser) keeps an engine with its UCI options under a name of your own, the way Arena and Shredder do, several per file, for matches too: MM5 [level 3] against Tacticon, ten games. CHESS COMPUTERS lists thirteen emulated classics by name, Mephisto III-S Glasgow, MM V and Milano, Novag Constellation Expert, Saitek Analyst D++, the Fidelity Designer 2000 to 2325, the Conchess Plymates and the Tasc R30; they run in Franz Huber's CB-Emu, which you install yourself, inside CZUBATRONIC with no window of the emulator's, at their own pace and level, and their own displays appear on the LCD: the MM V's PLAY and its moves, the Milano's two rows of text. IMPORT MESSCHESS takes any other machine of a CB-Emu folder. From the readers: no caret in the move list, shorter statuses on two lines, a setup palette laid out like a cockpit with real piece sprites that also fits a small tablet, NEW GAME clears the display, the time keys step by a second, and editing a value selects its control. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.12 Beta: a coach, continuous analysis, figurines, and the console answers with YES and NO

2026-09-26

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.12 Beta is out. COACH, a key with an LED under the engine display: while it is on, a move of yours that costs 1.7 pawns or more against the move the engine expected is called out on the display with the better move, the key's LED flashes green, the better move flashes as green dots on the board, and the engine holds its reply until you answer TAKE IT BACK? YES / NO with the new YES and NO keys, the way the old computers asked. ANALYZE is continuous analysis now: step through the move list, make a move or take one back, and the engine's line follows the position on the board. HINT flashes its move on the board's LEDs instead of a text panel. The move list shows figurine notation (NOTATION in OPTIONS brings the letters back), the keys' captions are printed smooth in a DIN face like a keypad's legends, and the SYSTEM STATUS window's text is larger. Engine matches can be paused and continued, the mode from before a match comes back, and the display names the match's engines. Positions load from FEN and EPD files (OPEN), from a FEN field in the setup palette (paste or type, SET, COPY) with four CASTLING switches. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.11 Beta: the engine is told "new game" once per game, not at every move

2026-09-24

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.11 Beta fixes something nobody could see from the outside. Before every search the program sent the engine the UCI command ucinewgame and then the whole game again, which told the engine at each move that a new game had begun. Ordinary UCI engines shrug that off, at the cost of their tables and any plan for their time; an engine that keeps a game of its own, such as the emulated dedicated chess computers run through CB-Emu or MessChess, restarted its game at every move and replayed the whole move list in edit mode. A reader who tried those engines in CZUBATRONIC spotted it. From 0.9.11 the engine hears ucinewgame once per game (after NEW, OPEN, a set-up position, an engine change or each game of a match series), followed by isready as the protocol asks; every further move arrives as the growing move list, and a takeback stays within the game. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.10 Beta: the keys under the engine display are back

2026-09-24

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.10 Beta follows 0.9.9 the same day. The three keys under the engine display, VIEW, ROTATE and BACKLIGHT, had been pushed out of the panel on most windows by the new scrollbar's own size request; they are back. In the TABLE view of the engine output a long main line now continues under the depth column when the panel is narrow or the text large, instead of a tower of fragments that read as blank rows. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.9 Beta: one row of keys, LEDs on the grid, settings that stay

2026-09-24

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.9 Beta is out. The control deck is one row of keys under the board (two at most on a small screen), the controls of a classic chess computer: small black rounded keys of hard, shining plastic with the caption printed above them, all on one pitch. SCHEME, PIECES, INDICATOR, MODE and ABOUT have moved into one OPTIONS dialog, which also sets the beep's volume (OFF to LOUD) and the board LEDs: small dots of the brightest red on the grid crossings around the from and to squares, like a modern electronic board's, bright or dim. Under the move list four keys like a CD player's step through a game, the number fields have big − and + keys for a touchscreen, and an engine match can be a series of up to 1000 games with alternating colours, every game saved as PGN and the score kept. The window's size and position, the scheme, the pieces, the indicator and the beep level are remembered between starts, the engine display never shows fewer than three rows, and the scrollbars, title bars and drop-downs are the console's own. Rest the pointer on the DCS Chess logo and a BUY US A COFFEE key appears. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.8 Beta: the beep sounds, and Zukertort joins the bundled engines

