Ember Chess is taking shape

Ember Chess is taking shape

What started small has turned into a much bigger project very quickly.

Over the last few days, Ember Chess has grown into a functioning online chess platform with live games, computer opponents, ratings, Game Review, profiles, moderation tools, achievements, and a lot more behind the scenes.

This is the first real Ember update, so here is where things stand.

Play against other people

Human games are live.

You can challenge another player directly by username or create an open challenge for someone else to accept.

Human games support live clocks, game chat, reconnecting, saved history, and separate ratings for Bullet, Blitz, Rapid, and Classical games.

New ratings begin provisionally, with the first 10 rated games helping establish a rating in each time-control category.

Practice against Ember Engine

Ember Engine includes computer opponents across a range of approximate strengths.

The lower-rated bots are designed to make more believable human-style decisions rather than simply playing perfect chess at a reduced speed.

Bot games are unrated, so they are there for practice, experimentation, and learning without putting your rating on the line.

Game Review has grown a lot

Completed games can be reviewed with Stockfish-powered analysis.

Game Review includes:

• move classifications
• engine evaluations
• candidate lines
• an evaluation graph
• interactive positions
• Ember Accuracy
• opening recognition
• Book and Last book move labels

Opening names and ECO classifications are also recognized when the game follows known theory.

The goal is not just to tell you that a move was bad, but to make it easier to understand what changed in the position.

Profiles, ratings, and milestones

Player profiles now show ratings, recent games, records, and earned Ember titles.

The first milestone titles are already live.

Early accounts have received First Spark, a permanent title recognizing players who joined during Ember's earliest public period.

Other milestones can be earned through things like:

• playing human games
• playing computer games
• defeating stronger Ember bots
• reaching established rating milestones
• spending time as part of the Ember community

Players can choose which earned Ember title they want to feature on their profile.

Fair play and moderation

Ember now has a full report, moderation, and appeal system.

Staff tools support warnings, chat restrictions, suspensions, bans, appeals, and audited moderation decisions.

There is also a dedicated fair-play system for investigating suspicious games.

Engine and timing data can help staff review a game, but they do not automatically decide that somebody cheated.

If cheating is confirmed in a rated game, Ember can correct the affected rating result while keeping an audit trail. Those decisions can also be reversed if an appeal later shows that the original decision was wrong.

Account security

A lot of work has also gone into protecting accounts and staff access.

Ember now supports:

• secure sessions
• session and device management
• username changes
• account data export
• account deletion
• staff two-factor authentication
• one-time recovery codes
• security auditing

Email verification and password recovery infrastructure is also being prepared, although outbound account email is not enabled yet.

A real operating platform

A surprising amount of the recent work has been on the parts players hopefully never have to think about.

Ember now has internal systems for:

• staff roles and permissions
• custom staff roles
• account and growth analytics
• title management
• moderation auditing
• site announcements
• public updates
• scheduled notices
• maintenance banners

Those systems are there so Ember can keep growing without everything having to be managed manually behind the scenes.

Still early

Ember Chess is still very new.

There are not thousands of players waiting in a matchmaking queue, and there are still plenty of features I want to build.

That is also what makes this stage interesting.

The people playing now are genuinely here at the beginning.

The next focus is continuing to improve the actual player experience, make finding human games easier, improve Game Review, and start getting Ember in front of more chess players.

If you find something broken, confusing, or just think something could be better, I want to hear about it.

Thanks for checking out Ember.

There is always another game.