2026-09-23

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.8 Beta is out, the same day as 0.9.7, for two reasons. The beep of 0.9.7 never sounded on any machine, a limitation of the sound call the program used; it plays now, a plain short tone for a move and two for check. And a fourth engine is bundled: ZUKERTORT, one of playchessgate.com's historical personality engines, the play of Johannes Zukertort recreated from his games. Choose it with ENGINE or as a side in ENGINE MATCH; its Skill Level (800 to 3000) and Style Weight are set in UCI OPTIONS. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.7 Beta: one console, a dot-matrix display, glossy pieces

2026-09-23

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.7 Beta is out. The program is drawn as one chess computer now: the board is mounted into a dark chassis, the clock and the engine readout sit behind smoked glass, and the engine output is a dot-matrix LCD in the manner of the Mephisto Milano with DISPLAY, TABLE and RAW LOG views, a rotating readout and a backlight in the scheme's colour. The buttons are keys with the legend printed on them, grouped into clusters, and PREV and NEXT sit under the move list, which is written on a sheet of its own. A new glossy Staunton set, 2D GLOSSY, is the set the program starts with. The message boxes are the console's own instead of the Windows ones, the beep is a plain short tone (two for check), and the splash and a new closing screen carry the DCS Chess logo. One thing to know: the two layout grips are invisible now. Move the pointer slowly across the gap between the board and the panel, or between the display's keys and MOVE HISTORY, until it becomes a double arrow, then drag. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.6 Beta: a glowing clock, and the engine plays to the clock

2026-09-22

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.6 Beta is out. The chess clock is a fluorescent display now: every lit segment throws a soft halo onto the glass, the phosphor has a hot centre and the unlit segments stay as dark ghosts, amber on WALNUT, red on GRAPHITE, green on GREEN and BLUE. A game clock now means the engine plays to the clock: choosing any clock switches the engine control to USE GAME CLOCK, so it searches as deep as its share of the time allows instead of stopping at a fixed depth, and No Clock brings the previous control back. The thin line on the grip between board and panel is gone. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.5 Beta: a wider panel for big screens, an hours clock, Arena-style engine output

2026-09-22

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.5 Beta is out. The right-hand panel can be dragged wider for large and high-resolution screens (a Mac display, for instance): the clock digits and the text of the move history and the engine output grow with it, and + and − next to MOVE HISTORY set the text size on their own; both are remembered. The chess clock shows hours on six digits (1:40:59) instead of running the minutes past 59. ENGINE OUTPUT is structured the way Arena shows a search: one line per depth with depth and selective depth, score, time, nodes and the numbered main line, following the search while the engine thinks; RAW LOG keeps the engine’s own text. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

ChessGate Explorer: play the legends at around 1000 Elo

2026-09-22

ChessGate Explorer is live. All 50 legends and the same playing styles, calibrated to around 1000 Elo, so that a club or hobby player gets a real game instead of being swept off the board.

Explorer is a page of its own, next to Challenge and Mystery GM, not a gate everyone has to walk through. Pick a face and play. The strength is chosen for you; the colour and the clock are still yours.

It keeps its own score, built on firsts rather than on grinding: meeting a legend, reaching move 30 against one, a first draw, a first win, and a bonus for meeting every legend of an era (Romantic, Classical, Hypermodern, Modern, Soviet Era). Each counts once per legend, so there is nothing to farm. The Explorer ranking board is separate, and Explorer games do not affect your Elo, your trophies or your record anywhere else on the site.

We measured the tier before opening it and it lands close to the 1000 we were aiming for, but calibration is never really finished. If it plays too hard or too easy for you, please tell us.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.4 Beta: any time control, UCI engine options, a living splash screen

2026-09-22

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.4 Beta is out. Game clocks can now be anything (CUSTOM...: X moves in Y minutes, an increment, then A moves in B minutes more, unused time carrying over); the clock panel is always on and shows move times when no game clock is set. UCI OPTIONS lets you set everything an engine advertises (Hash, Threads, Capa 1.33’s Kmoch switches, Komodo’s Personality and Skill), remembered per engine. Komodo and other engines that quit on a closed input can be added now. MOVE NOW doubles as ENGINE MOVE on your own turn (switch sides, or let the engine play on), a grip between engine output and move list trades space between them, Tacticon comes as its v2.02 build with the draw fix, and the splash screen replays the Opera, Immortal and Evergreen games on a tilted board to Bach’s first cello suite (John Michel, public domain). Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.3 Beta: MOVE NOW interrupts the engine, better support for external UCI engines

2026-09-22

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.3 Beta: MOVE NOW now really makes the engine move while it is still thinking (engines that obey stop answer at once; CAPA96 cannot be interrupted and is restarted for a quick move instead). External UCI engines such as older Stockfish builds get proper handling: isready after every new game, the whole move list instead of a bare position so repetitions are recognised, and output in any character encoding. Also documented: the bundled Tacticon searches at most 7 plies, so depth or time settings above that have no effect on it. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.2 Beta: loading new Capa builds works, engine matches get a tournament clock

2026-09-21

CZUBATRONIC 2400 0.9.2 Beta is out. If you tried to load Thorsten Czub’s new Capa 1.32 build with the 0.9.1 program and got Engine did not return uciok, that was a bug in the program, not in the engine: the UCI check started the engine from the wrong folder, so it could not find its opening book ENGOPEN.TXT. Fixed; the check now runs from the engine folder, tells you what the engine reported, and offers to copy the bundled book beside an engine that lacks it.

Also new: a tournament clock for engine matches (for example 40 moves in 5 minutes, then 20 moves in 2 minutes more, with both engines’ times on the chess clock), matches at a fixed time per move no longer break off with invalid move: none, the 2D CURRENT pieces have their proper proportions again, and the ABOUT dialog shows the build time. Several 0.9.1 downloads were replaced under the same name on 21 September while these fixes were made; from 0.9.2 on, every build has its own download link. Full details in the release notes on the product page.

CZUBATRONIC 2400: the dedicated chess computer, reborn for Windows

2026-09-20

A new free program from DCS Analytics: CZUBATRONIC 2400 recreates the dedicated chess computer of the 1980s on your Windows desktop. A professional console with warm electronic displays, a seven-segment clock and LED move indicators, driven by Capa, the chess program Thorsten Czub began on a ZX Spectrum and revived in 2026 as a modern UCI engine. Pioneer and Tacticon are bundled too; any UCI engine can be added.

Play with eight time controls and a human-feeling thinking time, set up positions, replay PGN games, let Capa fight Pioneer in an engine match, and switch between four schemes and four piece sets. The full Thorsten Czub interview and the story of Capa are built into the console.

Installer or portable ZIP, no account, works offline. The product page also hosts the latest Capa builds as Thorsten releases them: playchessgate.com/czubatronic.

Play the legends on your electronic chessboard with Chessconnect

2026-09-18

ChessGate is now one of the sites supported by Chessconnect, the free Chrome extension that links electronic chessboards to online play. Version 6.3 adds ChessGate as a new site, next to Chess.com and Lichess.

If you own a smart board, this means you can sit at a real board, move the pieces by hand, and play Tal, Capablanca or Karpov on it: your move goes to ChessGate, the personality's reply comes back to the board. Chessconnect works with DGT boards, Chessnut boards and many others, and it is free.

Install the extension from the Chrome Web Store, connect your board, open playchessgate.com and start a game.

Schachkicker: “Playing against chess history”

2026-09-16

The German chess news site Schachkicker has published a second feature on ChessGate: PlayChessGate: Gegen Schachgeschichte spielern by Walter Rädler.

The article walks through what the site offers today: the reconstructed personalities from Fischer, Tal and Capablanca to Petrosian, the Mystery GM, the daily challenge from real games, the Rate Yourself test and the ChessGate Arena, and it looks ahead to the idea of turning a personal game collection into a playable chess identity.

Thank you, Schachkicker, for following the project so closely.

ChessGate and LineaChess listed in the Schachcomputer.info wiki

2026-08-26

ChessGate and LineaChess have been recognised by the German computer-chess community at Schachcomputer.info, and both now have their own entries in its wiki, the reference work of the vintage and computer chess scene in Germany.

Three pages are now live there:

  • ChessGate covers how the platform actually works: the Ultimate Engine, the personality layer built from each master's own games, and why we scale difficulty by reducing search depth rather than injecting random blunders.
  • LineaChess Strength Rating Analytics is an entire library of chess personalities whose play has been measured across their careers with the LineaChess Strength Rating system, using the Spacious Mind methodology. Every opponent a player faced is scored, phase by phase.
  • The Story Behind the Strength Rating Analytics tells how the method came about, from borrowed library chess books and early spreadsheet experiments through to the Spacious Mind Rating Tests.

A big thank you to ChessGuru and The Spacious Mind, who made these pages possible.

Daily challenges from real games

2026-08-25

The Challenge page now serves a new position every day, drawn from a library of 1,747 challenges mined from real games against the recreated personalities. Both sides of every position were played by a personality, so these are genuine moments from real games rather than constructed puzzles.

They come in four flavours: convert a winning position, find the only move that holds, take the mate that was missed at the board, or redeem a blunder by playing what should have been played.

The rotation is weighted so the rarest and most dramatic kinds still get their turn instead of being buried under the common ones. There are themed collections too, including The Tal File, The Fischer File, The Karpov File, Across the Board from Kortschnoj, The Executioner, Second Chances, Technique and Only Move.

LineaChess 4.8 is out, with a complete Training section

2026-08-17

A new version of our free Windows chess program is available on the LineaChess page. Version 4.8 adds a full Training section to what was already a play and analyse environment.

  • 6,660 tactical positions solved directly on the board, with scoring, a countdown and resume. A wrong move costs you points but never ends the puzzle.
  • 4,108 named opening lines covering all 500 ECO codes, backed by statistics from 95,341 master games. Press Practise and LineaChess sets the line up and plays it against you from either side.
  • The same historic rating test as Rate Yourself, built in.
  • Stockfish 17.1 bundled alongside the built-in ~2535 Elo engine, plus any UCI engine you want to add.

Still free, still no account and no subscription, and it works offline. Windows 10/11, one 94 MB download.

Rate Yourself: measure your play against 50+ historic chess computers

2026-06-08

The Rate Yourself test is live. Play a single move in real positions from 40 historic games, spread across seven schools of chess history: Renaissance, Romantic, Berlin, Paris, London, Classical and Immortal.

Every move you choose is scored from -15 (gross blunder) up to +30 (best move) across 1,595 scored positions. Whatever you play, the game continues with the move that was actually played at the board, so nothing is ever lost and you can always keep going.

At the end you get a rating on the same scale as the 50+ chess computers measured on exactly these positions, which places your chess somewhere in the history of computer chess rather than just handing you a number.

Methodology and test data by The Spacious Mind, used with permission.

Seven new personalities joined the roster

2026-06-01

Michael Basman, Amos Burn, Anthony Miles, Miguel Najdorf, Harry Nelson Pillsbury, Alexey Sokolsky, and Howard Staunton are now playable. Find them in the opponent picker on the Game page or browse their bios on Legends.

All player ratings reset to 1500

2026-05-25

We rebalanced the rating system: every active player now starts fresh at 1500 ELO in all three modes (Unlimited, Rapid, Blitz). Your game history is preserved. The K-factor was tuned so losses against beginner-level opponents are less punishing.

Connect your physical chess board

2026-05-21

Own an electronic chess board (ChessNut, DGT, Millennium)? The new /board page is built for click-to-move play with full game UX: post-game recap, takeback, flip board, save PGN. Native Bluetooth integration is in development.

Timed game modes: Blitz and Rapid

2026-05-19

Pick a time control when starting a game. Blitz (5+3, 3+2) and Rapid (10+5) are now available alongside Unlimited. Engine pacing adapts to the clock so the personality still plays in character within the budget.